Inclusion a better option than choice?

Often in life, when we are sailing comfortably along one path, we bump into a starkly different yet attractive option. An alternative that in itself is attractive and makes sense, but just does not fit comfortably into your existing scheme of things. Examples?

• You  are a youngster with supportive, loving, sensible family, who is helplessly charmed by someone whose background and views just don't gel with your family's. 
• You are comfortably handling a successful business, and you encounter an opportunity that irrationally but strongly appeals to your gut, but all your supporters advise against it

What is the right thing to do when you encounter two paths in front of you, one of continuing what you have been doing comfortably, and one of switching to a wild and attractive new option?

There is a whole area of Decision Sciences that deals with making the right choice. Choices can be quantitatively weighted, scored, prioritized, optimized and selected in scientific ways. However, I recently began to wonder if this whole business of choice makes sense at all.

I encountered many forks in my own life. Looking back, the best decisions I took involved embracing both sides of the fork rather than choosing any one side. Including the new option into my existing life, so as not to destroy/lose what  is already there, but expand horizons to embrace the new, has always resulted in growth for all concerned, enriched perception, and made new opportunities available.

Making and sticking to a choice is far easier than inclusion. Hence it is the short-cut that people tend to prefer - just come to some conclusion quickly and simplify life. Hindu versus Muslim, urban versus rural, moral principles versus convenience, profit versus social service, parents versus friends, etc. However it seems to me that each choice we make is like a little wall we build between ourselves and the real, beautiful world out there. Choice breeds exclusion.

Inclusion is not easy to practice. Including some new thing as part of your current life is like becoming pregnant. Many existing parts of you will be forced to yield, many preferences get compromised, many allowances get made, many acclimatizations happen. But once the painful gestation is over, the end result is well-worth it. Your world definitely becomes richer.

In my personal & business life, I was fortunate to have encountered many situations where I was forced to choose between strong options. I feel grateful and gratified that something in me selected both options instead of only one. As an easy-to-understand example, my choice of a life partner was strongly objected to by my wonderful parents. I often felt cornered and forced to make a choice, but something within me adamantly stuck to "no I want both my parents AND my fiancée; all should be happy". It took time for a solution to naturally evolve, but when it did, the conclusion was more beautiful than any single choice could have been. There were many similar situations and learnings in the context of my business.

It will be wonderful if some Decision Sciences researcher takes up a scientific study of inclusion as a decision-making strategy, and evaluate its merits compared to choice.


 

Obesity & Undernutrition - two sides of the same economic coin?

To address India's dual health burden, Stanford researcher Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert, PhD, has joined forces with colleagues across disciplines to better understand the seemingly opposing issues of undernutrition and obesity and to develop nutrition policies aimed at reducing the public health concerns. According to a release:

Bringing his own expertise in mathematical modeling, Goldhaber-Fiebert is working with the group to consider the patterns of future illness and death due to undernutrition and obesity. The researchers would like to know how economic and demographic changes will impact these trends. Ultimately, broadly delivered nutrition policies will have to address undernutrition and obesity issues without exacerbating either one... Although currently focused on India, the research will have broad implications for many other countries that face the undernutrition/obesity dual burden.

The research is funded by a Woods Institute Environmental Venture Projects grant.

Why worship feet?

The focus on worshiping the Guru's feet is unmistakable in Hinduism - the following are a few examples:

• Saint Tulsidas starts his popular Hanuman Chalisa with "sri guru charana saroja raja nija mana mukura sudhar" (Having cleaned the mirror of my mind with the dust from the lotus feet of my Guru..)
• Adi Shankaracharya wrote an entire Guru Paduka Stotram, a collection of eight slokas describing the greatness of the holy sandals of the Guru.
• Seemingly unsatiated with this, Adi Shankara went on to write the Guru Ashtakam, another eight powerful slokas that ask "Of what consequence are any earthly possessions or achievements, if your mind is not riveted in devotion to the lotus feet of Guru". 
• The Ramayana story of Bharata installing Sri Rama's sandals on the throne of Ayodhya for 14 years

I always wondered - why worship sandals, of all things, the dustiest, lowest part of the Guru? By looking at sandals or feet, it's hard to even tell who they belong to - how can they inspire devotion? Is sandal worship a conspiracy by Gurus to establish their unquestionable supremacy over the disciples? Why not worship the face of the Guru, the whole form, something the Guru created like a book, or an abstract symbol like Om? Of all things that can be worshiped, why feet / sandals? Why should educated people stoop so low just because they respect someone?

I wondered in this manner for several years.


Recently a series of events took place in my life, which made me experience the sensibility, the beauty in this mode of worship. I understood that just thinking of Someone's feet can move you to tears and untold joy. That you find it impossible to think of Them as a mere human form. The only way you experience Them is as an all-encompassing, all-powerful presence, truly one with the Universe, as Truth itself, and you feel blessed to be able to behold their footprints in this insignificant, transient lifespan of yours.

Every time you touch those Footprints, you feel your existence being cleaned up. You experience Them as truly formless - as the air that courses through your body, as the divine sound permeating creation, as Grace itself. Their current form is incidental and of little significance; They walked the earth much before you came and will walk it forever after you leave. So the most tangible thing about them that you can physically hang on to are their footprints.

Further, you realize that your Guru is a continuity, not separate from the series of enlightened beings before them. It is as though a magnificent form, a coalescence of all Gurus since the beginning of time, the embodiment of all knowledge, love and compassion in creation, formless, limitless, and resplendent beyond imagination, stands on top of the two footprints that you worship. How can you dare to look up? It is not even the universe that stands on these footprints. The universe is a mere child's play for the Being, the Cosmic Energy that offered these footprints, with infinite compassion, to help an insignificant being like you dissolve. What pride can you have in front of that Being? Is your education, money, beauty, fame, intelligence, strength, or anything else pertinent in anyway before that Being? If your goal is to dissolve, and an invaluable opportunity to do so is being offered to you, is there anything more sensible to do than to shed all pretenses, all prejudices and offer yourself 100% at those feet?

Fortunate are those who naturally bow down at the Guru's feet with the necessary love, humbleness and awareness. But even for doubters like me, there is hope. Guru's grace can transcend doubt and bestow a beautiful experience on you. The following verse was born of Guru's grace and burst forth as a song.  

Guru paadam, ahamkaara naashakam

samsaara saagara tharaNOpaayam, sarva rOgaanthakam

manO-vaak-kaaya-karma puneetham, paramoushadham

Guru paadam, ahamkaara naashakam

Rotting an extremely serious matter - Supreme Court

Content from OUTLOOK India magazine
October 18, 2010


Ticking off the Centre for the rotting of huge quantities of foodgrains when people are dying of hunger, the Supreme Court today asked what action has been taken against officials responsible for it.

Terming the matter as "extremely serious", the apex asked the Centre to ensure no further wastage and gear up to meet the storage required for the ensuing kharif crops.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Mohan Parasaran drew flak for his argument that only 7000 tonnes of grains had got rotten in Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns and that 67,539 tonnes were wasted in the godowns owned by States of Haryana and Punjab.

"Even if it is 7,000 tonnes how can it happen? Then there is the wastage in two States. It is an extremely serious matter. You compare the wastage world over. The damage done in two States is very high. What action you have taken against the officials?

You are admitting 7000 tonnes have been damaged. People are dying of hunger. You are not providing them grain. This litigation has been going on for the past 10 years. Some evaluation should have been done by you by this time to prevent wastage and ensure proper distribution," a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma told the ASG.

The apex court made the observation while dealing with the public interest litigation moved by Peoples Union for Civil Liberties's (PUCL) complaining about large scale corruption in the country's public distribution system (PDS) and rotting of food grains in government godowns.

The Bench had earlier ordered the Government to distribute food grains free of cost to the hungry poor, but the Centre had not given any commitment on the issue though Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Paward had orally assured that Government would implement the direction.

However, subsequently the Prime Minister joined the issue saying courts should not interfere in policy matters.

During today's arguments, the apex court asked the Government counsel as to what action was taken against the officials responsible for the rotten grains.

"From the first of October you will be getting more foodgrains from the kharif corps. Ensure it is properly distributed. Let it not go waste, "the Bench said.

Referring to the rotten foodgrains it said, "if it is not fit for human consumption we do not suggest that it should be given to them. It should not be given even to animals. Because you spend more on breeding them (animals)."

The apex court also wondered what was the difficulty for the Centre to allocate sufficient grains for the BPL/AAY families in States if they are seeking higher allocation.

"What is the difficulty? When they find it(allocation of foodgrains) is very short, what can they(States) do?" the Bench asked the counsel.

The PUCL had alleged that many States were not getting adequate stocks for distribution through PDS as the Centre was allocating only a limited stock for the distribution.

According to the organisation, presently apart from 22 million tonnes of buffer stock, the Centre has an additional 33 million tonnes of foodgrains in its godowns, but was allocating only a meagre 2.5 million tonnes for the PDS.

The ASG, however, said the distribution was being made on the basis of the BPL/AAY statistics relied upon by the Centre, though the States might have their own parameters in determining the number of such beneficiaries. The arguments will continue tomorrow.

Women needed to fix food security

"Women were, really, in my view, the ones who domesticated plants, created agriculture. And as long as women were controlling agriculture, agriculture produced real food. Agriculture was based on [women's learned and passed on] knowledge. A Women’s centered agriculture never created scarcity. As long as women controlled the food system you did not have a billion people going without food and you didn’t have 2 billion going obese and w/diabetes. This is the magic of patriarchy having taken over the food system. Earlier, patriarchy left food to women, modern patriarchy wants to control food . . . women’s knowledge has been removed from agriculture . . we can only have a secure food culture if women come back into agriculture.” Vandana Shiva

I recently came across the wonderful work that Dr. Vandana Shiva, physicist, winner of the Right Livelihood Award (the alternative Nobel Peace Prize) is doing for strengthening our society against industrial agriculture and in favor of women.

Here is a great, recent interview with her.

The Ultimate Disconnect

My niece passed her tenth grade exams a few months ago. A couple of weeks before her exams, we got the shocking news that one of her friends, a girl whom we knew since childhood, jumped off a 6-story building on the artery leading to my house, and ended her life.

Sneha Sree, this unfortunate 15-year old, was externally bubbly, fun loving, well liked, and academically near the top of her class. She went to the same school that my son goes for years. We love the school for the individual attention and love that the teachers bestow on the kids. The hurt and grief of the teachers at what happened was as deep as that of the parents.

She apparently planned this closure for months, confiding in only one friend, who was also supposed to end his life along with her. On the eventful day, the two teenagers rode an auto at dusk to an under-construction building, comfortably climbed up to the terrace without being stopped by any watchman, and she took the leap first. The boy thankfully backed out at the last moment.

The reason for Sneha Sree's end is not falling in or out of love, monetary or other family difficulties, lack of well-wishers, lack of recognition, illness, failure, etc. It seems to be something deeper.

For the 10-19 year old segment, South India has been described as the suicide capital of the world. Kerala is the state with the highest suicide rate in India and Pondichery tops the list of union territories. The other south Indian states, Tamilnadu, AP, Karnaka are not far behind. (AP now ranks second in India.) All states are above Indian average, and significantly above the world average. The rate of suicide among young women is about three times as it is in young men, in south India. Worldwide, the reverse is true; many more men commit suicide than women. 

Interestingly, south India also happens to be ahead of much of India in terms of literacy, knowledge industries, law and order, international exposure, gender equality, availability of quality education and healthcare. None of this "development" has a positive impact on suicide rates; my worry is if the correlation is actually negative.

To me, the origin of suicides among youth from otherwise fortunate families seems to be a growing disconnect with people around them - with the family, with the community, with the society at large. A dissatisfaction, disinterest, boredom, a sense of pointlessness of the whole thing. The primary focus of upwardly mobile families, more often than not, seems to lie away from the children. Indirectly, most things we do are for our children, but my concern is about directly. Grown-ups and teenage children spend much less time together today than when I grew up - families are smaller, shared interests are fewer, distractions are many, and egos are so much more developed (on both sides). One sees a substantially wider disconnect between groups of youngsters and groups of 35-pluses in functions and gatherings today than we saw 20-30 years ago. There is much more loneliness today for teenagers (albeit under the anesthesia of cell phones, head phones, Internet , TV). Most teens that I know cannot relate to 75% of even the most youth-oriented newspaper - the politics, the strikes, the apparent priorities of elders just seem so unreal. The world is much more complex for a teenager to wade through today than it was a generation ago.

It will be a truism but a banality to say that the youth is our future, so I will instead say that, demographic dividend is India's primary passport to achieving great success. Nothing can be achieved if we, as families and as communities, do not learn to make our youngsters feel connected with us.

Gross National Happiness

It is nice to see Bhutan's initiative to advise the world, at the United Nations (see article below).  No one at UN was likely expecting any inputs from this tiny mountain kingdom. To propose a seemingly radical new goal to the hugely more powerful colleague nations, and to scoff at their current pursuits, takes courage, a certain depth of compassion and conviction. I appreciate this initiative.


In India, philosophically the goal has always been "sarve janah sukhino bhavanthu" (let everyone be happy and comfortable). I would think it is similar in other cultures and countries as well. The world's gap with Bhutan is not at a philosophical level; it is at intellectual and  implementation levels.


If Bhutan really wants the world to take its advise seriously and benefit from it, they should invest time and money to do some homework. They should put their advice in a language that the world can take seriously. They should form an international expert panel, and delegate to it the tasks of scientifically defining Gross National Happiness and connecting it to macro-economic indicators that the world-at-large can understand. If Bhutan can do this, the world can ever be grateful to this tiny nation.   



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Bhutan proposes a new global goal

By Tim Witcher (AFP) – 20th September 2010

UNITED NATIONS — The introvert Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on Monday urged the world to adopt a new Millennium Development Goal -- happiness -- if it really wants to end the scourge of poverty, hunger and disease.

Bhutan's Prime Minister, Jigmi Thinley, condemned the "dangerous and stupid" pursuit of wealth, even by some of his big and brash neighbours India and China, in a speech to the UN summit on reaching the MDGs.

The land of the Gross National Happiness index again sought to export its optimistic ideology, which the prime minister said encompassed all of the eight major goals set by the United Nations in 2000.

Aims which Thinley said Bhutan is on target to reach, while the rest of the world struggles.

Thinley said that as the eight existing goals are likely to remain after the target date of 2015 "my delegation would like to propose to this highest forum in the world that we include happiness as the ninth MDG."

"It is a goal that stands as a separate value while representing as well, the sum total outcome of the other eight. Its relevance goes beyond the poor and developing member states to bind all of humanity, rich and poor, to a timeless common vision."

Bhutan's Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley addresses the Millennium Development Goals Summit

Gross National Happiness was conceived by the father of Buddhist Bhutan's young monarch -- Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck -- and is firmly established as official government policy. Seeking a more holistic indicator of development that transcends the "materialism" of Gross Domestic Product, Gross National Happiness measures four criteria -- sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the environment, and good governance. It does not ignore economic growth, however. Bhutan, which has been slowly emerging from hundreds of years of isolation -- only allowing television in 1999 -- has clocked an annual average of about eight percent growth for the past few years.

Bhutan says it concentrates on the type of growth that is important. It has policies that provide free education and health care, a clean mountain environment and making sure the country's religious and cultural traditions remain intact.

"It does not demand much imagination intelligence," the prime minster told the summit, "to understand that endless pursuit of material growth in a world with limited natural resources within a delicately balanced ecology is just not sustainable -- that it is dangerous and stupid.

"One cannot imagine, even as China and India aspire to compete in consumption with the USA, what would become of Earth if every global citizen acquired the same voracious capacity."

According to the prime minister, "the evidence of the limited ability of nature to tolerate abuse is there for us to suffer in the rising frequency and fury of multiple calamities." He mentioned the Pakistan flood disaster as well as the huge oil slick which has hit the Gulf of Mexico this year.

Thinley said the global financial crisis was a reminder that much of the world's wealth is "illusory" and can quickly "disappear without a trace."

He said the current economic crisis could get worse and predicted "more, we can be certain, will strike to persuade us of the need to change our way of life."

The prime minister left the podium with a smile and to a strong if bemused ovation from world leaders.