Sarada Muraleedharan is Kerala’s new Chief Secretary. She takes charge from Venu, her husband.
Hope Supreme Court would make sense of the case of rape and murder of 31-year doctor in Kolkata, very soon and pronounce its verdict. There appear many discrepancies and anomalies in the ‘story’.
Are we, our governments, transcending ease of doing business to speed of doing business, with ease?
Natural farming, living – in harmony with nature, has emerged as an academic discipline, a la management, rural management, economics etc. This calls for Universities offering academic, learning programs in and around N. We await existing and upcoming universities and institutes coming up with these certificate, diploma, graduate, post-graduate, doctoral, and post-doctoral programmes. While we await, can we also think of having a dedicated institute, university for natural farming, living, livelihoods? Can the existing ‘academy’ evolve into this? Can this become a centre within the dedicated university? Can it be a Central University? Can it be a global university? Indian, global school of Nature, a la ISB, IIM, and IISc? In partnership, network with global giants in this domain. Multiple locations, hubs. Interdisciplinary courses. A range of them. Field-practice centric. Participatory learning, learning and earning pedagogy-based. Apprenticeship based. Best practitioners as professors. World class researchers, practitioners, educators in tandem. Maybe with 1000+ ha farms of its own, 10,000+ ha farmers’ farms; maybe 10,000+ farmer scientists experimenting, 2,000+ mentors, research and learning faculty working with them, any year. Maybe we need 500,000+ sq ft built up space. And Rs.1000+ Cr investment, and Rs.200+ Cr annual recurring costs. Can we do this? In the next 2-3 years.
CSR funds’ utilization has been less, 0.09 percent points below mandated 2% net profits, amounting to Rs.1,475 crore, out of some Rs.30,000 Crore. If we dig into the utilized funds, we can discover scope for huge improvements even there. Can we find ways for tapping and utilizing these funds for societal impact, climate impact, cooling planet, improving wellbeing of farmers-farmworkers, local value-chains, consumers’ health? Can we invest CSR in NF enterprises, NF services etc?
If we want to change, change for good, so that we do not lapse back, can we take 2-5 more with us? Likelihood of 3 staying there is much higher than a single person. Change needs company. Company of friends who trust, who are patient, and who are willing to risk a bit. Change could be deceptive. We may get carried away by superficial – surface changes. Can we seek to change skin deep? Robust change that could be measured. Change might need metrics that move with change. Change numbers can be coming in the way of deeper qualitative systems change. Quality calls for sustained effort of creating an ‘ecosystem’, space, for change. It calls for ability, capacity. And will. Transcending previous negative experience pool(s) floating around. These need conversations, deeper, more intense, iteratively. Champions at the helm of these conversations. We cannot see causality established clearly here for numbers, time, iterations, examples etc.
Can we see triggers? Can we find, capacitate champions? iteratively? Can we calibrate intensity, frequency, players, timing? Can we work in multiple ways, forms, paths, vehicles? For forward.
Yes, we can. If we coexist, if we map ourselves to the flow. In N? rupaantarayoga for 7L.
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