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)