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Guest: Rohini Nilekani, Ravi Venkatesan and friends (Brinda Govindan, Shaalini Srinivasan, Vineet Saraiwala, Jordyn Alexandria)
Host/Moderator: Nipun Mehta
Nipun: Welcome everyone to Awakin Talks. A few weeks ago, some of us were on a call reflecting on the challenges that we face as humanity, particularly around COVID-19 and a very organic question came up -- What would Gandhi do? Not just Gandhi as a person, but his eternal values of nonviolence and compassion.
How would we circulate them in the world today? What would that manifestation look like? We weren't sure. We had some ideas. We thought, let's invite a whole bunch of people to the party and ask them -- see what they think? We started out with what became a webinar series. It was hard to imagine it a couple of weeks ago, but here we are in our third Awakin Talk, of the series.
We have two very special guests today. Before we get there, we want to anchor ourselves, in a minute of silence, something that we always do, which is to ground ourselves in a space that's beyond just thoughts. So just a minute of silence before we start.
Thank you all for joining Awakin Talks. To open, I want to invite Brinda Govindan, a professor at San Francisco State University for 21 years. She is an avid flute player and a big fan of music, and certainly Gandhi. I invite Brinda to open with a prayer that was very near and dear to Gandhi.
[Brinda plays “Raghupati Raghav RajaRam”]
Nipun: Thank you, Brinda. It puts me in a very different space every time I hear that song. Thank you.
As all of you know, today, we are in conversation with Rohini Nilekani and Ravi Venkatesan, at the intersection of leadership and Gandhian values. Some of the themes that we hope to address are: What does it mean to design for connection? How does ‘Small is beautiful’ apply in today's context? Whether it's power or wealth or talents, what is the responsible way for us to hold those gifts? How do we be good trustees? How can we really start to reimagine abundance -- that's another theme that we also hope to explore. There's a lot there that we're hoping to cover, but before we get into our first speaker, let me just give you an overview of the flow.
The brief flow of our call today. We'll start with opening remarks with Rohini, followed by Ravi and then we'll do some Q and A, with some of my questions, but more of your (viewer) questions. We'll see how much we can cover here. We'll cover a bunch of it in other online spaces as well. To submit your question, simply, use the form that's on the live stream page. In between Rohini and Ravi, we will also have some interludes, some really inspiring everyday heroes, who have moved us in tremendous ways and live into the values that we are going to be covering today. So that's the rough flow.
I want to start with Rohini and invite her to speak. Most of us would know her as the woman who is one of the five Indians who has signed the Buffett-Gates Pledge (https://givingpledge.org/Pledger.aspx?id=346) giving away more than half of her wealth. Among the many institutions she supports, the big one is of course, something she founded - "Arghyam" (http://arghyam.org/) the foundation that supports sustainable water and sanitation. But prior to that, you can learn all about that online. Most of you already probably do, but prior to that, she has actually always been a writer, and a journalist for decades, and the author of a thriller. Rohini, I looked it up on Amazon and the Amazon description even said racy-thriller; nail-biting, racy, unputdownable -- were some of the words they used. So she's written a thriller, a nonfiction book called "Uncommon Ground". And in fact, if you look and dig a little deeper, even children's books under her pen name. So prior to that, there's actually a very deep connection with Gandhi. She has - and this was really a surprise for me and I didn't know this until I got to know her more recently, but her paternal grandfather, Babasaheb Soman who was a Satyagrahi and had worked with Gandhi-ji directly in Champaran and built the first Ashram that Gandhi-ji had in Champaran.
And aside the little tidbit, when Babasaheb's son Bhaskar Soman (later, the 4th Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy) wanted to actually join the British Royal Imperial Navy, Babasaheb was a member of the Indian National Congress. So, Babasaheb consulted Gandhi and Gandhi said, yeah, he should join. And that meant that Babsaheb actually had to give up his - a sort of formal designated post as a member of Congress, just so his son could go be in the Navy, and here is Gandhi saying yes. So it was Gandhi, in all his skilfulness, was much more than just the things that we reduce him to. So, Rohini has lived into all that, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention one more person that has inspired her, and that's her paternal grandmother, Atyabai who she just wrote about as well. She was a remarkable woman, but one of the things about her is that she spent the last few years in Alandi, which is the resting place of Sant Dhyaneshwar. And so in Rohini, I think there's both - the external impact work of her paternal grandfather, and this deep devotion and this call for inner transformation, that Atyabai stood for.
So Rohini it's a real joy and an honour to have you amongst us and I would invite you to share some initial reflections here.
Rohini Nilekani: Namaste everyone, thank you so much Nipun bhai and thank you to the whole team. Thank you to all of you who are listening, and it's great to be with you Ravi, on this panel. I think both Ravi and I are a bit nervous, because, certainly by no stretch of the imagination, can I be called a Gandhian in any way at all.
Nipun bhai stole some of my speaking points (Nipun laughs) and now I’d like to make new ones. I think this is a very good time to ask, 'what would Gandhiji do?' So, thank you for that, and allowing us into that reflection. Because today, as I read the papers, and it's eight and a half weeks into this Corona-Crisis, and it just feels like while all of us have recognised our interdependence so well, in my country it also feels like we have let millions of people down. Post-partition we have never seen so many refugees on the road looking to go home, and there is a huge debt that we all carry right now to make sure that they reach home safely, just like, in Gandhi's last year of life, what he was so concerned with.
So it is really a great time to ask, "what would Gandhi-ji do?" Not that I have the answers, but the question is very important. I think, first of all, he would be very amused that all of us are here seeking intimacy through the web because he was very good at creating intimacy across vast physical distances. He didn't even need social media to create intimacy, but I'm sure he would still have used the benefit of social media as we have it now, just as he learnt -- because social media and phones are everywhere, he would have found a better way for us to connect with the positive side of ourselves -- just as he did by picking up a fist full of salt and asking everybody, everywhere to do the same. So converting a personal action into a moral crusade. A very simple, personal physical action into a moral crusade that connects millions of nodes, is what he was very good at. And we have to innovate keeping that in mind.
So as Nipun-ji said, honestly, all my grandparents were my deep inspiration, but especially my paternal grandparents. Atya was very feisty and fiercely independent, who came from extreme wealth, living in the royal palaces of Gwalior, and came into a very humble home and learnt to just forget about wealth and devote herself to actual austerity towards the end of a life. Even when her children became wealthy again. So that was one journey.
And then Babasaheb, who just immediately was among the very first people who left from Belgaum to answer Gandhiji's clarion call in 1917 in Champaran, to unleash India's volunteer energy. They were on the first train out there, and Babasaheb stayed there many months with Kasturba-ji. And those stories have come down into the family intact. My aunt was born when Babasaheb was in Champaran, so she was called Champa, and she lived till 99 and told us hundreds of stories about my grandparents. So I am extraordinarily blessed by that.
Nipun also said to relate a personal anecdote and the main thing that I would like to say is that in the mid 90s, we came into unprecedented unimagined wealth as Infosys shareholders who are able to sell some shares. And honestly, it put me into my deepest personal crisis of my life because until then, I was busy, I was a middle-class, well-read, Western-sort-of-ideas person who also was a bit on the political left. And we in India used to think that wealth is bad. If you have wealth, you have done something wrong. And suddenly I find myself on the other side of this so-called fence. And then it throws me into this crisis about what on earth am I going to do now?
And it has taken me years and years, and I don't think that journey is even yet complete to understand the responsibility of wealth. And here's where Gandhi-ji comes back again like an umbrella in one's life to say, well, it's pretty simple. Really think of yourself as the trustee of that wealth, and that then begins to give some relief. Then you begin to see it as an opportunity, not a burden. And I know this sounds crazy, like a poor little rich girl complaining. That's not how I mean it, but the kind of extreme wealth that today's capitalist structures allow, you know, it's not just gradual wealth, you suddenly can become very wealthy. And you are watching now in California and New York and Russia and various parts of the world -- overnight, you become multi-billionaires. And that really skews the idea of how societies must be.
And so I had to think a lot about that. Both, personally, how I would use the wealth for my personal life, what I would tell my children, and also what would I do with this? There's enough wealth for many generations. And so once I made that flip, not like Gandhi would. I didn't turn to frugality. We live very comfortably, but then getting very interested in the journey of how do you give forward, how do you share? How do you hold that thought? For the idea of a better society.
And so my philanthropy, as they call it, started in honest in the last 30 years, I sometimes feel like I'm still in kindergarten because it's a very hard journey. But I started building portfolios, working with the amazing civil society organisations in this country, for which we are so blessed, in justice issues and environment issues, gender issues, especially to do with young men and boys. Because I think we need to focus on these 1 billion young men and young males in the world, who are very confused about who they should be, how they should be, and they need a lot of support. I work on other issues of independent media, et cetera. I won't go into any of those details.
But as you do that, you begin to think of also the economy, because the economy is such an important part of society. And I've had a ring fence, thanks to my husband, with the corporate sector. And then you begin to ask what Gandhi-ji often asked; if you are going to be in harmony with the earth. And today we are seeing two crisis simultaneously; The pandemic and climate change. My country has seen a devastating cyclone on the east side, Orissa, West Bengal and Bangladesh have been hit by one of the worst cyclones in the last hundred years. And we don't even know the devastation that is going to cause over the next several years. So with these twin crises, we have absolutely no choice but to restructure the economy and to come from a place of genuine openness to the structures of our global economy.
And I think the pandemic has helped many of us, people like us, people who are so privileged. Because we are in lockdown, we are doing our own cleaning and swabbing and taking out the waste and really understanding the dignity of labor. As Gandhiji would have had it. And I think that has allowed us to dwell on the simple pleasures of life and re-assign value to things that we didn't before. And if you expand that idea, I have been thinking that if we can learn to switch, from the mindset of frugality, which makes us all afraid, which makes us hoard, which makes us not want to share, just in case, to a mindset of abundance. Because in some sense, and by no means am I forgetting those who are less privileged, excuse me if it feels like that, but I'm talking about the elites, who often have to bear more of the responsibility for their own moral behavior.
We've all had a chance to experience abundance. Because we have seen abundance of fresh air. We have seen our roadside gardens blooming. We have experienced purity. We have experienced diversity of the natural world. And if you began to think of that abundance, then what kind of world could we shape? If you realize there is abundance of people, abundance of energy, and if you made that abundance effective… We can talk about that later… Then how would the economy look?
Would it be closer, instead of doing exponential consumption of the earth's resources, could we start aligning ourselves better to nature's linear production ability? That's the question, I think Gandhi-ji would have loved to dwell on. And I leave it there for the rest of the conversation. Thank you so much for this opportunity though.
Nipun: Oh, it's amazing. Beautiful. Thank you, Rohini. Those are wonderful remarks. We will get more into some Q&A and dialogue, maybe even between Ravi and Rohini, but before that, I want to invite Ravi to share. Most of you would have read his bio. So you already know that sort of co chairman and chairman of all these companies from Infosys to Bank of Baroda. I mean, the list really does go on. It's pretty remarkable. He's also an author of a book published by Harvard, and he's currently working on another book. He's also started a project called GAME, whose aim is to support mass flourishing, ultimately, using entrepreneurship as a lever.
But, what I really want to tell is Ravi the person, and he's just this incredibly big-hearted person. When I last met him, it was in Delhi in December. They were actually launching GAME, and we were in this leadership meeting. I was speaking with them, and at the end I had invited somebody for whom it would mean the world to meet Ravi Venkatesan. And I was like, what? I had just thought it was because they both had the same name -- Ravi Ravi, let's do it! But it turned out that this fellow, 30 years ago, when he was graduating from IIM Ahmedabad, he was very confused. He didn't know what to do. And so he wrote to a whole bunch of CEOs that he respected, whose values he respected. Just like a random shot in the dark, in case somebody responds. And he says, "Here's my issue. I don't know where to go in life. What should I do?" And he said that only one of those people responded. His name was Ravi Venkatesan. And in that meeting , he saw him for the first time and he says, "Ravi I'm here to say thank you, for responding, for caring for this one unknown person."
And so to me, Ravi, that's actually a fuller description of who you are. Being a trustee of the Rockefeller foundation is great. Of course. But you walk the talk. And last time when we were on the call, he actually turned his camera around and he says, “Whenever I need inspiration, I go to this desk.” It was a desk that Gandhiji had used. And incidentally, he is married to the great-granddaughter of Gandhi. And so there's also a deep connection there. So Ravi, it's a real joy and an honour to have you amongst us. Thank you. And we would love to hear your reflections.
Ravi: Thank you Nipun-bhai, for that generous introduction and also for inviting me to this conversation. And hello everyone. Hi Rohini. Like Rohini, I feel a bit awkward being here, even though I feel excited and privileged as well. And the awkwardness stems, exactly as Rohini said, from the fact that, when I think of Gandhi-ji and his clarity of thought, his commitment to his principles and mission, it's just orders of magnitude greater than my own. And so I'm saying it feels a little odd to speculate what he might have done. But, nevertheless, here's an opportunity, to talk about my work. I also realized through this pandemic, the number of ordinary unsung heroes who have gone out there, put themselves out to help in ways big and small. Their neighbour, their fellow human beings. So when I look at their work, their sacrifice, my own work feels ordinary. But you asked me, invited me to share a bit about it and see if it might be interesting to others. So here I am.
So, as Nipun said, till about 2018 I lived a pretty intense, moderately successful corporate life. And I had successfully, for years been putting off, the one thing that had repeatedly come to my mind -- which is to go on a meditation retreat. So my friends like Anu Aga, and all repeatedly said "Ravi, you really should try doing this." And I would say, "Yeah, yeah. Next year." But then December 2017, I finally went for my first Vipassana retreat. And like the proverbial life changing experience it was, somewhere on the sixth or seventh day, I had this intense feeling of suffocation and it stayed with me. It wasn't just a momentary thing. And I realized that I was suffocating on the material stuff at home, the activities I'd filled my life with, all my professional commitments. And I had just the clearest sense that I need to unburden, unload my platter, creating space for new things. So when I came back, the early part of 2018, I very quickly went about shedding all my commitments and hoping that something interesting would come along.
And you know, lo and behold, I didn't have to wait long. And it appeared in my life in the form of a gentleman, a gentleman by the name of Ned Phelps, who teaches at Columbia and who happens to have won a Nobel prize for economics, in 2006. And I was incredibly drawn to his work. His work is on mass flourishing, which is a word you use. And on the dynamism of nations. And he had such an unconventional take. So Ned began exploring why do some nations, just suddenly begin to diverge and get on a path to incredible prosperity. Why did this happen in Britain in the 18th century? Why did that mantle of prosperity then move to America? Why is America now apparently losing it? How's it on the rise, dynamism on the rise in China? What causes this? And he reaches such a breathtakingly different conclusion from all other economists. And there's hard evidence here. This is not speculation . He is a Nobel winner after all. So if there aren't equations, it doesn't really count.
So he talks about the central importance of values in a society. And he goes back to the Enlightenment and how during the Enlightenment, values began to change in Western Europe, and suddenly, things like individualism, self-determination became more important. Remember that's the time Descartes says "I think therefore I am". The sense that one has choices, the importance of creativity and imagination, of risk taking and exploration -- all these things started becoming mainstream. As a result, one saw the amazing flowering of human endeavour. The Renaissance is attributable directly to this feeling. You see the great explorers like Vasco da Gama, Cook, Cortés, start travelling the world. And thus the Industrial Revolution happens, starting with Britain. So the question is, what causes this revolution and prosperity?
This is how he explains it. Suddenly, ordinary people of no great education, economic means or perceived ability are empowered to start thinking, tinkering, inventing things. At first it is a few, then it's hundreds of thousands, millions and that tinkering results in an explosion of creativity. So he goes back and says look at those greatest inventions, right from the steam engine to the locomotive, to the automated loom, electricity -- they are not inventions by the elite, they are not people who are Oxford or Cambridge-educated. They are illiterate, tinkerers, and iron-smiths. To me this has huge relevance to India for India is struggling to find economic dynamism, we have a problem of unemployment even before Covid and now of course, it's much worse. So we started what you alluded to as GAME, an entrepreneurial movement across our country. Millions of new enterprises, at least half of which we want to be women-owned. And they in turn create lots of jobs in the country. So that's what we are about. For people who are listening in, I want you to think that if you need a good crop or a good garden , you need seed, a good soil and climate.The seed is that entrepreneur and we need lots of them.
This is what my co-founder and colleague Mekin Maheshwari is doing, and I think he was part of one of your programmes. He is running one of the most extraordinary experiments across 1000 plus government schools in Delhi with the Delhi Government. And about 800000+ students are undergoing an entrepreneurship programme in the morning. Though it is less than a year, it's a stunning transformation in their ambition. For most of the kids in India, the ambition is to land a government job because it is secure. These kids now actually want to do something -- they want to invent or build something. I met this guy Monu who is from the poorest of the poor families who cannot go even to a free government school as he cannot afford a uniform. So he starts repairing electric rickshaws. His greatest wish that day was a toolbox, which we got him. At night, he stays up doing his homework. It has completely changed his life and what he can achieve with it.
And it is possible to achieve this scale of change at a short period of time. But the seed is only part, it has to fall on good soil and have most of all good climate. And so what we are trying to do is in the number of places we are working in, like in Punjab, Karnataka, Eastern Himalayas, Shillong, we are trying to see whether we can work with the government and businesses in those areas and create more fertile conditions in the form of better infrastructure, connections from marketers, but most of all, can we change the value system?
In the prevailing value system, where the caste system is still strong and that means somebody of a lower caste has no potential, it's pretty hard to make progress, right? Same thing with risk-taking. You need to have at least that pocket, that local set-up, an environment where risk taking is okay. Failure is okay. And so we're trying to see -- can we create very, very micro conditions where these are true? And in that case, can you get this whole fly wheel of entrepreneurship going? It's still super early days, just a year old. But you know, we're on this path to see how we create an entrepreneurial movement first in India, which is big enough, but then take it to other parts of the world, which also need the same thing.
But I want to end by saying, for me, entrepreneurship is actually just a Trojan horse for something much more important. And that is societal leadership. The challenge in the world today is not the...[unintelligible].
Nipun Mehta: You're breaking up just a little bit there, Ravi… Fortunately, he was about to end. So we will add the conclusion to what he might've been saying. Rohini, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. So while Ravi gets back, we will ask him for his conclusion. But I think what he was trying to say is entrepreneurship is really a Trojan horse for actually re-balancing and re-catalyzing so many value-driven systems in society.
Rohini, were you going to mention something?
Rohini Nilekani: No. Were you asking me a question?
Nipun Mehta: No, I was not. I just saw you unmuted. Ravi, you're back. [laughter] I tried to conclude for you, but I'm sure it wasn't quite as good as yours.
Ravi Venkatesan: Well, as you would imagine, lightning strikes, the power goes off, the internet goes down. Sorry about that for everyone. Well, what I was saying is entrepreneurship is a Trojan horse for leadership. The things that you need to be a successful entrepreneur, the qualities, are exactly the same as what you need to be a leader in the world. Which is what? The sense of self determination, ambition, resourcefulness, tenacity, the ability to sell your ideas to others who become followers. What we are hoping is we can create the largest army of people who not only create successful small enterprises that grow and flourish, but who also begin to tackle problems in the communities in which they live and thereby change their life and their communities and society.
So, that's what we're about. When I think back about how Gandhi might have reacted to all this, I think he would have liked it. Deep in his heart, he believed in the equality of every human being, right? That there is a God in everyone and each of us is capable of greatness.
I think Ned Phelps' ideas translated into practice is something he would have very much endorsed. The idea that you don't have centralized, large corporations that are exploiting people, but rather you have this decentralized innovation and prosperity. [It] is another idea that I think he would have agreed very much with. So I think today, if he were alive and listening in, he might say, yeah, this is good, keep going.
Nipun Mehta: Beautiful, beautiful. And I think Trojan horse is really or probably the way to go. We have lots of comments coming in from people who have very insightful things to share. If you'd like to add a comment, we clearly won't be able to get to all of them here on this call, but we'll try to do something meaningful. We'll try to digest it and get responses later. You can submit a comment on the form.
Thank you, Ravi for those thoughtful reflections. I particularly loved the farming metaphor as well because it brings in that ecosystem, right? I don't think it's just a linear [movement], which is sort of what Rohini was also alluding to. That Gandhi's whole movement, I don't think it was linear. It had so many unexpected, amazing, sort of happenings. I mean, in a way, the pandemic is one of those ‘Black Swan’ events, you know?
So, there's a lot to unpack there. We'll try to get to some of that. Ravi, did you have any immediate comment there?
Ravi Venkatesan: My immediate reaction was in the world at this moment in time and history, we need new paradigms, paradigm shifts, the same thinking aint gonna get us very far. And, so Rohini talked about a paradigm shift from scarcity to abundance -- that’s one dimension. I think we need this kind of very very lateral shifts.
Nipun Mehta: Revolutionary, yeah, yeah, very beautiful. Before we go to the Q & A, we have an inspiring interlude by one of our beloved volunteers, Shalini Srinivasan. She is a passionate mom and an educator, currently living in Auroville and somebody who I’ll describe as “someone who loves to laugh”. And also with an amazing zoom background that she has on right now, which she says is actually broken cement on her terrace. So Shaalini, welcome. We’d love to hear a couple of reflections from your own personal life like how are you engaging with some of these ideas, in particular this idea of living into abundance?
Shaalini: Thank you Nipun bhai for the glorious introduction and thank you Rohini and Ravi for your shares. I particularly connected with how can we shape this new world being in harmony with the earth and when Ravi talked about the importance of values, I deeply connected to both and yeah today I’d just be sharing about a few local experiments that touched my heart here in Auroville, and the multiple forms of capital that are emerging in the community, at this time. I’ll just start screen sharing.
Nipun Mehta: Oh, you are going professional on us with some slides.
Shalini: Is that visible?
Nipun Mehta: Yes, along with your Gmail but we promise not to read your mail. It’s okay we can't really see, go for it!
Shalini: Yeah, today I’d like to share about honouring the subtle and invisible capitals that are around us in abundance. And one of them that we most commonly equate, well to money, I think breeds a lot of scarcity in our hearts and minds, especially in these times when business units are being shut down, and salaries of employees have been cut down by half or more, and there is generally insecurity around it. And I heard that one of the local enterprises here decided to do something unexpected. They paid the full salary of all the village women who were coming to work with them, and on top of it, they also offered an increment they had promised to them. I felt how beautifully they felt for all their employees, like how we care for a family.
Another form of capital that is abundant here in Auroville is nature and one of the stewards of a farm here started thinking how can I create abundance for all in the long term and what can I do particularly to bring this about? So he just made himself available to anyone, giving his time, freely sharing seeds and saplings, sharing natural farming methods for anyone who is interested. So many of us got inspired about starting small, little gardens around wherever we are living, or on the terrace, if we don't have access to land. Kids and elders and everyone were working with their hands together. Some even started harvesting in the garden to add to their plate of salad.
Another capital that was abundant here was time. We all had time in our hands and since we are a community of volunteers, we can't just sit at home. So many offered their time in service, just aligning themselves with the inner capacity. Some were very happy to go to all the spaces that are open and do the essential services, start cleaning, sanitizing and making social distancing plausible. Some decided to just deliver groceries to the elderly and a few more took up the hard task of, you know, sitting and segregating the whole community waste that was piled up during this time because they just had the time to offer. This spirit of volunteerism was super inspiring to see at this time.
The other form of capital that emerged this time was social. Although we are all living in close proximity and it's like a village where we see each other, it so happens that we just get busy with our lives. And you know this absence of all the helpers and staff gave us a beautiful opportunity to come together and clean the garden, sweep the pathways, just engage with each other more often, and create such a beautiful and deeper relationship with our immediate neighbors. So, one day I just went to drop groceries for my immediate neighbor. She's about 84 years old and an American lady. And I knocked on her door, and she said, “Come in, this is your home. You can come in any time, you don't have to knock.” And you know that kind of deep relationship was possible in such a short span of time for me, and which wasn't possible before.
And now a bunch of long-term residents here where you know the cup of gratitude was overflowing when they looked at all the frontline staff serving tirelessly in the health clinic, the ambulance service, the water service, the electricity, and just whatever it takes, to keep us going in this time. And they just wanted to express themselves by baking a cake. One of them was good at baking, the other was good at coordinating with everyone. So they just tapped into this community capital and invited everyone from kids to elders to write thank you notes from the deepest part of their heart. Many made beautiful paintings along with that. And they delivered this to wherever the persons were working and they just surprised them. And I can imagine the kind of feeling the recipient would be feeling. And this is really like doing small things with great love.
So I think one form of capital that has really been the base and the guiding force for the past 52 years here is the spiritual capital. And yeah, it's like this Banyan tree here. It's at the center of it. And, many of us use this time to come together in silence, wherever we were, in order to pray for the world, like many of you would have done. And a few committed people came online to just chant the Gita and reflect on it.
So, yeah. So, I think when I look at life and you know its many forms of capital that are enriching it. I just feel that abundance, I feel… Thank you.
Nipun Mehta: Thank you, Shaalini, Thank you for bringing us to ground zero and there are indeed so many forms of capital.
I think we often-times funnel everything through the traditional forms. And in fact Rohini, I want to start with that. There's a bunch of comments. I will just summarize them as saying, you guys are both amazing, that Rohini is so down to earth and Ravi, thank you for sharing how empty it can be to be successful. That it's something that's resonant with a lot of people. I'll start with a question, Rohini, for you, piggybacking off Shaalini's share -- you speak a lot about samaaj, sarkaar and bazaar, which is the public sector, the private sector, and the voluntary sector, which is something we also speak a lot about, and how they're completely imbalanced. And so how do we start to work with, say, the market sector, in a way that re-balances a lot of the inequities that are eroding the voluntary sector? Right? Like the samaaj, in some sense? So any broad level reflections there? And then I'll go to Ravi with the next question.
Rohini: Yes. Thank you. Very quickly, yes. A lot of my work has been about how do we retain a dynamic balance between samaaj, bazaar and sarkaar. But I come from the principle that -- actually, you know, in the West they call the civil sector, the third sector; whereas I really think it should be the first sector. Because samaaj/society is the foundation, and markets and the state were developed to serve the public, common larger interests. What has happened is it's become very convoluted. Instead of being citizens first, we are sometimes subject of the state first. Instead of being citizens and moral individuals first, we have become consumers of the market, and that becomes a huge threat to us, as people and as communities.
So the samaaj sector must take it upon itself, and you can invoke Gandhi in a million ways for that, to keep itself as the base and the foundation, and keep the markets and the state accountable for the larger public good. So that is how my work has been and that's how we have to recreate this better balance.
Very quickly, I would say also, just like I said, first sector, I think when we talk about society, we have to think of people as the first mile. Many times we say last mile and then how you design for the last mile, whether it is serving them consumer goods or state services, there's a very different mindset. Whereas if you said ‘first mile’, you have to begin from there, as Gandhi-ji would have said.
So I tried to flip that in my work, a little bit. And so I would say about the bazaar, and certainly Ravi could speak more to this, just like you talk about mass flourishing, we have to distribute the ability to solve. So our teams have come up with this thing that we call ‘societal platform thinking’, which holds this value that we need to create more agency everywhere. Value must not accumulate at one end of the spectrum. Distributing the ability to solve, instead of pushing one or two solutions in a pipeline will enable that abundance that we just spoke about, Shaalini so beautifully spoke about -- it can be made more effective everywhere. And distribute value also everywhere along with individual energy and potential. I’ll leave it there for now.
Nipun Mehta: Yeah. Beautiful. And I think related to that Ravi, a question for you someone asks as well is around how do you bridge, because Gandhi also had this thought, and he talked about gram swaraj, this distributed mass entrepreneurship, in some sense. So how do you bridge that kind of empowerment, at the mass entrepreneurship level in a way that rebalances the three sectors that Rohini was talking about?
Ravi: Yeah, so I think I've been at this now just a few years, and if there's one thing I've learned, it’s that problems today in society are very, very complex. They call them wicked problems for a reason, and wicked problems, to Rohini's point, require collaboration between all three sectors. They cannot be solved by anyone alone. Private sector alone, let alone government with its limited state capacity. We have to bring them together. And you have to come together around the individual that you're trying to see, flourish. So in our case, putting the entrepreneur at the center, or the would-be entrepreneur at the center is really important.
So, you don't -- there's a real temptation in all well-intentioned work to become paternalistic, which is you do things to the poor young entrepreneur. Okay? And very often we find ourselves sliding into that trap. So the trick here is to not tell the entrepreneur, look, here are the best opportunities. There's a real temptation to go into an agrarian society, and say, look, you should do something related to farming or food or something. As an illustration of this, you should leave it to the imagination of the young person as to what they do and simply be encouraging of their ideas, their journey, and so forth.
Similarly, you don't tell them what problems to solve. You encourage them to find some problem that irritates the heck out of them. Maybe the toilet's not working and instead of waiting for somebody else to come fix it, why don't you as a young person catch two friends and go fix it? So I think the whole approach in our work, which we are trying to make sure remains central, is find individuals, encourage them to dream, think, solve problems, and find small ways to make it possible for them to do this.
Okay. Oh, sure. We can connect you to a customer. Sure, we can make an introduction to a bank or an NBFC. But that's it. But the real sort of core, the heavy lifting has to be done by you.
If you do it this way, you're inverting the pyramid, right? So the person at the top of the pyramid is the individual, wherever they may be in a city, in a village, or whatever. And you're trying to make sure that you're being supportive of their ambitions, their dreams. I'm fairly convinced based on the work we've seen, that this is the right path. As I told you, the work in Delhi schools for me has been just sensational because here are kids from the most ordinary backgrounds, very, very challenged backgrounds. And within six months, the shift in their aspirations and self-confidence and their ability to solve problems for themselves, it's just stunning. So this capacity is there. It's just latent and suppressed. And if you get out of the way and be slightly supportive, you get this wonderful blossoming of human ideas, creativity and enterprise. Does that answer the question?
Nipun Mehta: Yeah. I mean, it does in a way, but I think the challenge is how do you get out of the way? How do you actually make sure that you're not paternalistic? And I think that's a personal challenge, but also systemic. Like there are many systems that force us into keeping the pyramid intact, you know? And so in some sense, I want to ricochet it back to Rohini. There's a bunch of questions around power. Both of you, you know, are accomplished in many different ways. How do we actually turn that power on?
And Rohini one of the questions we've asked you, prior to the call was, what was an act of kindness that you will never forget? And you shared this really beautiful story, which actually was very counterintuitive and maybe you can share that, but it seems to me, and knowing you also, it seems to me that, really inverting that power pyramid is very critical, in your view of bringing about change. But maybe you can lead with that story and also talk about what it takes to actually invert some of these pyramids that Ravi was talking about?
Rohini Nilekani: So, okay, since you asked me very quickly about the story, my son had a terrible accident when he was just 10 years old, and, we had to rush him to intensive care and the pediatrician who was there, Dr Mira. You know, it was a desperate situation and she looked at me and said, “I will give the most professional care to your son, but because you are a VIP, I cannot do more.” And that is an odd thing for a doctor to say the minute you have met her, when you're half dead with worry, and I looked at her and said, “Yeah, but that's all I expect and thank you.” But when I reflected on it, I thought it was an act of kindness. It doesn't appear like kindness immediately, but for her to hold to her professional values, and to make me also feel equal to everything else in that situation where I was feeling perhaps special in two different ways, somehow seemed to me, that she brought everything instinctively to a moral plane, which I realized much later.
But coming from that, the question of power is a very, very tricky question. Gandhi-ji also dealt with it a lot, many people accused him of also having a lot of power, which he used on other people, and so it's a constant struggle.
So in my work, I will tell you how, because yes, wealth comes with a lot of power. Okay. Success comes with a lot of power, and this do-gooder ability that some of us have, also comes with a lot of power. So you have to unpack that power and make sure it doesn't accumulate. Especially accumulation brings out a lot of toxicity. So how do you distribute it? And so the societal platform thinks that the primary value of that is you create open, shared public digital goods, so that you don't hoard that power and you've distributed it.
I will give two very quick examples. At Pratham Books, we wanted to, when we founded it in 2004, we said, we want a book in every child's hand. Why don't children not have books, joyful stories to read? And we said, but there are writers, storytellers, this is a country of storytellers. Why should only a few publishers monopolize the ability to tell stories? So we found storytellers, writers, illustrators, translators everywhere, put it all on a creative commons platform. So it was market, it was state, and it was society. There are millions and millions and millions of children who have read those books completely free today. I urge you to go look at that.
Also, Ekstep, that we are working with, unlocks the potential of 13 million teachers in India to co-create and share content. So you can do that. You can distribute value, and in fact, that's how you achieve the kind of scale that you need. Gandhi-ji said small is beautiful, but he understood that you need scale and you can do scale through small like Ravi was saying.
And that's how you distribute and share power. So it doesn't accumulate like we're seeing in some of today's, especially tech companies. We have never seen that kind of accumulation of power. Never even in the oil industry or the other natural resources industries. So now is the time to unlock and distribute capital of all forms.
Nipun: Hmm. Beautiful. Ravi, I'm sure you have comments here, but I'm just going to read one question, which I think relates to this and I think will add to a framing that you may want to use. Is it possible to achieve distribution of agency, wealth, and dignity -- beyond just talk – by operating within the framework of that design and avoiding externalization of hidden costs. Which is really to say that can we really create a revolutionary shift in a paradigm by staying in the same paradigm? Or should we actually be thinking outside of that paradigm? Or is it not an either/or, it is a yes/and?
Ravi: I would encourage whoever asked that question, and anyone else who is interested, to really go back and read Edmund Phelps’ new book ‘The Dynamism of Nations’ because that's at the heart of it. How did a set of countries -- first in Western Europe, then the US and Japan, end up distributing power, dignity and creating access to opportunity? And that was real democracy. It wasn't just going and voting in an election. The book explores why that was central to the prosperity we see and how it actually played out. And how today's policies, particularly since Ronald Reagan in the US are actually resulting in society moving in the opposite direction.
So rather than me attempting some hopeless answer, I'm going to make a push for that book. But the point here is - is it possible to do this within the existing paradigm? I don't think so. I think that is exactly what is meant by a paradigm shift. You need a whole different conception of the world.
So for instance, I've been looking a lot at this issue of state and business -- state versus business and entrepreneurship. It turns out that in India, like in many parts of the world, the state has actually become extremely predatory on business. So you'll have all these rules, regulations that you have to comply with, and then millions of agents who are rent-seeking and trying to collect a little bit for every possible deviation.
So instead of the state empowering businesses, the state has actually become a giant set of parasites on these businesses - big and large. The large guys know how to deal with it. It becomes incredibly hard. If you don't, if you cannot make that shift, to where as Rohini said, the State is actually serving the citizens, the States is serving businesses and helping them flourish, it's never going to happen.
So the problem in India is we are trying to make things easier to do business as measured by the World Bank. That means we've become very good at taking the World Bank exam and showing progress from number 142 to number 70 or whatever it is today.
But if you haven't changed the mindset, it ain’t going to happen. So, whether it's this, whether it's our relationship with nature, living in harmony versus exploitation, without paradigm shifts, it ain't going to happen. That's why I love what Einstein said -- insanity is doing the same things with the same mental model and expecting a different result. It is not going to happen.
Nipun: I have so many thoughts. I think we all do. These are all rich topics. But I think to sort of cover a bunch of different topics here in one - We are currently in a pandemic. We are in an unprecedented situation that we are facing not just as a country, but as a planet. It’s also an opening for, shifting paradigms in so many ways. So we clearly know the challenges. But perhaps if you have a perspective on those challenges, maybe you can share that. And also what are the opportunities here to seed new possibilities and new paradigms at such an inflection point in human history.
So maybe we reverse the order. We go with Ravi and then have Rohini conclude there.
Ravi Venkatesan: Yeah. Well, that's a great question. Look, I hear many people who want to go back to "pre-covid days". They want to go back to the way things were, which they consider normal. The point is, those were anything but normal times. Okay. Those were abnormal times because we had sort of accepted and institutionalized things like inequity or exploitation of nature, living in unsustainable ways, and so on and so forth. So here's this chance to actually re-imagine a very different way we live and operate.
So I tell people, no, we shouldn't want to go back. We should use this opportunity that nature's given us to imagine new ways of living and functioning. And, I think this is the time for every thinking, caring, person to do that, because the answer is not going to come from some genius somewhere, from some Head of State. The answer has to be evolved, co-created by millions of us making different, fundamentally different choices, right? So since we started out with Gandhiji, he says, "Look, be the change you wish to see in the world."
So I think that's the point here, which is, look, we may not be able to get others to change, in these respects. For instance, living sustainably, or treating everyone as equal, or whatever. But, we can make different choices. And as we do that, and others emulate that, you create a movement -- potentially. So I just think this is an extraordinary moment in time, and the absolutely wrong instinct is to wish to get back to, or to recover. Recover implies that you want to get back as quickly as possible to the way things were. We should hope and try to actually not recover, but create an entirely new way.
Nipun Mehta: And are the rumours true? You're working on a book on this?
Ravi Venkatesan: Yeah. I'm working on a book, which is sort of... the working title is: "How to Flourish in a Post-Covid World" and it is aimed at the individual. This is not recommendations for society or business. As an individual, how do you see this as the greatest opportunity to rethink your life and flourish? I hope... The problem with this sort of book is everything that is important and useful has been said by someone before! So I guess the best you can do is package it for this new context that we are living in.
Nipun Mehta: Rohini, any reflections?
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. So, thank you. This was marvellous. I would say that I think there's a chance that we will go to not just the previous normal but the previous, previous normal. If we push back labor and environmental protections, we are not going back to the 20th, but the 19th century. That's one scenario.
But another scenario is we fast forward into a 21st century that we all deeply in our hearts want to be in, but don't know how to. But now we have got some glimpses of it, so I'm going to keep my optimism very much alive. Gandhi said:"There cannot be a system so good, that the individuals in it need not be good".
I think that's one of the most important things to understand as we design for this new world. If good means that we are going to be trustees and stewards, and we are going to be trustees and stewards of this planet and for the futures of our grandchildren. Then we have no other choice. And it's a joyful responsibility to really seize this Covid moment, and design that good society and that good world that we all crave.
I think it's possible, and never before in my 60 years on this planet have I internalized so much ‘Vaishnava janato peer parayi...’ It means we all really know the elite cannot secede any more. So it's the end of elite secession. We are connected, by pandemics, by climate change, and those threads that bind us all have become visible. Now, let's spin a marvellous new conversation with that future. Thank you.
Nipun Mehta: Wow. Beautiful, beautiful! Spoken like an elegant, eloquent, journalist. I will come back to both of you for closing remarks. But before we do that, I want to invite one other person, who is actually a hero for so many of us. Certainly for me, a big inspiration. His name is Vineet Saraiwala.
He is an IIM Alumni (Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru) and one of the very few visually impaired IIM Alumni. And he received many lucrative offers, post his graduation. And he says he bucks that trend. And he says: " I want to go in the direction of creating a more inclusive society". And he has, in fact, done tons of unprecedented work that has shaped India, you can say.
So! Vineet, you would know all this. If we had more time, I would give you a much, much longer introduction! But it's a real joy to have you amongst us. We would love to hear a few reflections from you, and just stories from the ground in your daily life.
Vineet Saraiwala: You know, it's estimated that 60% of the population needs to get infected and recover to achieve herd immunity. And you know what Ravi and Rohini were talking about, is how to get herd immunity of Karuna! (Sanskrit: Compassion). We are all talking about herd immunity of Corona!
So there is this constable in (Khagragarh) Burdwan. Her name is Mahinoor (Khatun) and you know, her father had two cardiac arrests; and she broke her fixed deposit to serve more than one thousand families in Burdwan. And here we are talking about scarcity and abundance.
And you know, then there is this ordinary citizen called Shyam ji who has suddenly become a chemist, serving more than 300 individuals with medicine. And you know, one day he receives a call saying that, “I need medicine". And then, the woman retracts, says that: "No, no, I don't need medicines. I need groceries". And what happens? Shyam ji says: "Okay! Go to the nearest grocery shop!" And , the woman says: "kitane ke saamaan loo?" (in monetary terms, how much grocery should I buy). That is the typical conversation which we are having right now. Where most of the people who are under privileged ask that: "What is the amount?" (the cost).
Shyam-ji flips that question and says: "Just listen to your heart. Budget is not an issue at all. Just stay cool. Buy what is absolutely necessary.” And the woman gets moved by the trust because she had never expected that answer! And ultimately the woman bought goods worth eight hundred rupees, which is typically the cost of a food kit. It just came out of pure trust!
And what does abundance mean to me, personally?
I will say, you need to travel to Ladakh and the beautiful Pangong Tso Lake (situated in the Himalayas at 4,350 m) where I was practicing for my marathon. So I have done some five half marathons, cycled over 5000 kilometres from Maharashtra to Manali to Kardung La.
I have this cool condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa, in which vision deteriorates as age progresses. But you know, but that's not the story. I was actually in Ladakh and practicing my run, and it was so difficult to breathe there. (11,000 feet above sea level). But here is something which I thought at that point is: "Don't you think that we are all living and breathing?" That's such a beautiful gift here to all of us. And here we are talking about abundance. The mere fact that we are all breathing, is itself a gift --and the rest? All things are just extras to us!
And, coming back to the story of Shyam-ji , who is purely in service, and Mahinoor, who broke her fixed deposit. And actually, what are we talking about and here, Nipun, I'm still grieving about my eyesight. So yeah, that's...
Nipun Mehta: Vineet, you are absolutely on fire, and just an amazing human being! It's an honour to know you. And I know that behind that one story -- you chose to tell stories of other people when you actually have so many of your own, and that itself is this incredible generosity with which you live. So, thank you! Thank you Vineet! We look forward to more of those stories and we'll actually email them out to other people as well. A lot of the things you have done and shared in the past. So thank you! Thank you so much, Vineet!
Rohini and Ravi, here we have lots of comments, and lots of gratitude as well. And lots of questions.
You know, I mean, obviously these are very juicy topics. We're talking about power. We're talking about scale. We're talking about the economy. We're talking about inverting these pyramids. We're talking about a history- "normal", "before normal", and the future.
So there's a lot here and it's very rich. But I want to invite you to just share some closing reflections, and maybe connected to a Gandhian value that you feel, is the most critical, for us to embrace, the potential, that is possible right now, or that you feel, is possible. So, whoever wants to go first, can go first.
Rohini Nilekani: I would say, I have learnt a lot about myself and the world in the last few months. And you feel very humbled to see how people have been their largest selves. And here we are sitting in our comfortable cocoon, while people are putting their lives at risk, thank you to all of them. So that humility fills me and I hope it stays. So, I would say, as we try to reshape, our own selves and the world. that we should, like they said, occupy wall street or whatever, we should occupy the heart. And then with the heart, do make the movement towards the head and the hand, as Gandhi-ji did, to serve people, to create the Sarvodaya idea . Now is the time for personal action, making ripples out into the universe, and I would just end there. How do we occupy our heart so that the head and the hand are aligned with it? Thank you, Namaste.
Nipun Mehta: Thank you so much, yes and Ravi.
Ravi Venkatesan: Oh, it's usually a good idea, I've found, to agree with Rohini and build on her point. But I think the world is very much, I feel, that the world is very much at this tipping point and we have the opportunity to nudge it towards an amazing, much better way of living. And equally we have the risk, the danger of regressing and regressing, not just to, just pre-Covid, but as, Rohini said, there's some really dark instincts in many countries to actually go even further back.
And whether the world tips this way or that way, doesn't depend on others. It depends on our collective, how we act and vote. So back to you, like you said connected to that, what Gandhi-ji said, he said and my all time favorite quote is “Be the change”. I think which way the world tips depends on the sigma of our individual choices and decisions.
And I'll just end with the famous words of Hillel, the elder, which is, “ If not now, when? If not you, who?” So that about sums up, I think, the times.
Nipun Mehta: That's a powerful message from both of you, thank you. Before we end here, just a few logistical things. We will, as most of you, or some of you, may know, in Service Space, we don't see this as a campaign with a start and a stop. We see this as a movement. And we see everyone -- today you might be consuming the content, and tomorrow you might be contributing and you might be producing. And so just like that today, Ravi and Rohini were our speakers and tomorrow they will be contributors in other ways. And so we are going to do all that we can, with all the amazing comments and questions you have.
We're going to put it up, we're going to mirror it back to each other. We're going to share the recordings and there's going to be a ton more. So you'll see all of that and, and a lot more. And, before we close, we actually want to have one closing song. This is a song, this was written by Yogananda and in the tune of Yogananda, and it is going to be sung by somebody who is staying up very, very late all the way in Salt Lake city, in the state of Utah in America .
We are delighted to have Jordan with us, who is really very committed and feels very moved by our Paramhansa Yogananda, who incidentally was very close to Gandhi as well. So, Jordan, over to you, and I would invite all of us, once Jordan starts singing, just tap into that minute of silence. And, perhaps pay forward the gratitude for all the good forces that bring such possibilities even, into conversation, into our consciousness. I think it's a very blessed thing. So perhaps we can take a minute in silence while Jordan's singing, to beam out that goodness and occupy the hearts, as Rohini said. So, Jordan, thank you for agreeing to do this!
Jordyn: Hi guys. So the first time that I heard this song, I had no idea that it was written by Yogananda, but I absolutely fell in love with it and yeah, I'm going to be turning my camera off because I get really shy. But yeah, I hope that you guys enjoy it.
(Song is sung with accompanying music, the lyrics are as follows)
“Door of my heart, open wide I keep for Thee.
Wilt Thou come, wilt Thou come? Just for once, come to me?
Will my days fly away without seeing Thee, my Lord?
Night and day, night and day, I look for Thee night and day.
Nipun Mehta: Thank you. Thank you all for being part of this dialogue and I hope we can continue to build on that, in many to many ways. Thank you.
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