2015

Today is the last day of 2015. It has been a good year. I took the really difficult decision of quitting  my job and dedicating all my energy to Reniscience Education. I also took the decision to come on this 8000 km journey. There are a few things I am thankful for as the year comes to an end.

I am glad that we DID move back to India in 2007.  I love this country with all of  its complexities, problems and diverse challenges. I am glad I have an opportunity to contribute to its growth in some small way. I WANT to play my part in its metamorphosis-a process that has already begun. 

According to Shashank, the chairman of JY, we have 20 years....one shot before our young population starts ageing. They believe that entrepreneurship is the way to go, to create jobs to employ  the millions of youth emerging from middle India. They believe India can be  built through enterprise. 

The entire focus of JY is on entrepreneurship and business. This is great, but I find that they fail to show the bigger connection among challenges or opportunities. The bigger picture. Because a nation is an ecosystem. A web. And it is important for young people to see how everything is interconnected. Economic growth is nothing without ecological conservation. Sustainability means more than financial stability or longevity. It also means conducting business in a manner that protects our most valuable natural resources. 

For example, we had a panel discussion on sustainable agriculture last evening at Gitam University. All three panellists have managed to create profitable businesses in the field of agriculture. However, the fact is that they grow cash crops. When I raised the question of depleting soil conditions because of overproduction of cash crops instead of grains that are necessary, the response was weak, saying that yes this does happen and that we now need to 'fix' our soil. How is this sustainable? 

On day 4, we visited MSSRF, founded by M.S. Swaminathan. He is a plant geneticist, renowned for his  leading role in India's Green  Revolution. He is known as ' Indian Father of Green Revolution.' Even there, the message was that organic farming is unsustainable from a economic perspective. Isn't the whole point of innovation and enterprise to make possible what is perceived as not?  

    Mr. Swaminathan himself

 

Overall, the message I am constantly hearing is - you can and should  solve this country's problems by innovating and by building enterprises around the solutions. This is fine but it's an incomplete message.We can and should meet our current, numerous challenges and definitely create wealth in the process, but at the same time we must ensure that we don't create other enormous,  preventable problems for future generations. And this has a high probability of happening unless we actively and explicitly include conversations about conservation, humanitarian values and transformative citizenship. 

Tomorrow we begin a new year. 2015  was a good year. Let's hope next year is even better and let's hope next year's Yatra is even more inclusive of these important ideas.