Shades of Being Alive

  The compartmentalisation of the human being.  On one side, each of us can access the entire universe through ourselves, on the other side, we are forced into a system which makes us part of a mega-machine extracting and violating the Earth. These opposing forces create burnout.

This survey  named " Will our children's education be affected?" provoked a certain line of thought on possibilities before educators in these interesting times.  What have schools been doing all this while for the last 200 years, if they haven’t equipped children to own their learning? With humility I felt, the survey seems to be assuming a premise already - the worldview of industrial schooling that we all inhabit in our society. And from there all questions flow. I have challenged that premise and offered different perspectives. We need to ask right back upto Lord Macaulay whose well thought out colonial principles of domination still form the bed-rock of schooling of our children today. Can us educators, interpret this pause as a way to contemplate how has the education pursuit of our world / country doing? Source: Google Can this be seen as an opportunity to enable children and adults around them to Learn local From local material,...

More and more, its becoming visible to me- what’s the work for us. Perhaps, our life’s work. Over 8 years into Youth Alliance, it seems we are just beginning.  Humanity faces a civilisational crisis - that is made up with ecological crisis because we are consuming twice more than earth can regenerate; economic inequity because less and less people own more and more wealth in the world; political polarisation because nationalistic identity based division is rising world over and even spiritual crisis, because we feel more and more alienated from our own selves.  Or perhaps, as human beings we are in a stage of transition. From an industrial society to a life sustaining one. From a story of separation to a story of interconnectedness or interbeing.  From Google Last 8 years, in our work - we have created spaces for young people to get in touch with their own selves, with nature and with people whose realities is completely different from their own. Initial...

The Interconnected Crisis  The world today is at the cusp of multi-fold crisis:  Ecological Crisis where we are consuming 1.5 times the rate at which Earth can replenish Socio-Economic Crisis where 26 individuals own as much wealth as bottom 50% of humanity and inequity is only getting skewed each year (Oxfam Inequity Report)  Spiritual Crisis with a remarkable self-alienation whose one of the consequences is rising number of suicides.  The crisis we believe, is civilizational. It asks of us some fundamental questions about dominant way of being, way of thinking and organising.  The Core Problem  The crises are created by a web of factors – like mono-cultured education, globalisation, industrial modernity and so on. However, one of the most significant phenomenon that has led to these crises is dismantling of communities particularly in the last 30 years at a rate unprecedented before. Because of (a) economic mobility (including displ...

The world is at the cusp of multifold crisis:  Ecological Crisis where we are consuming 1.5 times the rate at which Earth can replenish  Socio-Economic Crisis where 26 individuals own as much wealth as bottom 50% of humanity and inequity is only getting skewed (Oxfam Inequity Report)  Spiritual Crisis with a remarkable self-alienation whose one of the consequences is rising number of suicides.  The crises are created a web of factors, we wish to name the roots as we see it:  Firstly, our monocultural factory like schooling system produce consumers and workers whose humanity is layered with fearful pursuits of material excess. And that has created a system that work for only a few humans at the cost of other human beings, other beings and the environment. The education system was developed for a particular socio-cultural context where Industrial Revolution was rising, colonialism was the order of the day and the paradigm of man’s relationship with...

I often wonder about the dominant characteristics that define most of human behaviour at this point in history. In this exploration with other people in our team, we have come to four words that represent the ways of being for most of us on the planet. More, Busy, There and Easy. More More factories, more products, more impact. More has almost become synonymous with better. This is bred from a constant space of scarcity of what we have and a possibility of aspiring to have something more. Does more at any point bring fulfilment? It definitely keep the economy running. Busy Most of us are busy doing something. Experience of leisure has become rare. Busy lifestyles that are borne out of auctioning people’s time to large corporates or inter connected systems or our small smart phones. Interestingly, today's times are marked by mindless busyness. And sometimes, we are too busy to find time for things/people that matter. There Everyone seems to be working to get somew...

Gramya Manthan has been happening for 8 years in the same village cluster in Kanpur Dehat and we have been sitting in the shade of this banyan tree since then. Only this year, we began calling it Dadimaa Bargat (Grandmother Banyan). Gramya Manthan invites people to reflect on one’s days - how would it be to draw from a witness of 300 years, was a sense we tried to hold. Grandmother Banyan has seen several storms, monsoons, changes in her lifetime. One of the work that has happened to us and through us is to reclaim the sacred in nature. Looking at nature not just as a material resource but as a spirit. And not just nature outside - what would it be to not just look at our own bodies as a material resource? Another aspect to this has been experiencing a different rhythm of life than the rhythm most urbanites are used to - clock-time, weekday-weekend etc. Experiencing seasons, experiencing daylight and nightsky, experiencing birds chirping or trees shedding leaves. We would start the d...

Dearest Family Member, I hope this email finds you in joy and love.  On this Saturday morning, I have a question for you - Where have you experienced / seen these elements?  Clock   |   Bell    |    Time-table    |      Compartments    |      Uniform      |       Input >> Process >> Output Guessed? Yes, school. Anywhere else? Yes, Factory, Prison, Railway Stations, Shopping Malls and sometimes even in Homes. And if you inquire deeply you would find one or the other combination of these design elements in all modern social constructs we are part of. What have these design done - they have created a story of the world - story of separation, of competition, of rush, of standardisation, of self-limiting survival and of self-interest. What does this mean? Why on a Saturday morning? To that, please allow me to take you away from y...

Society and Market What makes a network of people, society and what makes them a market. The answer is simple - relationships.  When my mother would make a pickle for me in the summer sourced from mangoes dropped in the wind - that was in the realm of the society.  When all of us people in the village would gather around our pond to celebrate a festival of water, desilting the pond, repairing our houses with silt - that's society. When I would go out play cricket with friends from my village / colony - that's a society.  Water, drinkable directly from ponds and streams - society. Grinder, shared by a whole neighbourhood - society. Children learning from elders - society. Friend taking care of another in illness - society.  But alas, society is encroached upon. Society is no longer needed.  Because markets' taking over.   Pickle - easyday, buy one get one free - chemical-rich, plastic-ridden. Ponds - buy (export quality) water from p...

I am sitting here at my home trying to absorb as much heat from the sunlight as possible. Its Republic Day. I didn't realise it consciously until in an ongoing whatsapp conversation I wished a friend, 'Happy Republic Day'. For me the day was going like another free-going time at home. But the message made me ask, what kind of 'Happiness' I see, in this day. A little later, some music from nearby school or a community center, reached my ears. The music was 'desh-bhakti' songs. Apparently, like most of us I have enjoyed and sung to these songs all my life. But at the moment, they brought a little disgust in me and along with it inspiration to share. As I sat to share, I started to explore and ended up listening to a lot of 'patriotic' songs and the expanse of my feelings increased to several different emotions. Doing this, told me something about our country, India (also sometimes called भारत and हिंदुस्तान) and the very idea of 'Nation (राष्ट्र)...