Awakin Talks With Rohini Nilekani And Ravi Venkatesan
ServiceSpace
--Zeal Shah
8 minute read
May 26, 2020

 

[This is our third week on this beautiful expedition, reflecting together, on ”What would Gandhi do?” -- in these unprecedented times. Very grateful to Linki and Gayathri for their editorial support.]

This week’s Awakin Talk gave us an opportunity to listen to two extraordinary leaders, Rohini Nilekani and Ravi Venkatesan, both expressing their understanding of Gandhian values. Moderated by Nipun Mehta, we were also super-delighted to meet two everyday heroes, Shaalini and Vineet, towards the end of the talk, sharing the beautiful stories they’ve witnessed during the lockdown, and who are living into the inspiring values that we are talking about in this series. Few themes that surfaced during the talk were: Small is Beautiful, What is the responsible Way to hold the Gifts we have got (Water, Air, Family, Friends, etc.) and Reimagining Abundance.

When millions of people are stuck in cities, wanting to go back to their homes, it’s important to ask what Gandhi would do -- so wondered Rohini in her initial set of responses to the question.

She adds, “There was a time when our family got loaded with unprecedented wealth which became a subject of worry and concern. I went through a personal crisis because too much wealth was seen in a negative light during earlier days. However, a shift in paradigm took place where I started thinking of myself as a trustee of this wealth and so I started seeking opportunities to put it in use that was for the greater good. A new journey of queries and introspection took place. In so many ways, the pandemic has helped people like us, who are living in the comforts of our home, by doing our own cleaning, swapping and taking out our waste, really understanding the dignity of labour.

Reflecting upon how we are all getting accustomed to online meetings now, Rohini says with a smile, Gandhi would have been happy to see how we are all creating intimacy through the web, as he himself was a huge fan of creating intimacy across vast differences.”

“Just shifting our minds from frugality to abundance, what kind of world could we shape? That’s another question that Gandhi would have loved to dwell upon.”

Ravi had distinctive thoughts to offer on this theme around the importance of values in the society: “We need new paradigms for a post COVID world. When ordinary people of no great educational qualification are suddenly empowered to start thinking, tinkering, inventing, starting something, first it’s a few; then it’s many! And that tinkering results in this explosion of creativity throughout a nation.”

“This has huge relevance for India, as we, as a country, are struggling to find economic dynamism. So the question comes down to, can we really ignite an entrepreneur movement across our country?”

Approaching a very thoughtful question, Ravi asks,Can we create micro-conditions where taking risks, exploring and failing is encouraged?

Further Reflecting on Entrepreneurship: “It is a trojan horse for societal leadership. We should find individuals, encourage them to dream, aspire to solve the problems that matter to them and make them take small actions to achieve them. We need to invert the power pyramid. Today, the capacity to dream and have aspirations is there but suppressed. We need lateral shifts in our mindsets and value systems. We won’t be able to go on with our current mindsets anymore.”

How do we bring a balance and bridge the 3 major sectors - Samaaj (Public), Sarkaar (System) and Bazaar (Market)?

Rohini had much to offer here: “Lot of my work has been an attempt to retain a dynamic balance between Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar. Making the civil sector the first sector is of prime importance. Because Samaaj is a foundation, and market and state were developed to serve the public, at a larger interest. (But today), instead of becoming citizens first, we are subject to the state first. Instead of becoming moral individuals first, we have become the consumer of the market. That has become a huge threat for us as a society. So the Samaaj needs to be at the base, the foundation; and to keep the market and state accountable for the larger public good is how we need to recreate a better balance. People need to be the first mile. We can’t think of them as the last mile.”

Adding to that she said,We have to distribute the ability to solve. We need to recreate a better balance where Samaaj is at the core. However, today’s Indian system often has Sarkaar as central which needs to change. We need to distribute the abilities and power to spread abundance. The value must not accumulate at one end of the spectrum. We need to have small agencies everywhere. Distributing the ability to solve instead of pushing one or two solutions in a pipeline, abundance can be made more effective everywhere, alongwith individual energy and potential.”

How do we create distributed mass entrepreneurship in a way that rebalances the three sectors?
Ravi Venkatesan: “Problems today in society are very very complex -- they are called wicked problems for a reason -- and they need collective efforts; they cannot be solved by any sector alone. And putting the entrepreneur or prospective entrepreneur at the centre is extremely important.”

“The trick here is not telling the entrepreneur that look, here are the best opportunities for you. There is a real temptation to be paternalistic about it and provide quick solutions like go into an agrarian society where we say we should do something with farming. It’s to leave it to the imagination of the young person and simply be encouraging of their ideas. Similarly don’t tell them what problems to solve. We need to encourage them to find a problem that irritates the heck out of them.”

“Find individuals, encourage them to find and solve problems in small ways. Because this capacity is there, but suppressed”

How do we really invert the power pyramid?
Rohini Nilekani: Wealth comes with a lot of power. Success comes with a lot of power. So one has to unpack that power and make sure it doesn’t accumulate. One way I try to distribute power and agency in my work is through creation of open, shared public digital goods. And in fact, that’s how we achieve the scale that we are talking about here. Gandhi said, “Small is beautiful, but he also understood that we need scale, and we need to scale through many smalls, to start a ripple chain in order to unlock the multiple capitals.”

Can we really create that revolutionary shift of paradigms by staying in the same paradigm? (OR)
Ravi Venkatesan:I don’t think so. Because that is exactly what it means by a paradigms shift. We need a whole new conception of the world. If we can’t make that shift. To what Rohini said, “The state is actually serving the citizens. Until we do this, the revolutionary shift is never going to happen. Because if we haven’t changed the mindset, it ain’t gonna happen.” Whether it’s this or being in harmony with nature, without shifts, it will not happen.”

Quoting Einstein he added, “Insanity is doing the same thing with the same mental model and expecting a different result.”

What do we think is the opportunity here to seed new possibilities, new paradigms at such an important point in human history?
Ravi Venkatesan: “I hear people wishing to go back to pre-COVID days, the normal life. The point is those were anything but normal times. Those were abnormal times. And here’s a chance to restructure the way we live. This is the time for every thinking, caring person to do that because the answer isn’t going to come from some state level; it has to be co-created by millions of us by making those fundamentals shifts. Coming back to Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Rohini Nilekani:We may not return to our previous normal but to the previous-previous normal if we push back labour and environmental protections, where we are not going to go back, not to the 20th ,but the 19th century. That’s one scenario. Or another scenario is we fast-forward into the 21st century that we in our hearts want to live in.” And then she quoted Mahatma Gandhi -- ‘There cannot be a system so good that individuals in it need not be good.’ The environmental crises and these pandemics are threads that connect us together.”

Towards the closing, we were holding some powerful questions for a better tomorrow, thanks to Rohini and Ravi.

Rohini Nilekani: I feel so humbled by the thought that there are people putting their lives on the line while I sit here in comfort. A question that I am holding is how do we occupy our hearts so that the head and hand are aligned with it.”

Ravi Venkatesan: We need to ‘Be the change’. What side the world tilts after all this, is the sigma of choices we make today.” He quoted Hillel, the elder -- “If not now, when? If not you, who?”

During the call, we also had the chance to hear inspiring stories of our everyday heroes who have moved us in tremendous ways and live up to the values that were discussed on the call.

Shalini shed light on the many subtle and invisible capitals we have around us in abundance, other than monetary capital. She added: “An everyday hero, a steward of a farm started freely sharing seeds and saplings, teaching natural farming methods to anyone interested, which rippled to so many people inspired to start their own small gardens at home. Many stories of children and youngsters surprising local essential workers with thank you notes and gifts, as well as using these times as an opportunity to connect with their neighbours. Or simply going to all the spaces working in these times, such as essential services, and volunteering there -- cleaning, sanitizing, and making social distancing possible. People offer spiritual capital by coming together in silence and sending prayers and metta for the world, collectively chanting Gita online and reflecting on it.”

On a similar note, Vineet shared from his jar of stories of love about a time in Ladakh, where he was practising for a run and the difficulty he faced breathing was when he felt a strong sense of gratitude for the beautiful gift we have -- air that we all freely breathe.” An inspiring statement he left us with: “We need to start infecting people with Karuna so that herd immunity is reached quite quickly!”

 

Posted by Zeal Shah on May 26, 2020


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