Blog
Jaychandran has this infectious energy with which he is able to communicate the burning issues with sincerity and solutions with hope. Media personnel at the peak of their career often do not digress from popularity centric events, initiatives and pursuits. Popularity is the critical differentiator in the media sector and particularly if it is combined with performing arts. As a television personality who is recognized in most households in Tamil Nadu, it is his training in social work and concern for society at large that stands him apart and his amazing initiative. He has been posting…
My conviction that women leadership is what will change the world has gained strengths repeatedly through my reading of Gandhi and JC Kumarappa as well as the interactions I have had with several thought leaders. I have interacted, spoken to, conducted workshops with, sat in meetings, with thousands of rural Indian women over the past 30 years of being in the change making space. I can today say with complete conviction that if the world has to transition into the space of safe planet, India has to nurture more and more of women in roles and spaces of leadership. Economically, JC…
Buddha Poornima is a special day for me. On this day I spend most of the day in meditation or special reading and expressing gratitude towards the sangha that we belong to. One of my constant efforts has been to read the precepts that I received from Thay Thich Nhat Hanh in a beautiful ceremony in 1997. I have had the good fortune of being in several sanghas during the three decades. Today I missed being in one sangha and that's what I am writing about here. Between a Sangha and Utopia Between 2015 and 2019 until the pandemic brought us to a abrupt stop, as the co…
Would you believe me if I told you that a government in India recognized over 1000 practitioners of various vocations from the unorganized sector as primary educators for a major skill development programme? That they between them organized over 2500 community based skill school and trained over 51,000 village youth in over 75 diverse areas of skill, and a majority of them being women? Even better, that over 79% of such skill upgraded youth were either successfully placed or became self-employed (nearly 25,000 started their own ventures)? And more than 250 new enterprises were…
Harmony Management - An Introductory 2-day residential workshop on Indian System of Management Summary: Synthesis or harmony is an ethos of the Indian psyche. People here have been managing institutions, organizations and ventures for millennia. History tells us that before the arrival of the British, India contributed 25% of the global production. But none of the Indian management systems or case studies of the communities that built and managed such institution are part of the over 15 lakh students who study management in India. What: The workshop is designed for practicing…
Reimagining Swaraj amidst the relentless politics of statism in the 21st centuryBarun Mitra, Free ThinkerLast week a good friend invited me to join a series of weekly online socratic dialogues. The topic was 'the functional order of cities'. He wrote, "In cities, order can be seen and felt as safety, vitality and social capital in a neighbourhood. This functional order is present in some cities and some neighbourhoods, and lacking in others. Through a conversation about cities, the seminars will explore the tension between the sources of this functional order, and planners' desire for…