Limited to Unlimited
MIT 1972 study (Limits to Growth/Expansion, commissioned by the Club of Rome), using World3 model, stated that human society is on the verge of collapsing by 2040. Gaya Herrington of KPMG re-confirmed that business as usual would take us there, for sure. It is possible to make huge changes and clean up.
Can we have rights? Rights to community restored on landscapes, commons, including forests, water bodies?
It is reinforced: Technology is not neutral. The solution evolves around how the problem is defined, who is defining, who is building the solution, how is it coded and implemented, what rules govern. Results include intentional and unitnetional consequences. Can we have ethical intentional designs? Can we have frameworks that let us have the agency of agency?
It is a decade since NRLM, National Rural Livelihoods Mission, was launched. Today, it is in all states and Union Territories except Delhi and Chandigarh. It is now, India’s self-help movement of 7 Milion Women SHGs with 75 Million members in rural areas, federated upwards at Village, Cluster and. Block levels, with their leaders, animators and cadres from within serving-leading them. Another 30 Million women are into SHG fold in urban India, under the aegis of NULM.
Various studies confirm: Its impacts are far reaching. It has enabled greater access to knowledge, participation, services and resources. Empowerment is palpably visible, with a clear bias with the poor and marginalized. Self-employment of women in work force increased. Incomes increased. Households are engendered significantly. Demonstrated better resilience to pandemics like CoVID, despite CoVID’s devastating effect on the poor. Without NRLM, MGNREGS et al, it would have been far worse.
More targeted diversified livelihoods portfolio development helps. Customized reality mapping, planning and support helps. Transcending from microfinance to microenterprises, collective enterprises, and livelihoods portfolios is still the critical gap. NRETP, National Rural Economic Transformation Project, is expected to step into this, building on the base. Digital efforts help. Realizing saturated convergence helps. Facilitating architecture for fair share of the consumer rupee helps. Increases in Budgets help.
Can we move to focus on happiness rather than earning materially? Do we need expensive houses, cars, functions? Do we need savings for generations? Do we think that our children cannot earn to live on their own? Can’t we spend tome for ourselves, our redemption? Can we seek joy? Can we seek joy for all of us?
Can we use words carefully, as words leave a lasting impact? ‘No offence but’, ‘with all due respect’, ‘I do not have time for this’, so on.
Will we be comfortable that we are misfit in many social environments and groups? Will we be aware of this? Will we work, travel, observe, analyse, read, write, speak, meditate, love, with greater awareness? Let us appreciate that the best things in life are ‘free’. And be with them. Then, we start living our own lives truly. We share the feelings that come from deep within our hearts, share the thoughts from the depths of our minds, and take actions emanating from our conscience.
Be aware that we are a bundle of contradictions, in thoughts, in feelings, in words and in actions. Some unconscious, semi-conscious. Let us be aware. Let us be aware that our brains have the capacity to change, neuroplasticity. It adapts to new circumstances temporarily to come back later as quickly as possible. To attain its equilibrium. Therefore, we need to get to the root, or core, and change it for good. Let us dig and probe deeply, to uproot.
Let us realize our problem is not our ego. Ego provides us a sense of identity of self. It has multi-dimensional selves within us – material, social, emotional, intellectual, spiritual.. It has pushed us to our results, impacts, and reaching our potential and purpose, the reason for our existence. Then, we need to transcend it, or allow it to ‘disappear’ or drop off.
In the final days of their lives, most people regret that they have not lived the life they wanted to live.Can we live the life, the innerself wants us to live? The universe wants us to live? Can we take a blank sheet, slide, and write ‘our ideal character’ of personality, aspirations, thought patterns et al, if we have to create ourselves? What do we want to do, not bothered so much about ‘success’? What would we do with some 100 million with us, if we are free?
Yes, we can. If we let go of the past. If we let go of the future doubts. If we practice listening to deep within and deep without. If we flow with N. For 7L.
Join us in the world of yoga of limitless useful coexistence – anantayoga for 7L.
G Muralidhar