I had just finished my day with receiving appreciation for the depth achieved...
Shantaben: A Community Leader In Kutch
I had been waiting for half an hour at Shantaben's house in Juni Ravalwadi,...
An Unwavering Commitment To Change: The Story of Mukesh
In a world where job-hopping has become the norm, Mukesh Ji stands out as an...
‘Character Alive’ : An Activity To Engage Children
Working at a children's library has been a journey filled with endless...
Cigarettes, Beedis And The In-Between
I grew up in Calcutta watching everyone from my father to the cobbler to the...
Allegory Of The Cave: In Social Work
Plato's (an ancient Greek philosopher) Allegory of the cave is a philosophical...
Kalamaitri – A Collective Run Enterprise
In an ideal world, collectives would be catalysts for societal progress,...
Dying Children And Dead Living Rooms
Until a few months back, when I saw parents coming in with really sick...
Learning Empathy
I walked into the village, excited about getting to see something new, enthusiastic about meeting new people from different walks of life, all set to explore how majority of our country's population lives. What I was faced with was a wandering naked three year old boy...
Letters To Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi : Part 4
The Mandi And Modern Supply Chains Dear Gandhi It’s been 150 years since you have returned from South Africa to propose your decentralized and localized economic models; and your nation is still obsessed with the same old imperialistic ideas of free trade and...
The Efficient Market Hypothesis
Sir George Mallory, O.B.E. stepped off the plane and immediately had to shield his eyes from the sun. It was the height of the Mexican summer and even before he got into the waiting car at the tarmac, he was sweating. Once again, he wondered why he was here. Then he...
Episodic Empowerment
It started raining heavily all of a sudden. It wasn’t supposed to, in mid-November. The scooter I had borrowed from a co-worker kept threatening to skid on the muddy roads. Every time we nearly fell down my heart would skip a beat, and I am sure hers did too. We were...
Pahaadi Measurement Of Time And Distance
My T-shirt and the only surviving pair of jeans (I have lost a lot of weight, thankfully!) had stains all over them and I was staring and scraping at them while trying to hold a conversation. I had not been involved in a fight nor had come after playing around in the...
Letters To Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi : Part 3
Dear Gandhi Have you heard about the three bricklayers? Before I tell you their story, let me give you the context on why I am writing about these buggers to you. I guess you might have experienced the thing that I am sharing while you were leading these humans’...
Materialism
If words had reputations, then ‘materialism’ would be the poor, misunderstood sod walking home alone at each night after being turned down by every girl at the bar. And yet, I call myself a materialist – and proudly so! I come from arguably the most spiritual country...
Love
Love is in the air at India Fellow! Indeed, not even my previous fellowship can match the rate of romance here. We really ought to use this as a branding tool – "Join India Fellow! Get a girlfriend/boyfriend!" I imagine we’d have to hire some extra staff just to...
Warping Time
Warping time is equally an old concept as much as it is new. Modern times' way of warping time is quite limited in its scope, and does not really enter into our lives as much as the old concept used to and can. Their purposes are widely different. The new way of...
Letters To Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi : Part 2
Subject - Organization, Ideology And Work Mohan Bhai, Did you hear the term social enterprise yet? This concept of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship has received much attention since late 70's. What is it that is so explicitly social about any...
Consistency Of Jams And Projects
Consistency of a jam is nothing but a measure of its fluidity. Right consistency yields the utmost satisfaction to the palate. Two raw materials are responsible for the consistency, namely pectin and sugar. Pectin is more known of the two contributors. Ask people...
Letters To Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi : Part 1
Subject - Death Of Swaraj Dear Gandhi, Today we visited an Adivasi community in a village called Phala amidst the hills of Udaipur. The idea was to understand the lifestyle of the villagers by interacting with them. The village had 13 mohallas, the one we visited was...
Chandus Dairies
Not a typo. I read an entire manual on how the self-help group (SHG) federation of the Khed taluka works. A bunch of women form an SHG. A bunch of SHGs form a cluster. A bunch of clusters form a federation. The federation provides financial and social services to all...