Vipul Shaha, Baramati, Pune, Maharashtra
vipul.shaha [at] post.harvard.edu
November 2013
I have been on a roller-coaster ride since my return from America last
year. With a degree in Human Development & Psychology from Harvard and the promise of lucrative jobs around the globe, I
should have been all set to start ‘changing the world’.
Instead, committing to follow my inner voice, I put myself through
a series of travel and internship experiences that have brought about a ‘change
of the world within my own self’. This
reflection is an attempt to share with fellow pilgrims, some of the insights
that I have gathered from my yearlong journey trying to better understand what
it means to live and learn in a holistic sense. I have so far been blessed with so much
inspiration and goodwill along the way that I feel compelled to pass it
forward.
Looking retrospectively, I can now see how the motivation for
taking this year-on[1]
was slowly building up during my studies, work and travels in America. My principal area of interest while at
Harvard and in the US in general was to grasp hold of the ‘cutting-age’
theories and innovative models in education and to better understand how
learning can best take place. I visited
over two dozens of schools and educational set-ups of various hues and
colors. I even spent a summer at a
democratic school in rural Minnesota, which I found to be the most authentic in
its approach towards self-directed project-based learning, building hope in
students and community strengthening[2]. Unfortunately, America, as it appeared to me,
was tightening its grip on education so much so that such innovative ventures
were finding it increasingly difficult to survive and replicate.
An American educator friend, who
deeply cared for the natural learning processes of children, complained to me
that the standardization movement and excessive federal controls were obsessed
with ‘making robots of children’ in America.
A handful of
public and charter schools that I visited confirmed for me the frustrations
expressed by him. My friend had further expressed
his concern saying that, “India
is now desperate to improve the quality of education for children throughout
the country, and hasn't had the time or the resources to make the serious
mistakes we have, but is in the danger of doing so.”
The deeper I went with my independent
research on educational psychology and its application, the more it pointed me
in the direction of Nai Talim system of education that Gandhiji had propounded
several decades ago. Although the larger
American education scene had left me somewhat disappointed, it had offered me
hope in the informal learning potential that India is blessed with especially
in its rural areas thanks to the paltry system of our public education.
Apple picking on an organic orchard being entirely managed by the students of Minnesota New Country School.
America also challenged many of my pre-set notions about
‘development,’ as I witnessed the ‘occupy’ movement take shape in the face of
rising socio-economic inequity in that country.
I could sense the disillusionment and the urge with which fellow
American friends were seeking alternatives to the dominant systems that have controlled
their lives for too long.
It was heartening for me to learn about the growing research and
interest in yoga and mindfulness techniques, a significant movement towards
organic food, veganism and vegetarianism as well as homeschooling. I saw that
the local farmers’ markets and cooperatives are becoming increasingly common in
the US. While on the West Coast, I got a
chance to visit and learn about a few sincere attempts at intentional living
eco-communities. There is also a collective sense of regret about the demise of
Native American tribes and new efforts are emerging to reinstate some of their
original languages and culture.
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Participating in the 'Sawhorse Revolution' in America--a largely volunteer run program that involves young people to work with the body and wood and build structures of public utility
Having grown up in an Indian village myself, it became
increasingly clear to me that what the growing lot of conscious Americans and
people elsewhere are desperately trying to revitalize (a vibrant localized
economy, volunteerism, a sense of local community and family values,
sustainable living practices, spirituality, gift-culture, creative
self-expression through stories, music, arts, co-operative games and so on) has
been an integral part of rural life in India and perhaps other indigenous
communities and ancient civilizations around the world for time
immemorial. It has been passed down for
generations in the form of living wisdom, rituals and traditions and vocational
skills. I grew sensitive to the fact
that while the West is slowly waking up to many of the inherent flaws in its
current consumption-driven technocratic model of development, India at large is
now crassly moving in the opposite direction in its quest for higher GDP growth
and superpowerdom, often leading to mediocre imitation of the West. The country is fast exploiting
its natural resources, dislocating the tribal / rural communities from their
farms, forests, mineral and water reserves and trying very hard to bring
everyone into the fold of the ‘mainstream’ race towards scarce, often
dehumanizing urban industrial jobs. The 'American Dream' has largely captured the imagination of India, whatever it may cost to its current and future generations. A documentary film named ‘Schooling the
World-the White Man’s Last Burden’, offered words and pictures highlighting
many of these intuitive musings that had already been bubbling up inside
me. It gave birth to a strong urge to
re-connect with my roots and to tap into some of the living wisdom that still
remains in rural pockets of India and to see for myself whether my growing
sense of unease towards mainstream education and its role in accelerating the
crisis of modern times was ill-founded or had any real substance to it.
Soon after returning home from America, I plunged myself in two of
the most powerful internship experiences of my life. The first one was at Shikshantar
Andolan/Swaraj University, Rajasthan,[3]
which was followed by a monsoon season hands-on work experience on an
organic/natural farm in a tribal village of Gujarat[4]. This came with a sincere intention to fully
immerse myself in grass roots living and learning experiences—a self-directed,
self-funded action research of sorts that I would call my “Learn From India”
journey.
To my own surprise, the past year has led me to do things, which my
‘highly educated’ mind might have earlier considered as being ‘too menial’
‘insignificant’ ‘unproductive’ or ‘irrelevant’ best suited for un-skilled
workers! Instead, they opened up to me a
world that went far beyond my once narrowly understood measures of productivity
and success.
Be it harvesting rice and wheat or milking cows and buffalos, or making
trenches for better water management, making organic fertilizer or doing the
floor lipai work using cow dung,
spraying natural pesticide or weeding in the fields…each one of these farm job
required from me very intricate skill and often hard physical work for several
hours a day.
A day spent picking up corn in the fields with a large tribal family. What a great team work!
For someone like me whose hands knew hardly anything more ‘productive’
than typing well and tactful play with words on my laptop, it was extremely
humbling to work on the farm. For the
first time ever, I got involved with growing and cooking the food that I was
eating. All these years, it seemed, I
had been missing the joy of integrating all my senses—head, heart and hands—in
a meaningfully creative work that had a direct impact on my wellbeing. Somewhere in my quest for achieving ‘worldly success’,
I had, to an extent, weaved a web of ignorance and pride around my own self,
not realizing that my authentic self was eluding me in the process. Like the school kids that I once used to
teach, the farm was strengthening my ability to be patient, to be flexible, to
constantly experiment, to have faith in natural creative processes, to respect the
diversity around and to recognize the dormant potential in every patch of soil
and every tiny little seed. Also, the law of impermanence and the need to
accept the ultimate outcome became apparent when it rained almost 30 inches in
3 consecutive days causing great losses to the vegetables and crops that we had
planted.
Using the hand-operated plough to plant Jute seeds on the Soneji farm—a true test of strength and a great workout!
Experiencing how demanding farm life can be, I began to have doubts
about the fairness of an economic system that compensates the producers of our
food so low that they are left at the mercy of often-corrupt bureaucratized
welfare services. Something must be not
right when India competes globally for continued economic growth even as a wave
of farmer suicides sweeps the nation.
My learning journey also widened my perspectives on how authentic
learning can be ‘owned’ anywhere and anytime when there is an inner drive to
connect with our surroundings in a very deep mutually nourishing relationship. Several faculties of knowledge can be practically
learnt and meaningfully applied on the farm.
Many of my already forgotten concepts from sciences such as physics,
chemistry, geography and biology started to come alive as I got in the rhythm
and flow of life on the farm and started to pay close attention to the process
of energy conversion from the Sun into the food and back to the soil, the
factors that lead to effective pollination or photosynthesis, the topography of
land and the type and quality of soil, the unique micronutrient needs and features
of different types of plants, animal husbandry, the types of birds, pests,
insects and snakes on the farm and their delicate interdependence...I was
absorbing so much all the time—not due to fear of any exams, but simply because
it was well-integrated with everything that makes farming a skillful art and
science.
Collecting natural fertilizer and mulch to spread around in the farm.
The less formally educated tribal folks may not have words and
theories for all the natural phenomena that they constantly engage with on the
farm and surrounding forests. I now
actually think that it is unnecessary to overload our mental space with
digitized or textual information, which often blunts many of our natural
senses. The tribal farmers with their
sharp observation and listening power convinced me that there are multiple
‘other ways of knowing’ and living. It
seemed that they could very instinctively and intuitively draw from their
surroundings just enough to fulfill their most basic needs.
I was amazed to meet farmers who, despite very little or sometimes
no formal education at all, could easily do the necessary mental math to keep
track of their produce and its market price.
I met up with a wood craftsman in Rajasthan who had taught himself how
to read and write Hindi script by using a twig on the ground. He had run a successful furniture business
and could maintain all his basic accounts himself.
Champakbhai, a 52 year old Tadavi
tribal became my ‘guru’ in a Gujarat village where I spent a monsoon
season. He would very enthusiastically
share with me his knowledge of various medicinal plants and herbs and their
Ayurvedic significance. He also taught
me how to make plates, bowls, pouches, ropes and a gofaan using parts of various plants. I also enjoyed building a bamboo roof for a
house under his keen guidance. His ability to predict the monsoons several
months ahead of time left me quite awestruck. It was based on a very detailed
observation of the sky over a period of time and what certain species of birds
do in a particular season. Champakbhai
is also very skilled at making household furniture and wooden farm tools. He
sews and stitches clothes at home, regularly goes to repair motors on farms and
fixes up broken water hand-pumps in the region. Anytime there is a large-scale
village gathering such as during a wedding, Champakbhai loves to offer his
assistance in cooking the regional specialties.
He has no regrets about being a 10th class ‘failure’ and
having left school several years ago.
The village youth gathered around Champakbhai who's teaching us how to make 'gofaan'--a hand-operated tool to scare away the birds in the field
My grassroots ventures took me to varied places and allowed me the
opportunity to experience multiple worlds that co-exist and thrive all around
us. I went swimming in local water
streams where the tribal kids exhibited flips jumps and various water sports
that they have invented. We used to exchange magic tricks, songs, games and
food. They were extra keen to teach me my own ancestral language—Gujarati,
which I picked up very fast. I played my flute on mountaintops, sang bhajans with the tribal folks and
performed garbha in a community
circle. A ‘learning-exchange’ was taking
place all the time as the boundaries of age, culture and socio-economic
background simply vanished in the process of our mutual friendship.
The tribal kids are teaching me a self-invented game that they play with Sitaphal seeds. The entire village and the surrounding forest were like a one big ‘Children’s Play Park’ without the need for any adult supervision or manufactured toys. 'Experiential Learning' and 'Socio-Emotional Development' in education lingo!
Be it while picking up flowers to make natural colors and selling
them in hand-made paper bags or helping out a friend sell his natural jewelry
on the street-side, hand-grinding the grains or making umbrellas with teak wood
leaves, making soaps with cow dung, aloe vera and neem leaves…I was learning something new and tangible everyday.
Another important transformation has been underway for me. It is my growing sense of respect for a very
simple, self-reliant lifestyle and the dignity of labor. In a way, it is liberating myself from the
bondage of having lived a life of luxury and my constant dependence on
household help, technology and ready-made solutions. When, for instance, I created a pin-board out
of waste materials and painted a design on it or when I fixed up a bicycle tire
puncture, I was slowly discovering that the joy of ‘doing-it-yourself’ far
exceeds the joy of shopping or hiring help for everything.
In the past year, I have made chapattis
and tried out new recipes in the kitchen, hand-washed my dish and clothes
with natural detergents, cleaned up the toilets and swept the floors, and
helped out with many such household tasks that I had often ‘outsourced’ and
taken for granted. It began to bother me
that I have, in the past, been so indifferent towards the work done by my
mother—an Indian housewife, whose effective household management skills and
often invisible but a very crucial role in keeping the family intact goes
almost unrecognized in modern economics.
Grinding the grains on a gatti. A good warm-up at the start of the day!
Of course it took tremendous amount of inner churning and
de-conditioning before I could see meaning and significance in everything I was
doing—a part and parcel of my years of institutionalized education perhaps. What kept me going was the immense joy,
beauty, creativity and inspiration that I found in such ordinary moments when I
stepped out of my comfort zone and connected with fellow beings and my natural
surroundings at a very deep personal level. It has also taken a constant process of open
communication and negotiation with my parents to try and get them to understand
the not-so-usual choices that I have been making. I have felt extremely fortunate to have their
support, patience and faith in me at the end of the day.
I also found it wise to ‘un-plug’ myself from my over-dependence
on information-technology—an experiment I called ‘techno-fasting’. My Vipassana experiences[5]
earlier had convinced me that in order to clearly hear our own authentic voice
and dive deeper within, sometimes it helps to simply leave aside, at least for
a while, many of the external influences, conditionings and the baggage of our
‘normal’ routine lives. Therefore, while
in the tribal village, for over 3 months I switched off my cellphone and barely
ever checked my emails. I almost forgot
that there exists something called ‘Facebook’ in my virtual world out there! Instead, I made conscious efforts to make new tribal
friends and meet them face-to-face everyday.
My techno-fast may sound like a form of escapism. It, however, offered
me glimpses of a kind of mind-body intelligence that often eludes us—the
ability to work with hands and body skillfully, to be rooted in the ‘here and
now’ and be sensitive to the needs of our body and our surroundings, to be
spontaneously creative, to be a keen observer, a compassionate listener and so
on.
My
co-learning and co-creative interactions with tribal folks,
village crafts-persons and farmers, housewives, cottage industry entrepreneurs,
social activists, education psychologists, anthropologists, development sector
workers, spiritual healers and seekers, and, most importantly, the large masses
of what I would term as ‘ordinary inspiring people’ have made me rethink
everything and question some of the fundamental issues of life, such as what it
means to be truly ‘educated’? Am I truly ‘privileged’ and ‘empowered’? If yes,
why do I harbor so much inner-turbulence and a sense of de-rootedness? What is
real wealth? What we call ‘modernization’ and ‘development’—is it truly in our
collective interest? Has the technological
progress made our lives truly more fulfilling?
What is the very purpose of life itself? What direction is the human civilization
heading and am I contributing to its evolution or destruction?
While each one of us arrives at our own evolving version of the
truth every moment, I would like to offer an illustration of why some of my
pre-held assumptions about education and ‘development’ or ‘progress’ have been
challenged through these times. It may throw
up many new questions and perhaps shed light on a few others. I believe that everything
is ultimately inter-related and thus must be looked at in a holistic sense.
It is the story of spending a day with Amar—a Vasava tribal who accompanied a friend and I on our long walk in the
woods. We were visiting his very
beautiful small village located on a mountaintop and surrounded by Satpura forests.
A makeshift dirt road and no electric
supply gave the village a very ‘lost-to-the-world’ feel. Sensing our need for a local guide, he readily
agreed to show us around—despite the fact that we were complete strangers to
him and that he was busy grazing his cattle at the time when we met. “My neighbors will look after the cattle”, he
said confidently. As we walked around
the village visiting the small patches of multi-crop farms on mountain slopes,
we were greeted by children and elders alike, invited in their homes and
treated to freshly picked Sitaphal fruits
from the surrounding jungles. In one such Vasava
house, we were offered lunch. It was a large family consisting of parents
and their nine children—all of them working together on their own ancestral
land. While we were carrying our own
food, they insisted that we must
taste the food that was just being prepared.
I cannot put in words how tasty and love-filled this simple meal turned
out to be—containing the desi millet
of bajra and tuver daal mixed with
bhendi leaves and green chillies all
grown organically in their own farm and cooked on a chullah and a tavaa made out
of mud.
The 'rotalo' (thick chapati) being prepared on a mud tavaa and a mud chullah.
The houses were very simple but very beautiful—built using natural
materials available locally—mud, bamboo, cow dung and a variety of forest wood.
Many of the village folks, including
Amar, have traditionally been wood and bamboo artisans. Earlier, oil lamps using the oil extracted
from locally and abundantly available mahuva
tree kept the houses lit after dark every evening. Now the government has
installed solar panels on house rooftops for lighting at night. Amar has only been to the city two times in
his entire life, and rather prefers his ‘poor’ but ‘peaceful and healthy’ life
in the village, as he puts it. He later
took us to the water-stream running through the valley where we could have a
bath and drink water. “This is very
tasty water, coming from the surrounding forests and mountains,” he proudly proclaimed
and also expressed his disbelief at the fact that now they ‘sell’ water in
plastic bottles in the ‘outside world’. He
and his fellow village mates were not aware of the land acquisition plan that
the state government has recently come up with—his village will be part of a
larger ‘area development authority’ that is set to turn the tribal region into
a ‘world class’ tourist destination. When
we mentioned the proposed project, he was quick to respond “We have lived here
forever, and this jungle is our God…we cannot even think of selling it…we take
from this forest only little bit of what we need and we are supposed to protect
the rest. We are well taken care of in
return.” I was awestruck by Amar’s
unflinching loyalty for his land. Ask
him about any plant or tree, and he could tell its name and multiple uses for
making household materials or providing herbal medicines in case someone got
sick. As smiling faces greeted us every
place we went, it occurred to me that there were no hospitals, no cinema
theatre, no police station, no hotels or shopping centers in his village and
yet the people all seemed to live an extraordinarily harmonious life in tune
with their community and natural surroundings.
The tribal folks seeking permission from village deity to start harvesting the green vegetables at the start of the monsoon season. Traditional Indian views of ecology have preserved the environment through many such rituals
As the sun-down approached, Amar very kindly offered us an
accommodation for the night if we wished to stay there. Instead, we decided to head back to the
village where we were stationed. Amar
happily accompanied us all the way until he felt sure that we could now follow
the route on our own. When we finally parted
ways, what embarrassed me was the fact that when we offered him some money for
his ‘services’, he almost took it as an insult—“We are Vasava people, we think of guests as our Gods. How could you even think that I was with you
for money all this time?” was his firm response. I was deeply touched by the generosity of
this complete stranger and realized the futility and worthlessness of my abused
source of self-esteem—and effort to rely on my conditioned use of the almost abstract
concept of ‘money’. All at once, I
remembered that there was something more worthy that I was carrying in my other
pocket that I should offer to the fertile forestland—Sitaphal seeds that Amar and
his community may get to enjoy the fruits of someday. Amar, who has never been to a formal school,
radiated peace, generosity, good health, a sense of self-belief and concern for
his community and possessed multiple skills to fulfill his most basic needs. Not to say that there are no hardships or
challenges in his village life, but there is also resilience to continually
learn and live as a close-knit community.
A somewhat functional primary school now operates in his
village. I say functional because at
least the two appointed teachers do show up regularly, unlike the time when
Amar was growing up as a kid. The older children
who pursue secondary schooling do not stay in the village. They have special
government run ashram shalaas or
boarding schools, in towns and cities that will make sure that the kids can
have a chance at ‘better livelihood’ and a ‘higher standard of living’ someday
in the distant future! In a comparatively more ‘developed’ tribal village
located in the same region, I noticed the youth hooked to their mobile phones
and television screens, many of who do not share the same loyalty and
self-respect to their traditional way of life as the village elders still do. Neither Amar’s village, nor my own
Maharashtra village is any more immune to the rising influence of market forces
in our lives. It is likely a losing
battle trying to convince the ‘educated’ youth in the villages to not give up
their physically arduous, but healthy and well-integrated traditional way of
life. So many allurements await their
destiny.
If my experience with Amar and his fellow villagers were a one-off
instance limited to a particular region, I would have probably tucked it away
as a sweet memory and nothing more. As
my mind and heart slowly opened to it, I have encountered such extraordinary
stories of ordinary people over and over again—so much so that I now feel that
I belong to an ‘elite’ minority in India, who have been cunningly smart to take
advantage of an illusionary system of meritocracy—knowingly or unknowingly
exploiting the human and natural resources and thus keeping intact the fundamentally
inequitable socio-economic structure on which ‘development’ and ‘modern progress’
have depended for too long.
I left Amar’s village overwhelmed with many emotions, trying to
grasp the dichotomy between the frenzied world that I move about in and his
self-content, self-reliant, almost utopian community hidden in the mountains of
southern Gujarat. Trying to connect the
dots, I could now see how my mechanized and consumption based ‘high-lifestyle’
could be causing that tribal community to be uprooted off its land and put into
cheap labor jobs in a city-slum or that river to be turned into a mega-dam
project or that forest wood to be turned into furniture. Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of Swaraj—rule over self and Sarvodaya—welfare
of all kept running through mind—“Impoverished India can become free, but
it will be hard for any India made rich through immorality to regain its
freedom,” had warned the great soul over a century ago[6]. While those of us bitten by the ‘education’
and ‘development’ bug may struggle to find that holistic balance within and
outside, we must at least pause and deeply question the impact of our
well-meaning intentions to ‘change the world’ under the banner of educating and
modernizing the ‘less privileged’ lot. “Am
I trying to putout the fire with one hand while adding wood to it with
another?” is what we need to be asking ourselves. There is also hidden arrogance in me assuming
that just because a funnel system has worked for me (or has it really?) it must
work for all and therefore I have the obligation to ‘help’ (read, impose it
upon) the not-so-fortunate people.
I am aware that it may not be entirely feasible to switch back to the
rural lifestyle of a tribal farmer. My own efforts at
embodying a truly ‘down-to-earth’, holistic, simple life have remained at a
very superficial level so far. To start
with, there is a huge disconnect between my current reality and the ideal
future that I envision for my self and the community. My existing sense of inertia towards hard
physical work, the temptation to seek comfort and remain ‘on top’ of the game
that I have mastered well to play, a subtle sense of uncertainty and
insecurity, a deeply entrenched habit of hitching my self-esteem on externally
defined measures of success such as money and a job title, the constant tussle
between ‘idealism’ and ‘practicality’, the wide gap between ‘thinking’ and
‘doing’, the need for a community of like-hearted people and my hesitance to
‘let go’ are some of the factors that have made me realize that it takes a lot
more than mere intellectual understanding to bring about radical shifts in our
lives.
I am convinced, however, that the future reform and the reversal
of the socio-ecological crisis that is already underway calls forth an honest
self-dialogue and a channeling of our talents and energies into the
re-integration of sustainable living practices and community values that have
been the hallmark of Indian civilization since ancient times. The hardest to accept is the fact that there
is so much healing (or un-learning) that has to happen within our own
‘educated’ minds before we can start to re-imagine and create a different
paradigm. Multiple layers of conditionings, starting with over-parenting and
schooling, have smothered the authentic voice of our childhood inclinations. It is endowed with immense creativity and unique
potential. It is never too late to reclaim that
child within!
While life itself is an endless learning journey, when
both--learning and conscious living, merge together, it creates a beautiful
synergy, is what the journey so far has convinced me. I am fascinated with the idea of each one
taking complete charge of his/her own learning and living. My brief stint on the farm and the tribal
community offered me the opportunity to experience how learning simply emerges and
life blossoms when we are attuned to something most meaningful and authentic to
us. I envision for myself a farm life
that could beautifully turn into a community learning space, combining many
of the sustainable and holistic living ideals. It may be a long and perhaps
difficult transition back to the roots and the soil; I am
willing to walk the path however.
[1] To know
about the Year-On Campaign visit: http://yearon.wordpress.com/
[2] After
graduating from Harvard, I spent a summer living on an organic apple orchard
being entirely managed by the students of Minnesota New Country School,
Henderson, MN. The experience highlighted the need for freeing up education
from the stranglehold of excessive federal controls and standardization. For more about self-directed project based
learning at MNCS: http://kstp.com/article/12303/?vid=3139060&v=1
[3] Visit http://www. shikshantar.in and http://www.swarajuniversity.org
for several
useful resources on the topic of development and education
[4] Visit http://nipun.charityfocus.org/xyz/guri/Writings/Profiles/dhiren-nipun.doc for a
very inspiring essay on the unique farming lifestyle adopted by the Soneji
family. Written by Nipun and Guri Mehta
during their walking pilgrimage across western India.
5. Vipassana is an ancient meditation technique
as taught by Buddha and now revived in India.
For more—http:///www.dhamma.org
6. Hind
Swaraj or Indian Home Rule by M. K. Gandhi.
Page 81. Navjeevan Publication
Some reference resources that have inspired my journey—
Education related:
1. Dumbing us Down and Weapons of Mass
Instruction—John Taylor Gatto
2.
Learning the Heart Way—Samyuktha
3.
Education and the Significance of
Life—J. Krishnamurti
4.
The whole movement of life is
learning—J. Krishnamurti
5.
A Call to the Youth of India—Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother
6.
Free At Last—Sudbury Valley
School—Daniel Greenberg
7.
“So Live”—Jyotibhai Desai on the Nai
Talim system of education in the modern context
8.
Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the
Voice of Vocation—Parker Palmer
9.
Passion for Learning: How Project-Based
Learning Meets the Needs of Students—Ron Newell
10. Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Pedagogy
of Freedom—Paulo Freire
11. Democracy and Education—John Dewey
12. Swapathgami—a quarterly newsletter by
Shikshantar
13. Education Toward Inner Transformation--Chinmaya Mission publication
14. Diwaswapna--Gijubhai Badheka
15. The Fall of the Human Intellect--Parthasarathy
16. Thoughts on Education--Vinoba Bhave
17. Our Land, Our Life--A curriculum on farm based learning
18. Totto-Chan, The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
19. Education for Life by Swami Kriyananda
20. The Continuum Concept--Jean Liedloff
21. Collected Works of Swami Vivekananda--on Education
22. On Education by 'The Mother' & Sri Aurobindo -
23. A compilation of Gap Year opportunities and Alternative Learning Spaces across India:
https://tinyurl.com/mpusmfwz
Development / Farming / Sustainable
Living—
1.
Hind
Swaraj—Mahatma Gandhi
2.
Ringing
Cedars book Series—Anastasia—Vladimir Megre
3.
Tending the
Earth— Winin Pereira
4.
Ancient
Futures—Helena Norberg-Hodge
5.
Garden of
Democracy—A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of
Government— Nick Hanauer
6.
To Hell With
Good Intentions—Ivan Illich
7.
The Other
Way of Knowing— Lilian “Na’ia” Alessa
8.
Grassroots—the
Universe of Home—Paul Gruchow
9.
Rooted in
the Land—Essays on Community and Place—Wes Jackson
10.
One Straw
Revolution— Masanobu Fukuoka
11.
Ahead to
Nature—Dilip Kulkarni
12.
Gatiman
Santulan—a monthly newsletter by Dilip Kulkarni
13.
Bhoomi
Magazine by Bhoomi Network, Bangalore
14.
Sacred
Economics, the Ascent of Humanity and The More Beautiful World that Our Hearts Know is Possible— Charles Eisenstein
15. Disciplined
Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System
That Shapes Their Lives--Jeff Schmidt
16. Walk-Out and Walk-On—A Learning Journey Into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now—
Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze
17. The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power
18. The Yes Magazine
19. Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher
20. The Art of the Commonplace--Wendell Berry
21. In the Absence of the Sacred--The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations--Jerry Mander
22. Economy of Permanence--J.C. Kumarappa
18. The Yes Magazine
19. Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher
20. The Art of the Commonplace--Wendell Berry
21. In the Absence of the Sacred--The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations--Jerry Mander
22. Economy of Permanence--J.C. Kumarappa
23. Braiding Sweetgrass -- Robin Kimmerer
Documentary Films:
