Are You a "Bystander"?

While cleaning my mailbox today, I came across this year-old mail from a "friend" - well, we had communicated on mails, talked a couple of times on phone, and had even met once accidentally. This young MBA from IIM/A was working with Ashoka:Innovators for the Public, and we had got in touch because of my interest in Social Entrepreneurship.

His announcement came out-of-the-blue...

"...I am leaving Ashoka to work in the grassroots in Assam. The situation in my home state is terrible, and I do not wish to remain a mute spectator to this devastation. I am not yet sure what I'll exactly do, but I plan to travel extensively to figure out how best I could contribute to making some positive difference."

Reading his mail again, reminded me of the reverse stance many/most of us get quagmired into.

I had once written about this Logic of Inaction, and his mail stimulated me to make this quiz for myself (you may also like to take it):

Am I aware that something seems wrong in a situation around me? YES / NO

Do I actively deny taking responsibility - however, remote - of my own part in purpetuating/creating the problem or preventing its resolution? YES / NO

Do I claim that, given my "circumstances", I could not have acted otherwise? YES / NO

Do I discount my own autonomy and power to influence the situation? YES / NO

Realising that such a candid and conscious admission to an otherwise unconscious stance of negation is difficult - actually impossible - to make to oneself, I also created a checklist of typical statements that one makes (to oneself and to others) to justify one's Bystander Stance.

"Oh, this is none of my business."

"The situation is actually far more complex than it seems."

"Well, I do not have all the information/am not qualified to deal with this/ make a comment."

"I don't want to get burned again."

"I want to remain neutral/ am neutral on this issue."

"I'm only telling the truth as I see it."

"I'm just following orders/ doing my duty."

"What difference will my individual contribution/effort make to such a large/complex issue?"

"Who is to be blamed? They brought it upon themselves."

"I don't want to rock the boat."
etc. etc....

So...? Are you a Bystander?

East is East, and West and West...

...and never the twain shall meet !!

Rudyard Kipling might have written his ballad for modern India.

Omakar Goswami's CERG Advisory compiled detailed data from Census 2001 on rural India, going down to the level of its around 600 districts, tehsils and villages. The findings were published in Business World about 2 years back

The data ranked every single Indian district in terms of household ownership of, and access to eleven assets or amenities. These were:

1. whether a household has a bank or post-office account,
   
2. whether it has a permanent or pucca house,
   
3. whether it has an electricity connection,
   
4. whether it owns a television set,
   
5. whether it owns a scooter or motorcycle,
   
6. whether it uses LPG for cooking,
   
7. whether its drinking water source is either in the homestead or within 500 metres,
   
8. whether it has a separate kitchen within the homestead,
   
9. whether it has a separate toilet,
   
10. whether it has a separate enclosed bathing place and
    
11. whether whether it has a telephone.

Needless to say, if the majority of households have access to these assets and amenities, the region would be more economically prosperous.

What emerged was this picture:



Is there a learning in this map?... Think about it!!!

Update: On second thoughts, here are some indications....

A Map of Mineral Resources and Forest Cover in India:


A report Rich Land, Poor People by Center for Science and Environment, noted that:

If India's forest, mineral bearing areas, regions of tribal habitation and watershed are all mapped together, they will overlay each other on almost the same areas....

The three tribal-dominated states of Orissa, Chattisgarh, and Jharkhand... account for 70% of India's coal reserves, 80% of its high-grade iron ores, 60% of its bauxite and almost all its chromite reserves...

Of the top 50 mineral producing districts in the country, almost half are tribal. The average forest coverin these districts is 28%, much more than the national average of 20.9%... etc.

Earlier in the report, is a paragraph:

"Minerals, however, are essential for a nation which stands on the threshold of a promising future, and must be extracted. Which means the land, its resources and people must make way for the miners. Enamoured by mining industry's promises of progress, Indian planners and lawmakers have achieved this with clinical and brutal precision. Forests are razed, waterways polluted and clogged, farmland transformed into wasted tracts, and mining dust hangs neavy in the air. As for the people, they are summarily evicted with little prospect or promise of compensation and rehabilitation.... Most mining areas of the nation remain mired in grinding poverty and deprivation."

... which perhaps may explain this last map:

Democracy: Inside & Outside Iraq

Five years back, I woke up at 4:30am (IST) - not my usual schedule - just to switch on the TV... with a hope that No! this will, perhaps, not happen!!!.

It happened!!


Today is the 5th anniversary, of what one of my friends once described as my "magnificant obsession"...

...To me, it is also a time to reflect, refresh our memories, and consolidate our understanding of where the world has been led/dragged to... Some of these unfolding events were covered in AlternativePerspective, e.g.,:

Iraq War @ AlternativePerspective (1)

Iraq War @ AlternativePerspective (2)

Iraq War @ AlternativePerspective (3)

Iraq War @ AlternativePerspective (4)

For the rest, pictures speak better than words:
[I owe the credits for these to the numerous websites from where I have been downloading them - thanks!]

Spreading Democracy Inside Iraq:







































...Meanwhile, there were other Grassroot Democratic Voices (muted, naturally!) Outside Iraq:
(oh, yes! One knows that the "media" failed to bring us these voices and images)

New York:


London:


Rome:


Cairo:


Karachi:


Bombay (Mumbai):


Melbourne:


Ankara, Turkey:


San Fransisco:


etc. etc...
In conclusion:

Biharis, Muslims Need Not Apply...

In an earlier post - Ekalavya Applies for a Job!! - the issue was about Dalits and Muslims...

...and now, perhaps we need to add Biharis to the list of those discriminated... this time due to educated corporate India's obsession with "Proper English"...

Thanks to Yawar's mail, here are excerpts from the news-item in Mumbai Mirror

....Even the HR firm was surprised by the pre-condition set by the BPO. "Though we were surprised, the BPO organisation, Netambit, explained that people from UP and Bihar have a problem with their diction, especially with words like insurance where the ‘sh’ sound is pronounced as ‘s’," said Nadeem Faruqi, director, Connect Global, the HR firm. He was unable to get any logical explanation as to why Muslims were also excluded.

Uma, the HR head for Netambit, said, "We do not prefer people from UP and Bihar because of their strong mother tongue influence." However, she added that the HR firm was trying to malign them. "It is not at all true that we’ve said they are ineligible. In fact, we also do not prefer candidates from the North-East. Even they have a very strong mother tongue influence."

But Faruqi was firm. "Why should I want to malign them? For me, this is my business. We have been getting them candidates for the past three months. We have been verbally instructed that they don’t want candidates from UP and Bihar. They also do not want Muslims. I myself am a Muslim, but we didn’t probe much because for us this is business. They are our clients, they have specific needs, we service those needs," he said....

...Keith Rowe, director, HR Solutions, another consultancy, confirmed this. He said, "This kind of pre-conditioning exists in both big and small BPOs. We had many clients telling us categorically that they did not want candidates from a particular state, belonging to a particular caste or creed. In fact, this caste system works in another way in this sector. Looks and gender can also be qualifiers or disqualifiers. We also get requests for good looking girls because ‘they add to the glam quotient of the office environment’."

...Akhilesh Karn from Bihar, who used to work with GE Money in Gurgaon, had a tough time getting his last job. "Due to our accent, it is very difficult to get a job in a BPO. Because the managers know that we have a tough time getting jobs, at times, they even make us work longer shifts without any overtime," he said.

Coming back to unsolved riddle of "He was unable to get any logical explanation as to why Muslims were also excluded.... may be the reason is:

The "Other" in Modern Indian "Hindu" Psyche....

Indian Budget'08: When is "sop" Not a "sop"?

Sop (n.): A piece of food soaked or dipped in a liquid; something yielded to placate or soothe; a concession given to mollify or placate, etc.

The highlight of the India's Annual Budget yesterday was the waiver of Rs.60,000crore ($15bn approx) debt to the small and marginal farmers.

Some hailed this as "revolutionary", while others criticised this as a "populist stunt" - a "sop" given with the next year's elections in mind. In either case, both sides agree that this is "whopping" amount.

[Though this is not the focus of this posting, my own understanding is that this debt relief package will not be able to solve the farmers' debt problems - for two reasons:


• According to the pre-budget Economic Survey, non-institutional sources (e.g., local moneylender, traders, relatives, etc.) account for more than 40% (or Rs.48,000crores) of farmers' debt, which is taken at exhorbitant interest rates, and
  
  
• The debt relief touches only the symptom, and not the root-cause. Farmers take debt because the production costs have gone up, remuneration for produce has gone down, and state investments in building farm-related infrastructure. Quoting from an earlier post in 2005:
  
  "...So why are Indian Farmers indebted?
  
  The decline in agriculture started during 1980's, with the decline of public investment in the sector — in irrigation, marketing infrastructure like warehousing, mandis, etc, and seeds and extension services. From 16.4 per cent in 1979-80, plan outlay in agriculture and allied activities slumped to 4.9 per cent in the Ninth Plan (1997-2002), making farming, always the most privatised, independent business, a totally support-less venture in these liberalised, globalised times (the fact that this coincided with the IMF loan is a different story)
  
  Meanwhile, the global prices have dropped: from $216/ton in 1995 to $133/ton in 2001 for wheat, $98.2/ton in 1995 to $49.1/ton in 2001 for cotton, $273/ton in 1995 to $178/ton for soyabean, etc.
  
  The drop in global prices is not because of increased productivity, efficiency and competitiveness of other developed economies, but due to the agricultural subsidies doled out by the rich nations to their agribusiness corporations (e.g., Monsanto, Cargill, Syngenta, etc.).
  
  For instance, the U.S government pays $193/ton to US Soya farmers; 25000 cotton producers in the U.S are given a subsidy of $4bn annually, etc., leading to a subsidy of $ 230 per acre in the USA. In the process, the Indian peasants are loosing $ 26 billion or Rs.1.2 trillion annually. This is a burden their poverty does not allow them to bear. Hence the epidemic of farmer suicides."
  
  This debt relief does not address these basic issues...]

But coming back to the issue of how "whopping" is this "sop"?...

One concern often mentioned in the mainstream media (and that includes the metropolitan conversations in blogosphere) is about where will this money come from - and that why should the taxes paid by individuals and corporate be used for bestowing this dubious largesse of Rs.60,000crores...

Here are some benchmarks:

Where did the honest - even if ignorant - taxpayers' money go during last financial year?:

Export related subsidies and exemptions (when given to industry, these are called "incentives") accounted for Rs.58,416cr

Individual tax-payers saved Rs.38,107cr on income-tax by investing in tax-exempted options under 80C of IT Act (in case, you want to exercise this option, here is an advice on how to save 88% of your income tax in the coming financial year.

The India Inc. got tax concessions worth approximately Rs.58,655cr, based on the analysis of over 3.28 lakh tax returns filed by the corporate bodies, representing over 90% of corporate tax returns... "these companies earned Rs 5,56,190 crore as profits before taxes, but declared taxable income of Rs 3,41,606 crore only during the financial year 2006-07.... Taking advantage of various exemptions and rebates, these companies paid taxes at the rate of 20.60%, substantially lower than the statutory tax rate of 33.66%."

Excise duty exemptions accounted for a revenue loss - or loss of taxpayer's money - of Rs 87,992cr

There are various mechanics and modalities for exploiting the "legal leaks in the corporate tax systems" which is how the tax-consultants earn their living... If interested, check How Much Income Tax Did You Pay This Year?

In any case, the issue is between:

Rs. 58,416 + 38,107 + 58,655 +87,992 crores vs. Rs. 60,000 crores

Needless to say, the marginal and small farmer has neither such tax-saving options - and for that matter, a taxable income!!!

Tittytainment replaces News...

Today I came across these findings of CMS Media Lab at Hardnews [hat-tip: Reader's Words]:

"The research indicates that TV news today is no longer political. It has become abjectly insensitive towards issues concerning health, education, environment and public interest. It has become flooded with sports, entertainment and crime stories... Even a little shift in favour of human interest stories seems to be again trapped in meaningless trivia and selective and obsessive 24-hour coverage of issues like ‘Prince in a hole’ or a ‘naagin’ out to take revenge..."

Tittytainment, it seems, has finally arrived to Indian news media in the form of non-stop trivia...

"Tittytainment" was a term coined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security advisor of US president Jimmy Carter, essentially to convey the thought that a mixture of "intoxicating entertainment and sufficient nourishment" that can "tranquilize the frustrated minds of the globe's population."

The term gained currency during/ after the famous first State of the World Forum held at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel in 1995, where this idea was apparently proposed as the solution to the "20-80 society" of the 21st century. This excerpt from The Global Trap (1997) by H.P. Martin and H. Schuhmann describes the proceedings:

"...The pragmatists in the Fairmont Hotel reduce the future to a pair of numbers and a term: "20 to 80" and "tittytainment".

20 percent of the working age population will be enough in the coming century to keep the world economy going. "More workers will not be needed", said magnate Washington SyCip. A fifth of all jobseekers will be enough to produce all the goods and perform all the top-flight services that the world society can afford....

What about the others? Will 80 percent of those willing to work be without a job? "Certainly"... The question in the future will be "to have lunch or be lunch", to eat or be devoured.

....The term "tittytainment" makes the rounds... The frustrated population of the world could be kept happy with as mixture of numbing entertainment and adequate food.

The managers soberly discuss the possible doses and reflect how the wealthy fifth can employ the superfluous remnant.... The organizers of the three memorable days in the Fairmont imagined themselves underway to a new civilization. However the direction envisaged by the assembled experts from the executive floors and science leads directly back into the pre-modern age... The world model of the future follows the formula 20 to 80. The one-fifth society is brewing in which the excluded will be immobilized with "tittytainment"."

The future has arrived!!

Indian History Trivia (8): The "Myth" of "Macaulay's Children"

It was the 3rd or 4th time this mail landed in my mailbox (through chainmail, exhorting one to send to all Indians - or as a plain forward by a friend) during last one week...

Lord Thomas Macaulay was supposed to have made this speech on Feb 2nd, 1835 to the British Parliament:

"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."

Apart from the fact that this did not read like something an Englishman will write in 19th century ("break the very backbone", or "caliber" instead of "calibre"), and it was too much of an 'opaque' statement...

... And so, I did some googling to find the original text.

It is here:
Macaulay's Minute on Education, February 2, 1835

...apparently, Lord Macaulay did not ever make any such statement!!!

(though, such is the power of internet on the un-discerning consumers of information, that, as this news-item in The Hindu (Jan 18, 2008) shows, this quote is even displayed in the "Freedom Express" at platform No. 11 at the Chennai Central Railway Station!!!)

Macaulay made his speech when there was a raging controversy about how to use the Rs. 100,000/- that the British Government was spending on "educating the natives" in India.

The issue was: which language to use for this education.

On one side were the Orientalists, who favoured supporting native langauages - Sanskrit, Urdu and Persian. And on the other side were people like Macaulay, who favoured English, because, in his own condescending wisdom, he felt "that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."

... And that is how the legend/myth of "Macaulay's Children" was born.... A set of Indian elites, educated, indoctrinated and brainwashed through the the British education system... One article has a vivid description of this insidious system:

"His education system was originally designed to create a class of people who would be the intermediaries between the British rulers and the ruled natives. They would be indoctrinated through an education system to be Indians only in appearance - they would have complete belief in the good intentions of British rule and the philosophy of 'the white man's burden', thus making the task of ruling this vast country easier. They would, without question, believe that the British were there for the upliftment of the Indian people from centuries of ignorance and backwardness. Over a period of time, they would associate all things British with superiority - their physical appearance, their attire, their language, their culture, their religion.... The education system was to be a self-perpetuating one. Once indoctrinated, the converts would carry the torch. Incentives were built to ensure that the system spread reasonably far and wide..."

This (mis)understanding about the education system which the British introduced - and which supposedly continues to produce the "Macaulay's Children" - is rooted in this (selective) quote from Macaulay's "Minute":

"... We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, - a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect...."

Macaulay, of course, wrote/spoke this. But he said something more before and after this statement, which completely changes the meaning of the above quote (Please read the full quotation later in this post)

He was, apparently, a pragmatist in his own dispassionate way, even though his was a mindset of one who believed that he - and the British - represented a more evolved civilisation. His motives to create "a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern" was not aimed to create a submissive populace, but a nation which the British can trade with...

In a speech to the British Parliament on Govt of India Bill (1833), he had said:

"...It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill governed and subject to us... To trade with civilised men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a doting wisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would make it an useless and costly dependency, which would keep a hundred millions of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our slaves.... Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may keep them submissive? Or do we think that we can give them knowledge without awakening ambition?..."

In the modern business parlance and cliché's, Macaulay was aiming to "create a market" through - one is tempted to say - "inclusive growth"!!

Given India's linguistic and ethnic diversity, his solution was to educate a set of elites - in English - who in turn, will help translating the Western knowledge in local language. And so, whathe said was this:

"I feel... that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, - a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population."

The fact that, 150+yrs later, Macaulay's elite "interpreters" had forgotten/discarded their own native vernacular - and had createda class-system based on "proper" English - is, of course, a different story....

Earlier Posts in the Series:
1. The Story of Junagadh
2. The Foundations of "Nehruvian Socialism"
3. A "Nation-in-Making"
4. Legacy of "The Raj"
5. When Did India Become a Socialist Country?
6. India's 1st 5-Star Hotel
7. The Non-Legend of Cyrill Radcliffe

Celebrating India's Declining Poverty Levels!

About a year back, there was a flurry of articles celebrating the post-reforms/liberalisation decline of poverty levels in India.

Govt of India's press release concluded based on NSS (National Sample Survey) 61st round that, from a poverty level of 36% in 1993-94, by 2004-05:

the poverty levels had fallen to 27.5% (if one goes by Uniform Recall Period (URP) consumption distribution methodology)
And/or

the poverty levels had fallen to 21.8% (if one goes by Mixed Recall Period (MRP) consumption distribution methodology)

One news report noted:

"The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government may have been voted out of office in 2004 as its "India Shining" campaign boomeranged, but official data now available shows that more people moved above the poverty line by 2004-05 compared with the earlier estimates of 1999-2000.

As per the provisional data of the 61st round of large sample survey on household consumer expenditure, the poverty ratio at the national level was about 22 per cent in 2004-05, down from the roughly comparable data for 1999-2000 which showed a poverty level of 26.1 per cent for that year."

This, to say the least, is a great achievement!
(for a country with the population like India, bringing 4-6% of populace above poverty line in such a short period is equivalent to bringing almost the entire population of countries like UK or France above the poverty line)

... Till one starts looking at the "definition of poverty" in India:

The NSS data divides "the poor" into six groups:

1. Extremely Poor/BPL whose average per capita consumption income is Rs.9/day

2. Above the Poverty Line, earning is upto Rs.12/ day

3. The Marginally Poor earning Rs upto Rs.15/day

4. The Vulnerable, earning above Rs 15 but less than Rs.20/day

5. The Middle Income earning Rs.37/day, and

6. The High Income, earning above Rs.93/day.
($1 = Rs. 40/- approx)

POINT TO NOTE:

if you earn more than Rs. 13/day, officially, you are above the poverty line

india's poverty "declined" when the per capita consumption of 43mn people grew from Rs.9/day to more than Rs.13/day

Meanwhile... 836 million people in India live on a per capita consumption of less than Rs.20/day!!

Between Hope and Despair...

Last one week was an amazing experience... I had the opportunity (in connection of an NGO assessment work I am involved in) of travelling and interacting with the unnoticed entrepreneurs/changemakers in the interiors of the modern India.

These interactions were simultaneously exhilirating and unsettling. Here is a snapshot of one of those (among many):

====

I met Sheetla Devi (and her friend... I could not catch her name) on the outskirts of Hazaribagh.

“how much loan did you take?”, I asked her (she was one of the beneficiaries of the SIDBI loans through NBJK (Nav Bharat Jagriti Kendra) under the Rural Industries Programme (RIP)).

“Rs.15,000/-“, she told me, and had built a business – livelihood – from that money… She had opened a dhabaa from that money… had paid back the loan, and was self-sufficient now.

“What about you?”, I asked her friend. “Did you also take a loan?”

She pointed to the “Beej Bhandaar” (the seeds store) opposite the road. She had taken a loan of Rs. 30,000/-

“But, do you sit there, yourself ?”, I asked.

“Yes, I do. But I do not know how to read or write. So I get my son to manage the finances. I only tell them what they should buy for the season.”

They had both paid back the loans, and were now managing business independently.

“How was it before you got the loan?”, I asked.

Miserable, they told me. The day-to-day living was in jeopardy. Mostly, they and the family, used to get some work as construction labours – that too, not regularly. And more often than not, the contractor would not give them wages – or deduct some money for some reasons.

“Now”, she explained, “we can manage our own lives.”

“now, my daughter goes to school,” she added with a tinge of pride.

=====

I made a mental calculation. Only Rs 45k (i.e., Rs. 15k + 30k) – paid as loan and recovered - were enough to bring these two illiterate women (and perhaps 8-10 other lives in their families) out of a precarious existence of a day-to-day survival.

Why was this interaction "simultaneously exhilirating and unsettling"?

Well... because, I teach in a Business School, where the expectation of a middle-class graduating youngster is a minimum of around Rs.45-50k per month as the starting salary...!!!

Making a Difference: ...Not Just a Piece of Cloth

Here is real life fairy-tale rags-to-riches story...

...except that this is a story of converting what the urban India considers "rags" into the "riches/resources" for those who - due to some quirk of fate - were born elsewhere, in some other families...

So here goes...

In October 1991, the mountainous region of Uttar Kashi in Northern India was hit by a 6.5 richter earthquake, causing widespread havoc and making countless people homeless. Anshu Gupta, a 21 year old student from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (New Delhi), and a freelancing photo-journalist, decided to visit the affected areas to do a feature. What struck him, and remained imprinted in his memory was the insensitivity with which the relief was being provided to people.

He recalled much later:

“The hill people are poor but they are proud. They were aghast at bundles of clothes dumped from moving trucks, literally on their heads. They withdrew and chose to wrap themselves in potato sacking cloth."

That lesson remained with him:

Help and charity should not deprive people of their basic human dignity and self-respect.

Back in Delhi, one day while passing by a hospital, he was intrigued to see an unusual signboard printed on tricycle-rickshaw:

"Dilli pulis ka laash dhone wala" (Disposer of dead bodies for the Delhi Police).

This was an odd unheard-of job-description for a rickshaw-puller. Curious to find out more about this, Anshu located and talked to the rickshaw-puller, Habib.

Habib had a strange occupation, which remained invisible in the impersonal hum-drum of the metropolitan life.

Everyday a number of people died on Delhi footpaths – due to illness, cold or plain hunger. Their bodies remained unclaimed; there was no suspicion of “foul play” since everyone accepted that these deaths were, in legally accepted parlance, “due to natural causes”. However, these bodies had to be disposed, and Habib was hired by the Delhi Police to take these bodies to the nearest crematorium, for which he would get Rs. 20/- and 3 yards of cloth to cover each body.

Anshu talked to and followed Habib on his routes, and finally wrote a feature on Habib. What however, jolted him was a statement by Habib:

“The body count goes up in winter. I can barely cope.”

What would be a business bonanza for Habib was also a sad statement about the life of a large part of populace in the capital of the country. Habib’s own 5-year old daughter, who would often accompany, once told him:

“When I feel cold at night, I just tightly hug the dead body on the rickshaw and sleep with it.”

Anshu felt deeply about this experience, and discussed this with his batch-mate, Meenakshi. It was difficult for him to remain just an objective photo-journalist, and not get involved...

...Life, however, moved on. Anshu completed his course, and joined Escorts in the corporate communication department. Meenakshi joined BBC radio, and they got married in 1995.

...and then one day, in 1998, the life took an unexpected turn.

...When a disaster strikes somewhere, there are wide-spread efforts, by many agencies, to collect clothes, medicines, utensils, grains, etc. And many of us, donate whatever we can/ feel like donating. Behind these acts of charity, there is also a “feel good” factor of having done our bit for the society; and then we return back to our normal daily life.

In a similar situation, when Anshu and Meenakshi put together their disposable clothes, they were shocked.

Here they were, as Anshu recalled later..

"...a young family of two adults, new home-makers for just three years, not wealthy by any means and we have 67 pieces of good, usable garments we don't want any more. Yet, but for the disaster we wouldn't be giving them away."

The dots of past encounters connected as a personal insight…

...The same is true for most of us. To quote Anshu from the video below:

"(It) literally take a disaster to happen, and then you take out clothes… so our basic issue was that half the country does not need a disaster, but they need clothing. For every single person who does not have enough to cover himself or herself, winters are a much bigger, regular disasters.”

And so, Goonj was born.

Anshu Gupta left his corporate job, and formed an organization, Goonj, to collects, process and distribute what the urban India disposes to those who really need it
Since then, from a pile of 67 clothes in 1998, today Goonj has grown:

it collects and dispatches 20,000kg of clothes from collection centers across five cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Jalandhar and Hyderabad)

across 19 states in the country, and

the are requirements specified by around 100 grassroot NGOs

If this makes sense to you, please spend 7:10min of your time to view this video to know what Goonj does:




… better still.
Visit the Goonj Website!

Which brings me back to an old question:

Are we??...



Update:
thanks for the suggesions, Kiran:

Please click here to find Goonj's Collection Points

You can also participate in The Giving Challenge by helping Goonj win $50000