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 (497)

Dear JY Participants:

I am sure that by now, all of you would have been notified of your successful applications and you would be looking forward to board that train, flight, bus or cab that will bring you to IIT Mumbai on 24Dec08. I hope all of you have already read or are planning to finish Shashank’s ‘India - A Journey Through a Healing Civilization’ before then. Aside from all other obvious reasons, I think it is important to read it to realize how formidable it was to dream up such a journey and how tortuous was the path to realization. Without that understanding, I’m afraid you will not be able to immerse yourself in the second edition of this adventure and some of you might be tempted to behave like tourists on a package tour.

One of most memorable sessions held on the train during Azad Bharat Rail Yatra (97-98) was when Shashank and the rest of the crew gathered us in the chair-car and talked to us about what went on behind the scenes. There were two of these sessions and I participated in the second one. I remember seeing some people whose tears wouldn’t stop flowing and I wondered what the fuss was all about, until I myself heard it from the horse’s mouth.

The Jagriti Yatra is no different. Given the foil of ABRY, it may have been easier to imagine but it is equally difficult to execute. I have been on the fringe of the JY development therefore do not have intimate details of what went on, but based on what I have known, JY has been a labor of love. You will appreciate this on the 24th, when you will perhaps see a well-deserved halo of happiness behind their heads of Shashank, Gitanjali, Kaustav, Rewati, Swapnil, Raj and other members of the JY team.

Imagine 5-6 individuals based in different parts of the world coming together on a conference call on 15Aug06 to launch the discussion of a new Yatra. Thought-led by Shashank, most of these individuals are ABRY alumni and by now, fully involved in the humdrum of their daily lives - some of them working on key projects within their organizations and some others going through personal inflection points - relocation, wedding or some other family predicament. Yet, the idea takes germ and people agree to devote their time to a new Yatra. Their inspiration is simply that another Yatra must happen for the next generation.

Over the next 2 years, some of those individuals move away from the core group but some others join the fray. The initial plan was to do a Yatra in Dec07, then it was moved to May08 and finally, Dec08. Getting others to believe in your idea is, in itself, not easy and then, getting them to put put their money where your mouth is - that is a challenge. Those of you who have tried to raise sponsorship for something in the past will probably understand how difficult the process is - especially, if you do not have people working full time on it. For every big hit, there were countless misses. But, nothing possibly frustrates more than false alarms. Imagine sweating out to convince an organization of the value proposition of the JY for them, meeting them countless times to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ and after sending increasingly strong messages of a looming partnership, the organization pulls the plug on you. Imagine this happening a few times and all of a sudden, you are behind the schedule by several months and feeling somewhat down. During those moments, the JY team kept the chin up and persevered - because they believed in the idea of the Yatra.

Getting the sponsorship may appear like half the battle won but the second half is no easier. The operational challenges are unprecedented and with fewer resources, one has to maximize the value of every rupee and every minute. Half the energy is sapped up by the government bureaucracy. I am sure getting the Indian Railways excited about an event like this is impossible - even if the Yatra objectives are perilously close to their own avowed goals of national integration and promoting development. On the other hand, they are excited about the prospect of being able to spring last-minute surprises - they might make the chair-car suddenly unavailable or they may ask for a huge cash advance or refitting a car with bathrooms may need five different applications in triplicate. I am just beginning to imagine.

If you thought the government system was impenetrable, even some of the private players could be inscrutable. The caterer might retract from the agreement because of some union pressure, the media partners may throw several tantrums before agreeing to the schedule, the AV system may develop last-minute snags and some interest group might say that the Yatra does not have enough participation from a particular state, community, gender or nationality. And, just because the Yatra takes off on the night of 24th doesn’t mean that all issues have been nipped in the bud. There are a hundred different scenarios that have to be planned for - from medical aid to local transit to keeping the train on time to ensuring hospitality for all the guests and planning all events meticulously, down to the last detail. You just don’t know what might upset the apple-cart.

In this melee, the organizers have one group of people that they can depend upon for their solidarity and empathy - and that is you, the JY participants. From the time you set foot in the IIT campus at Mumbai, you should simply cast yourselves as fellow supporters, volunteers and organizers. This is easier said than done. Some of you may need some time to assimilate before you can contribute, some of you may be skeptical of the goings-on before you believe and some of you may be hesitant about stealing the thunder of the organizers. The organizers will appreciate your initial reluctance but sooner or later, you are expected to move away from the sidelines and take the centerstage in small and not-so-small ways. While the agenda would have been set and schedules ready, there is always ample room for improvisation, as long as it enriches everyone’s experience. A train-full of like-minded people are raring to learn from you but they will also need your willingness to be open to their ideas.

The concept of the Yatra will come alive only if participants join hands with the organizers and work as a team. All the essential planning has been carried out but the organizers need you to go beyond following the guidelines; they want you to make improvements and involve others, as you go along. Such participation will not only make the Yatra a true success, it also has the promise of making your experience truly memorable. I recall some of my best memories include being part of the team that took shifts in the engine and tail cars to keep the pressure on the train staff to maintain the speed. Some of the Yatris, on their own initiative, decorated the train for the New Year’s eve celebration, while some others took up the task of ensuring cleanliness. I also recall how one day, a group of Yatris just decided to give rest to the catering staff and served dinner to everyone on a moving train. These gestures were small but they made us all feel like one great family.

I believe each of you has been selected to participate because you were not content being another brick in the wall. As the logical next step, I see this Yatra as your best opportunity to be the maverick that you always wanted to be. If you have been one all along, it’s time to get some momentum. After the Yatra concludes on 11Jan09, I can assure you that many of you will report it as a life-changing event, some of you may remain unimpressed but at a minimum, all of you will go back with great memories and friendships. Where you want to be on the scale depends on how soon you are willing to shed your inhibitions, experiment with your dreams and go with the flow!

Godspeed!!

If asked to recount 5 top events of my life, I will perhaps always include my participation in the Azad Bharat Rail Yatra (Free India Train Journey) in 1997-98. A chartered train with over 200 students cris-crossed India in an exciting journey that celebrated India’s 50 years of independence. The second edition of this journey, called Jagriti Yatra (Renaissance Journey), takes place this winter, 24Dec08-11Jan09.

Jagriti Yatra (JY) succeeds the Azad Bharat Rail Yatra (ABRY) after 11 years. These 11 years have not been a blink in time for the world, and certainly not for India. We have seen a great deal of change in these years. As JY unfolds, we need to perhaps assess our ABRY direction and evaluate where we need an inflection and where an about turn is necessary.

To that end, the JY team has rightly positioned this journey as a forward-looking, future-oriented event focused on India’s need of the hour: Entrepreneurship. As an ABRY participant, I am also in position to point out certain themes & messages of the last Yatra that need to be revised for the consumption of the new generation that will come aboard.

As many participants will recall, we had a 5-point agenda on the train (Population Control, Environment & Sustainable Development, Values, India & the Globe, Agro-Industries & Entrepreneurship) and additionally, a focus group on an Ideal Village and Ideal City (which we named Azad Gaon & Azad Shahar). While certain messages have remained topical and have acquired an even bigger importance, a few themes need repackaging:

a) Population Control: ABRY’s consensus was that population growth is a problem and we need to control our numbers. This position was heavily conditioned by the state propaganda and our biases. Indians (and people from other developing countries) are sometimes diagnosed as possessing a ’scarcity mindset’ as opposed to an ‘abundance mindset’ of Westerners. Growing up, one would look around and easily associate the scarcity of resources with number of people claiming them. This thinking expressed itself during events like ‘load-shedding’ (this concept is unknown in the West) or queuing up at the railway station to purchase tickets or over rising prices and while dividing waters. Research (not necessarily recent) has revealed no causation between population and poverty. Thinly-populated countries can be miserable (think sub-Saharan Africa) and heavily-populated regions can be rich (think Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, New York etc). True, larger numbers require more resources but they also accelerate innovation. Innovation fuels prosperity which eventually shrinks the birth rate and populations reach stable levels. To focus on population control as a means of reducing poverty is like rowing against the tide to escape the storm. India needs to focus on creating opportunities for the people, accelerate development and reap what many economists are beginning to term as ‘demographic dividend’. In the process, population will take care of itself.

b) Ideal Village: There was a bit of Gandhian thought that hung upon us like still air throughout the journey, especially after the visit to the Sabarmati Ashram. While Gandhi was clearly a great individual and leader, no serious economist would term his notions of development well-considered. His focus on self-sufficiency may have been good as a tool of civil disobedience, but in post-independence India, it was a recipe for disaster. From that wellspring arose the idea of developing villages (because that’s where India lives, they say). Our well-meaning leaders relied unquestioningly on Gandhian insights and still do. However, this kind of thinking that treats assumptions as axioms is very harmful. Yes, majority of people live in villages but should they continue to live there? A cursory analysis of concentration of world’s wealth (and common sense) reveals that cities are where wealth is. In developed nations, very few people live in rural places or earn their living through agriculture. We can improve the lot of rural India by focusing on creation of cities, not on improving villages. There is a thin line between the two but this difference in paradigm has a powerful impact on how we allocate resources.

c) Agro-Industries: Similar to the Ideal Village discussion, the emphasis on agribusiness was not forward-thinking. In India, we often take agriculture as non-negotiable and then, proceed to think about how we can create more value out of it. It is a sound idea in the interim but our end-goal should be to wean our workforce away from agriculture, as much as possible. Today’s India is reflection of this trend where we have moved away from an agriculture-dominated economy to a services-dominated one. During 2005-06, agriculture accounted for 20 % of India’s GDP while Services accounted for 54%.

d) Values: I was a part of the Values group and remember that we created a poster of a Tree of Values which showed how there are some basic values (the trunk) and how they provide the bulwark for other values (branches) which ultimately help us in achieving success and joy (fruit/leaves). For us, the trunk was ‘Honesty’ and ‘Integrity’, and none of it is obsolete 11 years from then. This is a discussion that requires an inflection since a better understanding of values has assumed a much greater role in assimilating a global world. The more we are joining up, the more we need to learn to understand and respect differences. The predictions of homogeneity (’global village’) have fallen short and as different regions of the world develop at varying rates, the melting pot runs the risk of occasionally turning into a seething cauldron. Samuel Huntington’s 1993 thesis ‘Clash of Civilizations‘ appears full of prescience as he predicted that Post-Cold War conflict will stem from cultural, rather than ideological differences. At that time, this appeared counter-intuitive to many since ideology was supposedly a more powerful force than culture in modern times. Not many people doubt Huntington’s thesis anymore. 9/11 can be considered a watershed in this development and as an event, it stands between ABRY and JY. The next wave could be based on any other identity, beyond cultural or ideological. Therefore, it is important to widen the scope of the Values discussion and include not just culture/ideology but also gender, sexuality and race as possible fulcrums of the emerging world order.

e) Environment & Sustainable Development: We debated endlessly about how forests needed to be saved and rivers needed to be cleansed. The awareness regarding environment has peaked in the last few years with global warming taking centrestage with war on terrorism, so this presents another inflection point. While ABRY understood the importance of Sustainable Development and also endorsed several local and national solutions, I think JY needs to take this dialogue further and include the nuanced nature of the issues that now beset us on a global level. Some of the recent analyses have shown powerful connections environment has with peace (think Water) and terrorism (think Ivory), going beyond the traditional foil of industrial development. The debate has also taken on a moral shade due to clamor by the developed world that China & India need to rein in their emissions and energy hunger. While the West easily neglected any fallout on environment during its coming-out, developing countries are expected to show restraint when they need it least. This calls into question the fairness & politics of development. JY must explore these issues and present India’s case.

I am sure JY team is crafting a 5-point agenda for this year’s Yatra but if I may throw in my suggestions on which broad areas to focus on, these will be:

1. Role of Government & Civil Society
2. Sustainable Development & Environment
3. Religion & Values
4. Free Market & Regulation
5. Entrepreneurship & Education

I wonder what others think.

(The above is a reproduction of the latest post from my blog: serialbus.wordpress.com)

About 7 years back, on 14Nov01, I wrote the following email to the ABRY yahoo-group. It had been about 4 years since the Yatra. I had just got my arms around the basics of internet and email. I found the group online and decided to write to everyone. Looking back at this mail, I am not sure whether I am nostalgic about the mail or about the Yatra or both. Anyways, reproducing it here in original (except for the everything sic, which I edited!!).

“Dear All,

Long time, no see!

I am really excited to realise that just by hitting the ‘Send’ button, all this that I am writing will be
instantly delivered to some long-lost friends from far and wide (from Manipur to Minnesota, that’s how Shashank put it, right?).

I joined the e-group a month ago but it had to be today. I am on another e-group where i get some two mails everyday so I was dismayed to see that we Yatris aren’t getting our act together - it took a Dilen Gandhi to shook us up - and suddenly we began to hear some really interesting pieces of mundane news from all quarters - like how someone just got over with exams and is aching to get back to Manipur, like how some people thought that someone else was namedropping on a US connection and like someone has just completed a report on minorities in the backdrop of a lovely snowfall (Hazel, it’s winter here too, in the Terai region of Himalayas…and I make it a point to wear my hooded sweatshirt every evening).

Suddenly, it struck me that of the 55 people on this list (who all are they???), some might be wondering whose mail this is: Who was Mohit Joshi? What did he look like? or (God forbid) Was this guy really on the Yatra?

So let me tell you what I was witness to. Small things first.

I was there in the foyer of convocation hall, IIT-B when Juhi and Purva shrieked when they discovered that they were long lost kindergarten friends. And, I had looked on in amazement as Akhtar walked up to the stage unaided to introduce himself in his Brit accent. I was sitting outside at lunchtime when Frank came along chatting with all Yatris one-by-one (Damn, he was looking for a hero for the film he was to shoot for the Yatra. I didn’t deliver my lines properly so Devang got his first big break).

And, I had stood up in Matoshree when Shashank made us get up and do some stretch exercises before delivering his cocktail speech (Shashank, we didn’t really need it: your cocktail gave us a good enough kick!). And, I was the one who sang the carols out of tune at the Bombay Central station on the midnight before Christmas (who broke the coconut, i never could gather!).

And, the cold morning of 26Dec97, when the train had reached Tilonia and the welcome party from the village had started beating drums hoping that our motley group will jump out from all possible outlets in the train, our people were busy rushing to the loos while the train stood still.

And, the rather colorful guide at the Amer Fort in Jaipur who spoke in detail about the polygamous habits of the Rajahs. The way we all rushed to the stage at GGIC, Amritsar to do bhangra but then were recalled because we had reacted prematurely….

Marc Tully, Kiran Bedi and R K Pachauri couldn’t get enough of each other at IIT-D. And, the people danced at Railway Station till the train got moving, a few minutes after it became 01-01-98. Mrs and Mr Pasricha joined us there. The five-point agenda spelt out by a lady doctor at KGMC, Lucknow - Does anyone remember what I’m talking about? (Not the real 5-point agenda!)

Gautam Mukherjee’s Toflersque talk at football stadium, Jamshedpur enthralled all of us although Shashank remained skeptical of his ideas till the end. Santaragachi???? Yes, here we had the Azad Bharat Paidal Yatra (ABPY), lest anyone forget!

I guess we kept the Navy guys waiting for long at Vizag Rly Stn and I got bumps at the harbour because it happened to be my b’day that day and never will I forget the card Purva hand-made and got signed by everybody then (It said in block - “Tum jiyo hazaaron saal; saal ke din ho pachaas hazaar”).

Aurangabad was a long halt - the Manifesto group had started working day and night - and the presentations at the Bajajs’. The choreography show by Nath Valley School kids was awesome, wasn’t it? And, Frank made Madhur Bajaj do several retakes for capturing a single scene (Frank’s houseboat on Thames was called ‘Girl Friday’, he said).

And, by that time Clyde had become famous for his bum-charades also. And Komal for her dance on the French number, ‘Melissa’!

The pictures of the tank ride at Ahmednagar have always been the envy of my friends. While filming Anna Hazare near his school, Frank had stationed himself on a rooftop nearby. At a point, he wanted a retake but he didn’t exactly remember Anna Hazare’s name, so he shouted out to Shashank - “Make the great man go down the steps once again!”

The military band playing outside Col Patil’s home in Pune excited junta so much that they formed a platoon and started marching on its beats much to the amusement of the band! I had forgotten my slam-book at the Agha Khan Palace but someone brought it to the train in the night to my relief or I would have lost all those precious entries by all of you!

And, the Pune-Mumbai leg was what they call senti; Chutki broke down and some others too. People began taking rounds of the train - beginning at one end, they would go ahead hugging everyone they came across till everyone had been hugged 199 times.

The last time I was with you was when the cake was being cut at the Bombay Central with a beaming Shashank doing the honors. After that, we unclotted. We walked, ran, raced ahead in all directions. And, haven’t stopped ever since. So, i feel sometimes we should stand still. And, let the forest find us.

Let’s connect - all of us! And, get everyone else into the loop! Let’s keep the family intact because the onus of an Azad Bharat Sea Yatra (ABSY) is on us! We will get Shashank et al as consultants.

Keep writing a la Dilen’s formula - mundane events in lives of friends distant become the most interesting of narrations. I have been rather sloppy so far (3 years, 9 months, 25 days) but my Diwali resolution is to remain in the loop now onwards!

I basically wanted to wish all of you a great Diwali (for the Finnish, the Indian festival of light) through this mail. Those who remember me would be kind enough to hit the ‘Reply’ button and those who do not, well, can assume me to be a new friend altogether and the e-group shall keep us together.

Regards and Ciao,

Mohit Joshi
No longer in Nainital”

‘Is the glass half empty or half full? Depends whether you are pouring or drinking’ said Bill Cosby’s mother in a conversation that reminds me of India in this 60^th anniversary year.

On the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence, in 1997 we organised a national adventure – the Azad Bharat Rail Yatra. Two hundred young Indians participated in that Yatra and have since remained in close contact over the years. This is an extended family forged by the memories of twenty-two days of exhilarating, non-stop travel on a special train that covered 7,000 kilometers of India. We keep in touch through a web-based forum, and at heart; we simply remain attached to India. As I write this, these participants are planning another Yatra – the Jagriti Yatra with the theme of awakening entrepreneurship. 

Our aim for the Yatra was to discover the other India, an India beyond the English language. To me, this India was in the smaller towns where I had grown up as the son of an army officer; it was in my town of birth, Gorakhpur, and in Barpar, our ancestral village in the Deoria district of eastern Uttar Pradesh. During our travels we found more than one India. But the central theme that dominated the journey was India integrating with its own genius. By doing so will we build a country that is different and therefore able to compete and prosper in the new world. Only if we understand who we are and are comfortable with it, will we live lives of integrity. Participants discovered this first hand. They celebrated the integrity they saw amongst those they met during our travels.