My ‘Learning From India’ Journey

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.

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 10^th 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.

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[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

A tribal friend shows me how to make an umbrella using teak-wood leaves.

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://medium.com/khoj  

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

23.  Braiding Sweetgrass -- Robin Kimmerer

Documentary Films: