Gaurav Sharma, Partho Chakravarty and Prabal Bhardwaj, three yatri’s on the Jagriti Yatra train speak to Kaustav Bhattacharya and candidly speak about their expectations and experiences on the yatra. The interview was conducted just before the third stop of the yatra prior to any major role model site visit. Gaurav speaks about the power of the network whilst Partho digs deeper in to his own impressions of how groups collaborate. Prabal has recently set up his own project called Media for Change and tells us about how youth can play a part, through media, to bring about change in society.

I hope you enjoy the interview and would love to get your feed back via comments on this post. Hit the play button below or download the MP3 file to your system for portable listening on your favourite MP3 device.

 

 Interview with yatri's during Jagriti Yatra [13:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (224)

Hi all. Sorry for the late update to this blog. A number of days have passed with no updates. Apologies in advance for any typos and mistakes in this update as I’m typing this very late and don’t have time to proof read. Things have been very hectic and busy on Tata Jagriti Yatra. On top of all the work to do, almost everyone in the AC compartments has come down with a flu, cold and cough most probably due to the bad air conditioning, the close proximity of so many people and the onset of cold weather. We seem to have passed on the cold bug to each other. Ironically, those in the non-AC carriages mostly seem to be fine as they have the advantage of natural air-conditioning by way of the outside breeze free flowing through their compartments. The cold and cough has has dragged down my wanting to update this blog on a daily basis but it hasn’t flagged my spirit of adventure or ability to enjoy the yatra.

I’m going to try and summarise events from the last few days in one blog entry to save some time. Enjoy!

Day 7

Ramaswami Elango is a social entrepreneur with passion and flare. To say that he is an amazing speaker is to do him some serious injustice. Elango has worked with many national committees on rural development, was recently awarded “Ashoka Fellowship” and has been invited by the UK and USA government to study local governance. The village of Kuthambakkam is in Tamil Nadu (India), with a population of 5000. A few years ago, the village was fraught with poverty, inflicted with violence against lower castes (dalit) and women, had 35% of its population involved in illicit liquor brewing and lacked infrastructure. Today, the village is transformed, has good basic infrastructure in place, and the villagers are now busy building an environment-friendly local economy based on a cooperative model, producing their basic necessities (like food and clothing) within their own village.

Our journey to Elango’s model village in Chennai was challenging. Although located close to a national highway, access in to the village was via a network of narrow village road. Navigating through these in nine large Volve buses was hairy and severely dangerous. We all got quite shock on the bus which I was traveling in when the bus in front of us snagged a live overhead electric cable and ripped it clean off. The cable ended up draped across the left wing mirror of my bus and hung there precariously directly over the exit door of the bus. After much worrying, and urgent requests for all yatri’s to remain seated and not go anywhere near the cable, a local villager managed to get word through to the electricity sub-station controller who must have turned the power off and we eventually managed to nudge the cable away with a large stick. With the commotion over, we proceeded in to Kuthambakkam where we all alighted from our buses and gathered in the village panchayat to listen to perhaps one of the most passionate, animated and totally amazing role models we have met so far on the yatra. Elango came across very much as the peoples man, someone who lived with his village and worked with people around him. He understood the day to day hardships and challenges of rural villagers in India. His zeal to lift villagers out of abject poverty and attain a basic sense of dignity and pride in their home and village struck a chord in the heart of all yatri’s that was so strong that during the Q&A session following his talk, Elango was barraged with a never ending stream of questions from the yatri’s. We were all very fortunate to get a personal tour of Elango’s village where he showed us how local men and women, all highly skilled and trained , were busy producing essential items of hardware to keep their villege going. Items such as gas burner elements, piping and all manner of other metal work. The word sheds were all extremely well equipped with machinery to grind, file and bend metals and wood. All in all, it was a very impressive set up.

Day 8

Bangalore certainly lives up to two of it’s reputations very well. Firstly, it really is India finest example of high tech development. The city if developed and strung with hundreds of ultra modern and vast techno and business parks hosting major world class India and International business all primarily in the high tech space. The second reputation that definitely do ring true with the grid-locked traffic. The atmosphere in Bangalore has got to be one of the most eye wateringly polluted environments I have ever been in. The traffic jams are so extensive that it would be faster walking, if it wasn’t for the fact that pedestrian walk ways are practically unheard of in India and negociating your way through Bangalore traffic by footed, weaving in and out on the side of  a side-walk-less road is really taking your life in to your own hands! It was, however, encouraging to see major progress taking place on the Bangalore metro which has yet to open but much of the construction work appears to be at a fairly advanced stage, and boy, if there’s a city anywhere in India that desperately needs a better public transport system, it has got to be Bangalore.

The Yatri’s were treated to a talk by three role models Harish Hande, S. Rajagopalan and Madhura Chatrapathy. Each came on stage one at a time to give their talk. Harish Hande co-founded SELCO INDIA, a social venture to promote sustainable technologies in rural India. With its headquarters in Bangalore, SELCO has 25 branches in Karnataka and Gujarat. Today, SELCO has installed solar lighting systems in over 85,000 households in the rural areas of these states.

Established in May 1993 at Bangalore by Dr. S. Rajagopalan, TIDE (Technology Informatics Design Endeavour) is devoted to promoting sustainable development through technological interventions. It identifies economically rewarding, environment friendly technologies invented in India’s research institutions, and develops them into successful enterprises. TIDE focuses on those technologies which are suitable for the rural environment, address energy issues and build rural entrepreneurs. Amongst the many technologies promoted by TIDE are energy efficient stoves. These have been developed for various informal industry sectors like Ayurvedic medicine preparation, rubber band making, areca boiling, textile processing, sericulture etc.

The third speaker is Madhura Chatrapathy who represents a women focused angle in entrepreneurship. Madhura, as she would like to be called, wears two caps - as a Social Entrepreneur and a Business Entrepreneur. She is a food technologist by training with Post Graduate Diplomas in Marketing & Advertising and Journalism to her credit, both with distinction. As a businessperson she set up her business of a de-hydration plant in 1981 with know-how from CFTRI for Tamarind Powder. After two years of struggle she diversified into a range of de-hydrated food ingredients that today meet international standards and caters to international markets like North America, Europe, Australia and Japan and also domestic market that includes multinationals. Today, Food Associates Bangalore, is a leading customized food ingredients producer and a sourcing agent for a range of ingredients for its very discerning customers. FAB’s B2B operations mean - processing against order, no inventory pile up and no major problems with marketing. As a Social Entrepreneur, she has initiated and built up many institutions including Association of Food Scientists & Technologists (AFST), Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Karnataka (AWAKE) of which she was the Founder President and also Asian Centre for Entrepreneurial Initiatives (ASCENT).

It was clear from the reactions of the women contingent who were packed out in the hall to hear Madhura speak that she was a inspitation to all who listened to her and respresented a strong female role model for all other women to look up to - especially those with aspirations to become entrepreneurs and make it big in a business world that is still largely male dominated.

Day 9

Hyderabad is home to the Nandi Foundation. a not-for-profit organization, may soon find an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for setting up the world’s largest kitchen. Spread over two acres with a built up area of 14,000 sq ft, this biggest central kitchen located at Uppal in Hyderabad caters mid-day meal to 880 schools in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, benefitting 150,000 children on all school days.

Naandi Foundation, formed in 1998, was conceived by the former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and was set up as a public charitable trust. When the Andhra Pradesh Government began a mid-day meal scheme to reach 7,500,000 poor children in 70,000 schools across the state, it chose Naandi and entrusted it with the gigantic task of preparing and distributing the food.

Naandi’s operations are expanding to Madhya Pradesh & Delhi very soon. Leena Joseph was honored with the Manava Seva Dharma Samvardhani Award for excellence in social service in March this year at the Guru Nanak Bhavan in Bangalore.

We actually have a member of the TJY organising team who actually works for Nandi and so we’ll be posting some more information on this amazing foundation soon.

Day 10

Bhubhaneshwar. I’m going to update this part of the blog tomorrow at it’s very late here. Here’s a little teaser. We all got chucked off our train at 2.30am and had to sleep on the platform. We also traveled almost ten hour by bus which wiped most of us out pretty badly.

Day 11

Jamshedpur/Tata Nagar. I’ll update this tomorrow when I have some more time.

It’s day 6 on the Tata Jagriti Yatra. Our train arrives in Puducherry (Pondicherry). We are visiting one of the most advanced eye care hospitals in India, the Arvind Eye Care Hospital. As our bus approaches the hospital grounds, it’s not difficult to notice how ultra modern the facility looks like from outside. The hospital is modern, large and well maintained and looks like being a million miles ahead of any normal government hospital. Indeed, Arvind Eyecare Hospital would even give the best private hospitals in India a run for their money on aesthetics alone.

Aravind Eye Care Hospital is an ophthalmological hospital with several locations in India. It was founded by Dr.Govindappa Venkataswamy. The hospital is named after Sri Aurobindo, one of the 20th century’s most revered spiritual leaders.

Aravind is more than an eye hospital. It is a social organisation committed to the goal of elimination of needless blindness through comprehensive eye care services. It is also an international training centre for ophthalmic professionals and trainees who come from within India and around the world. It is an institute for research that contributes to the development of eye care and to train health-related and managerial personnel in the development and implementation of efficient and sustainable eye care programmes. Aravind also is a manufacturer of world class ophthalmic products available at affordable costs.

We were joined in the hospital auditorium by joint director Dr. Ravindran and by video conference from their Madurai branch by joint director Dr. Arvind. Dr. Ravindran gave us a rousing talk about the history, ethos and outreach of the hospital. His talk resonated a lot with the gathered yatri’s and resulted in a standing ovation towards the end. One of the most amazing things that stood out for me about the hospital was its utilisation of the most advanced forms of technology. Their hospital network is interlinked by a multi-mega bit wireless network that has a 75Km range. The hospital provides mobile medical units. Fully self contained optical diagnostics units that can travel in to the darkest depths rural India and bring advanced, world class optical treatment and diagnosis to millions of people who would otherwise not have access to such treatment and care.  The buses can transmit video and photos back to a main hospital and within minutes receive an in depth expert analysis. They are also equipped with equipment to carry out minor eye surgery.  The hospital is free to extremely poor people and treatment is heavily subsidised for all those who can afford to pay, making the Arvind Eyecare Hospital one of the most socially accessible and medically advanced hospitals in India today.

Today was more symbolic then anything else. With our location now at the southern most city of India - Kaniyakumari - we intended to pay pilgrimage to legendary Vivekananda Rock Memorial which was a short ten minute boat ride.  Vivekananda Rock Memorial is a sacred monument and popular tourist attraction in Kanyakumari, India. The memorial stands on one of two rocks located about 500 meters off mainland India’s southernmost tip. It was built in 1970 by the Vivekananda Rock Memorial Committee in honour of the visit of the great spiritual teacher Swami Vivekananda to Shripada Parai during the month of December 1892 for deep meditation and enlightenment. He swam to this rock and meditated about the past, present and future of India. It is said that he attained enlightenment on the rock, and henceforth became a reformer and philosopher.

We all gathered at the memorial and took in the scene across the vast expanse of water, a place where two seas and an ocean meet. Five minutes of quiet contemplation was had within the meditation room to the rhythmic chant of  “ohm” followed by a visit to the memorial itself, an imposing yet delicately designed structure housing a life size bronze statue of Swami Vevekinanda.

The day concluded with a beach front media event hosted by CNBC TV18, during which a panel discussion was heald and a Q&A session was conducted to allow the audience to ask questions about the topics raised during the show. The recording was made with only one re-take sequence and ended on schedule. We do not have confirmed dates of when the show will be aired, but I believe it will be on during early January whilst the yatra is still running. It will be broadcast on CNBC TV18 in India which is also available are an online streaming channel via the CNBC TV18 web site.  Our second media debate will be held at Chennai.  The venue for the event was a picturesque beach front within the grounds of the Vivekanada Centre in Kaniyakumari. We noticed a couple of trees on-site were baring freshly ripe tamarind seed pods which tasted superb. We picked up a few of the pods which had fallen on the ground.

With the media event over, dinner served, we retreated back to the train for our next destination, Puducherry where we would visit the revolutionary and technologically advanced Aravind Eye Hospital which has helped millions of rural, poor and remotely located people receive life saving eye treatment at little or no cost.

What a gloriously sunny morning but what a rude awakening! The previous night, most of us had gone to sleep VERY late. I myself had reached R. E. M. state at around 3.30am and was meant to be getting up at around 6pm to make a 7.30am start to the Trivandrum Techno Park. As suspected, I didn’t get up on time. Instead I awoke to the PA system blaring out “Breakfast is being served outside on the platform, get up, have breakfast and be ready soon, infact VERY soon, to board the buses as we’re going to the Trivandrum Techno Park”. At this point, the typical Flintstones and Barny Rubble scene of urgent panic and insane madness ensues as I make a mad dash for the bathroom, change of clothes, brushing of teeth and simultaneously falling out, half asleep on to the platform to gulp down breakfast. With all of that over in a blink of an eye, and STILL feeling as if I had just run head long in to a brick wall, I stumbled on to a bus, completely separated from my own group and ending up next to a fellow Bengali with what one can only describe as an “interesting and persistent” laugh. Cue throbbing headache

The Trivandrum Techno Park is located up on a hill. As the bus entered the grounds, we were greeted with scenes of ultra modern buildings and house-hold names such at ITC and Tata Consultancy Group, amongst many others. The most striking aspect of the Techno Park was how spotlessly clean it was. This really did jump out at me as I walked around the grounds and observed the superb facilities dotted around the techno park. Unlike vast swathes of India that is often littered and dirty, the Trivandrum Techno Park did not have a single item of plastic, paper or any other man made trash visible on the ground anywhere.  What a refreshing and impressive change to the world just outside its gates.

We arrived at the Techno Park at around 8.30am and settled down in their outdoor open air audirorium. An impressively large venue, capable of holding at-least ten times more people than our yatra group. All the yatri’s settled down quicly in eager anticipation to see two very distinguished speakers.  Whilst waiting for our guests, a thought crossed my mind that the surroundings of the Tehcno Park added to the excitement. Participants were clearly impressed by their immediate surroundings and the chatter could be heard amongst the participants about the big name companies and the impressive architecture that was available within the Techno Park. Lets not mince words here, even I was impressed, and I’m used to working in big technology parks back at home in the UK and on my occasional trips out to the USA. I think for me the beauty of nature, palm trees, plush vegetation and impressive modern builders all seamlessly co-existing in a way that almost felt natural was the most impressive aspect of the outward physical beauty of the location.

Up on stage we greeted G. Vijayaraghavan who is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Technopark in Trivandrum. Technopark is India’s first technology park and among the three largest IT parks in India today. He was accompanied on stage by P. Jayakumar from Toonz Animation,  an animation company which has diverse interests in production and distribution of live action feature films, digital and gaming content, licensing and merchandising and media related education.  Mr. Vijayaraghavan took us through an engaging history of the techno park and spelt out a number of the challenges and issues he faced during the early days when he was attempting to acquire the land to build the techno park to the corruption and issues he faced after the techno park was built. He gave some very inspirational tutoring and encouragement to the yatri’s to be follow the path of truth, honesty and hard work without having to stoop to the level of bribery and trickery to get business done. This drew much applause from the young audience. Mr. Vijayaraghavan later returned to the stage after the Toomz presentation to give a one hour talk to the audience about entrepreneurship. This was a particularly educational talk, giving concrete and tangible advise to the gathered yatris. Topics such as how find the right talent, how not to build debt, how to treat your customers and how to not be afraid of failure was all spoken about with some great real world examples that helped to bring the message to the youth in an accessible manner.

Next stop Kovalum Zero Waste NGO, Kovalam Beach. Here we attended a talk about waste management by an NGO called Thanal. I was quite excited to note that one of our African contingent stood up to ask a question! Superb! I suspect the session was a little too lengthy judging by the flagging spirits of those in the audience and the dropping heads. Having said that, we did get a clutch of good questions towards the end an an opportunity to sample some of the local handy craft made by women who work at the NGO and make collectible items made out of recycles waste items such as paper and coconut shells.

We all headed back to the train station for dinner, then entered train at 12.30am to hit the sack. It was a long and thoroughly engaging day.