MAIN - Part II (Final)

One could argue that we have now identified everything that it takes (‘Who’ is the World’s People, ‘What’ is school education for children under the poverty line and ‘How’ are the Powers of scale & teamwork), therefore, it should work perfectly from here on.

This argument has no doubt some weight, however, all major changes in our world have been initiated by an unexplained & invisible force, a design, a change agent or if derived from the ancients’ principle of “nothing happens before it’s time”, the harbinger of time, though this doesn’t necessarily need to be as preordained as it sounds. It can be a conscious choice of the masses of this world powered by a common dream and a common design to achieve it enabled by an increasingly connected world of today. There is one thing though, the conscious nature of this design necessitates the doers or executors (in this case the masses) to understand it with perfection. Hence this book to facilitate that, before it’s time for the real action.

Come to think of the design to achieve a common goal by the masses of today’s world, I just hear someone shouting from a rooftop saying “network” just at the same time as another one says “internet”. So, that’s the idea to begin with, “network through the internet”. Though profit-making can not be a goal of a venture of this sort, in order to make it successful, it’s important to take a cue or two from the most vibrant examples of success on this newest mass-medium, the profit-making business ventures like Google, Yahoo and Amazon.

We need to focus on basics like the site purpose, target audience profile / lifestyles / interests, site structure & interactive functions etc. But more importantly, we need to clearly understand the venture model (aka business model for a non-profit venture). Since that is of singular importance, let us focus on that first.

We said we have at our hand the epic challenge of providing primary & secondary education to nearly one billion children living in poverty in today’s world, nearly half the total child population on the planet. This would entail making mammoth enhancements in the existing educational infrastructure, nearly doubling it to be specific. That’s easier said than done, but surely not impossible. Let us broadly look at what does an average school need and what can the ‘Who’ in our venture provide. The table below claims virtually everything.

It’s clear that the people can provide everything it takes to wipe out the thought & means inequities from this world. The question is, will they step ahead and take the initiative ? I believe they will given the right level of stimulation.

What should that stimulation be ? Would it suffice to simply create a high level of awareness for the venture, assuming every one has an angel inside them who would come rushing out with open arms to help the underprivileged given a great opportunity ? Or, do we need to go beyond just basic awareness and craft a strong marketing campaign with a solid call to action ? There can be many arguments in favor of both the points of view. However, I tend to agree more with the later.

This doesn’t at all mean that I doubt the basic goodness in all mankind. I have seen so many cases of really well settled folks enjoying swanky careers at top companies achieved after years of struggle, retiring early to do what they claim is their true calling, helping the underprivileged through some serious charity work. Some of the richest people of the world such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have also proven to be creditable examples in this area. However, most cases of human kindness are neither as well known nor as noticeable. Almost, every ordinary person is capable of helping those in need and has actually done it more frequently than just a few times.

The question is, are YOU ready to be a part of this revolution NOW ? The REAL revolution. Let me know.

MAIN - Part I

As some one some where said “knowing what is half the battle”, let us first focus on the what.

We can do a “What’s that ?” test. As we go, you’ll understand how it works. We said we have not yet achieved true modernism. What’s that… ? Well, true modernism works for betterment of the society at large. What’s that… ? The betterment of society is all inclusive and it means equal opportunities for all, including those who are currently underprivileged. What’s that… ? That means equal opportunities of pursuing total fulfillment. What’s that… ? Total fulfillment entails emotional, material & intellectual fulfillment and that comes from equality of thought. What’s that… ? Equality of thought is equality at formative rearing. What’s that… ? That is equality of learning & development opportunities ? What’s that ? To be specific, that is equality of education at the primary & secondary levels. So, the what here is the epic challenge of providing primary & secondary education to nearly one billion children living in poverty in today’s world, nearly half the total child population on the planet.

Is it possible to achieve ? Can someone really do it ? If yes, who is that some one ? Can the governments of the world do it ? Or the NGO’s ? Or Unicef ? If yes, then what stopped them until now. There is no doubt that all of them can contribute extensively. But, the scale of the issue is such that it requires a much bigger force to address it, a force multiplier. Who is that force ? Well, there is nothing supernatural about it. It’s a well established force that drives our contemporary world on most frontiers. It’s what drives the governments, has carved our history and continues to get stronger with every passing chapter of human evolution. It’s the strongest yet the most oblivious force in the world today. It’s unaware of both its colossal power and it’s most vital interests. This force is the very basis of the immense scale of the issue at hand. It’s the force of the people of this world, of you and me.

Now comes the biggest question of all, of how. How can the who achieve the what ? How can the oblivious be elightened to its virtue ? To answer that we need to look at the source of people’s power, where it stems from and what makes it tick.

For me the power of people lies in two things. The first one is the power of scale, the unmatchable strength of numbers that can make even the most gargantuan problems appear incredibly manageable. All big tasks in our world are accomplished by the sheer power of numbers. All major governments of the world are formed by ballot from the masses. All global organizations function only with the help of a vast global workforce. Big investments have the ability to wobble the markets with their moves. Nations feel safe only when they have an army of men protecting the borders. The fastest growing economies today have managed to turn the tables only with an increased participation from a larger strata of society.

The other raison d’etre is the power of team, each member in it with their unique set of strengths, working collaboratively to make the end result exponentially better than the sum of the parts. It’s like a machine consisting of individual parts, each on its own worthless, but together virtually running the whole show today.

Preface - Part III

Space. It’s a wonderful feeling to own a lot of space. And I am talking about the personal space here, the space to do more things, the space to do things at leisure, and more ‘deliberately’ without the ‘heave’ from all sides. Across the last few days, I could see a difference in the way things had spaced out for me. And I seriously believed it was a lot about the perspective, macro versus the micro.

Both are important, but on different occasions one needs to shift the mode from one to the other. The micro perspective helps focus on details, in avoiding small but critical mistakes, while at the same time too much focus on the micro perspective can also lead to missing the big picture. The macro perspective on the other hand ensures one always has the big picture in mind and that was a big help in setting my “ought to do” priorities. All the same, the flaw of having the macro perspective as a constant companion is that one might end up missing the finer points.

And there is a new problem I was facing now. While I gained immense space by wearing the macro hat, at the same time I thought the hat was too wide, may be a tad too big for my head. Even so, it was fun wearing it, at least for the time being. The problem was that instead of blocking my vision, my new hat actually seemed to have opened up my eyes to the world around.

When I looked around in one of the world’s most moneyed cities Dubai, life wasn’t a tranquil experience for every one. There were those here who could spend a thousand dirhams for a glass of fine French wine without even batting an eyelid, while some others out there on the streets were ready to bow their head, join their hands and slog not less than sixteen hours a day to earn a trifling sum of four hundred dirhams a month, all to support a family of eight back in their home countries.

So what really lied beneath all these different faces? Did they have different philosophies to life? Or did they think alike? After all, at the end of the day, they were all human flesh and blood. I suppose both the premises were true, but only partly. The real question was which one of them was more exact than the other. I believed it to be the former. Most people allow their thoughts to be governed by their circumstances. When I meet some one new in a job, all they want to focus on is do well in their career, have fun and that’s that. You spin towards the disadvantaged strata, and they would be mulling over ways of pulling together enough of the indispensable resources. A look at the relatively successful and well-heeled, and you would find them drawn towards the most up-to-the-minute fads. Finally, the erudites amongst us would have the taste for the uncharted.

The social inequity, of thoughts and means isn’t just a failing of today’s society but has in fact always existed. The amazement however is that the famed modernism in the last century or so hasn’t done much to cerebralize the exploits of the vast majority. Consider Einstein’s quest to unify his general theory of relativity with the new laws of quantum physics seventy years or so ago. As in the world of “Alvin Tofler’s Future Shock” that’s perhaps equivalent of twenty five thousand years of human progress before that. Compare that quest now with the grapple for existence of the masses of today. That no doubt is not a grand sign of modernism and true progress.

So, what is true modernism? How far off is that from where the humanity stands today? Are we on the right track to the betterment of the world at large? I believe not yet but we do have the right ammunition. Be it the technology or the human resources, the world has everything that it takes. Except just one thing, the will to do it. Some one, some where has to demonstrate boundless benevolence, ingenious game plan and gritty execution to achieve true progress. Well, I know that would sound akin to a repetitive phrase from a regular Hollywood flick, but remember, we are genuinely talking about changing the world here. And therefore, that’s easier said than done. There are many impediments that hover all around in the form of thorny questions. Some of these include issues like what exactly needs to be focused on, who will do it and how. The scale of the riddle itself is mind boggling.

Assuming it’s doable, let’s for a moment toy with the idea of arriving at the what, who and how.

Preface - Part II

Did I move even an inch towards the “ought to do’s” I had emphasized in the last episode of my Journalistic musings ? What happened to the opportunity for consistency in the modus operandi of my existence? Did the little life analysis I did about three nights ago help at all? Looking at the way things had shaped up so far, it certainly didn’t seem so. I had even come back to the self analysis mood only after a gap of two extra days.

Was I ever going to achieve any better control over my life? Would I always continue to exist with the choices thrust upon me by life’s circumstances or will I ever be able to live with my own conscious choices? I experienced yet another sense of lost control this time when I came to know that I had to spend a substantial part of my salary to pay off car fines incurred mostly due to my ignorance in topping up my toll account over the last fortnight. It could well be the beginning of financial manifestations of my lack of control. I guessed at least for now the best thing would be to take this as one more occasion of learning for future application.

Future, when does it become the present? How much time does it take to get there? I just saw this news item on TV where a youngster in Delhi met with a potentially fatal road accident in which metal from a road-side barricade pierced though his body just below the chest and passed out from the other side damaging his lungs and liver. He was going back home after a long and grueling day at work, probably in too much of a hurry. Miraculously, the doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences hospital managed to save his life after a three hour long surgery the victim had to put up with in a sitting position. The sudden nature of this incident immediately declared to me that future is here, future is now. There is really an extremely thin line between the present and the future. And that line can sometimes be crossed in a millisecond without even an iota of effort. Deepak Chopra derives his theory of time & space from the convergence of ancient vedic wisdom with principles of particle physics in his book, “Life after Death”,

                        “In the twentieth century Western science came to understand that all solid objects are actually made of invisible vibrations .......
                         …… (as per vedas) different planes of existence represent different frequencies of consciousness. The world of physical matter is just one expression of a particular frequency ......
                        …… (as per physics) we measure outside events using the inner clock of the brain. Our bodies experience time because of atomic level vibrations in the organic chemicals that form our brain. A snail’s brain clicks so slowly that it takes five seconds before one event passes and a new one appears. In those five seconds you could pick up a snail and move it ten feet, and to the snail it would appear that he had teleported through space.”

Impressed, I concluded if Time was merely a manifestation of the physical world we were in, why couldn’t I control time to achieve the physical world’s “ought to do’s”?

Beginning of a new Beginning

At first, I thought I would use this contraption for sketching new to the world ideas, ideas that would identify the world’s unexplored needs and meet them in a pioneering way. And all this while deriving self-sustained business models that could lead to personal wealth creation possibilities beyond any individual comprehension. I did just that, only for a little while. Thanks to my fertile mind, there were several of those schemes. But I guess the real predicament I was facing lied is the very fact that the idea of creating life defining, wealth creating new ideas was also merely an idea, nothing more than a tiny part of the ideas churning malaise most fertile minds of this world suffer from in the info age that is today.

I had come to realize over time that what was equally important to seeding new ideas was to think each one of them through, at the slightest to derive a true creative satisfaction out of it if nothing else. And to do that consistently over time was equally important in order to truly enjoy a pursuit like that. And it isn’t hard to be candid, consistency but for office work, was clearly missing from all aspects of my life, be it personal or in any other aspirational & exploratory interests I had had so far.

This concurred with my yet another unfinished errand of reading Robin Sharma’s “Who will cry when you die”. Two things in particular struck me. They presented themselves as potential remedies to my then life situation in order for it to be a much more fulfilling and rewarding experience. The first one was that I should start writing a Journal as it would not only help create a platform to analyze the minds’ diversions on a fairly regular basis but also help absorb the life’s situations and derive their logical directions. Secondly, it would not hurt if I could start managing my time a lot better and focused either towards things I always wanted to do or towards the ones’ I always had to do, or in other words “ought to do’s”, but never ever go on to do, due to fast paced days and tired nights.

So, what were my “ought to do’s”? Well these were things I thought of doing several times but never actually materialised due to other over-riding priorities, i.e., recurring in thoughts time and again, but hardly ever in action. This brought me to another apprehension and now I truly hoped that I wasn’t a thinking diarrhea freak.

Coming back to the “ought to do’s”, these for me could be many, of two broad forms. The first form was the “had to do’s” such as renewing my long pending car registration or the soon-expiring domain rights, hitting the gym consistently for more than five days at a stretch or finishing the “to do” list in my office outlook calendar to end one fine day at work with a satisfied closure feel. The other form is the “Wanted to’s” which for me meant things like learning to dance well enough to be able to match, who else, my wife Tina’s footsteps on the floor, or learning to swim well enough to be able to dive in deeper waters.