17-day Paris Olympics 2024. The US is in the top slot with 126 medals, followed by China with 91. India is at 71, with 6 medals. The US and China got 40 Golds each. Next is the Los Angeles Olympics 2028.
Bangladesh. Some want to cross over to India. Hope the restored situation convinces them to stay back. Hope rumours about St. Martin alias coconut alias cinnamon island are not true.
Finding Anand Gurukulam, my next university, was not easy. Debated, weighed the three possibilities – journalism, social work, and development management. Joined an engineering college as an electronics and communications teacher, to teach Computers and Social among other things. Apart from teaching, the time and energy available was used to deeply explore these possibilities. Thankful for the offers that came, including ISRO-SHAR, Bhadrachalam Paper Board, National Productivity Council, Indian Express et al. Saw work in defence, appropriate technology in IITs, health-medicine, writers, communities, civil society, rural enterprises et al. From all this, coupled with deep reflection, long hours and delving deep, the third possibility became the obvious possibility. My exploration confirmed I needed a licence, lest I could be stuck and less useful. Weighed TISS and IRMA. IRMA was more suited given my competencies, aptitude. Why not IIMA? Wasn’t sure of not getting tempted out. IAS? Not sure of remaining focused on development management, leadership fully. Journalism? I needed action influence, rather than pointing possibilities.
IRMA, a part of Anand Gurukulam, with Dr Verghese Kurien as its Chief Praachary, had taken me in reluctantly. Application, Admission Test, and Interview at Amul, Hyderabad. The panel was not sure whether I could hang on. Offer was made. I had to tell my father that I may not give money at home for a couple of years. I had to ask him to sign as guarantor for the Bank of Baroda loan, if I defaulted and I did not stay in the sector for the mandated three years after passing out of IRMA. By this time, highly troubled and frustrated with extroversion, I started practising introversion. I could read a book a day. It is an 8-term course, with 5 classroom segments with 3 other segments – 1 fieldwork; 2 management traineeship. CFCCMCMC. I did well in academics. Village stay, stay with a civil society organization, long-time with tribal communities, doing national, rural opinion surveys of problems and prospects, and staying in the dairy prepared us well for the future. Developing management information systems, coding, and implementing; going on milk supply routes at 0330 hrs onwards, to rationalize them; alone, and in teams, gave us the arsenal. In-house tuitions, class preparations, class participations, homeworks, individual-group assignments, volunteer tasks, getting A++ so that + can be taken to next term, editing terra firma – magazine et al ensured we were ready for development management, leadership work fully. Prof MS Swaminathan gave us diplomas.
I joined the Market Intervention core team led by Dr K himself, much before convocation, not opting for three other offers, to be at grassroots, and working with weavers; to be in modelling at the level of Harvard; to be with energy, science and technology. Anand Gurukulam includes Dairy Board, Amul, their sister organizations and the ecosystem. I spent some 2+3+2 years in this, with life-long teacher friends, peers as teachers. Anand took me to bird’s views-worm’s views. macro-micro. Lateral. Integration. Can we practise these and be useful? Can we be relevant? Can we visualize, realize possibilities?
Yes, we can. If we coexist, if we come together to flow. In N? samaikyayoga for 7L.
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