The Jagriti Yatra 2010

I went to Jagriti Yatra when it was still called 'Tata Jagriti Yatra' and the experience still worth recounting. I cant help but think of those semester on wheels with fond memories and truly a train of thought and experience that you can never shake off yourself.

9000  kms 18 days 13 role models 400 yatris from 23 states and 7 countries – Tata Jagriti Yatra was what it can only be – an incredible adventure of mission, passion and purpose.

My Group 'I'

We started off on the Christmas eve with lit candles, glowing faces happily singing carols and inviting the huge 18 bogey Santa, our home for the next couple of weeks. We were all excited to meet our neighbors (cohorts) who were from different states, background and sometimes even different countries.  Even during the facilitators workshop on the previous day and in the preliminary group intro’s it was quite evident that this group of 400 is a handpicked lot of the best and most diversified group and most learning as it rightly turned out to be was from our own peers.

We started out with a fun evening in Kochivalli Beach and Garden. Then came Thiruvanthapuram, where we met G. Vijayaraghavan,  founder of Technopark, India’s first IT park, and also Usha and Jay Kumar of Thanal, an NGO working on food safety, empowerment of women and a number of socially relevant issues. Post the meeting we had an informal and heated discussion on the Genetically Modified (GM) crops amongst ourselves. It was interesting to note how much people were aware of a lot of technical, chronological and scientific details on the issue.

TJY Train - Our home

The next stop was in Kanyakumari, where we had a fitting spiritual discourse on the rock memorial by Swamiji who had traveled with us briefly from Kochivali to Kanyakumari. We had our first panel discussion on ‘Starting the Enterprise’ by eminent panelists who shared with us, their journey of Entrepreneurship and a number of innovations in marketing and strategy adopted by them.

From Kanyakumari we reached Madurai, the city of temples where our stop was ‘The Aravind Eye Care’, a spiritual retreat in it own right. The warmth of reception was evident from the moment we stepped into the hospital. The story of Dr.V and his mission of eliminating needless blindness and the journey of Aravind was captivating captured by Ms. Pavitra in her document and left most of us with clouded eyes and speechless. This was followed fittingly by the presentation of the hospital’s business model by Dr.Aravind followed by interaction with the team of founders.

 

Vision and the visionary - Aravind Eye Care

The next stop was Chennai, where we went to meet the vibrant Mr.Elango of the Kuthambakkam Village, an engineer who chose to come back to his village and work for its development. His journey from an engineer to Panchayat leader and the transformational story of the ordinary backward village into a model village with a number of schemes which were later adopted in the rest of the state. His story definitely left a number of us thinking that it is indeed time to go back to our roots and reverse the migration trend. The dignity and the pride in the villagers were quite evident in every single act and talk.

Next stop was the dream B-School ‘ISB’ in Hyderabad where we had a panel discussion on the funding. Our Panelists, broke a number of myths on funding and re-iterated to us that Funding should probably be the last of our worries on building the enterprise and that we should put more focus on building our team and partnerships and when the project is investment ready, the investmenDr. V TJt will start coming. Soon, we found ourselves in Naandi Foundation, in one of the biggest centralized kitchens in Asia where tons of rice, dhall and sabji get cooked every day to serve more than one lakh children in the government schools of Andhra Pradesh. The logistics and scale of the work and the passion with which it is carried out every day touched our hearts.

Panel disc in Hyd

 We were off to meet Joe Madiath in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, the founder of Gram Vikas. Gram Vikas has extensively worked on Education, Clean water and sanitation related work in rural areas of Orissa. Joe shared with us his story on what had inspired him to settle down in Orissa and work for its development. The change that Gram Vikas had brought into the life of the villagers was evident. All the houses had toilets constructed with funds pooled in by the villagers, Gram Vikas and the government and they called it as the house of Dignity. Gram Vikas was also able to indigenously manage to cater to all the water requirements of the villagers from harvesting the rain water in the mountains and thereby making 24 hrs water supply possible in all the houses of the village. Gram Vikas also had a residential school for the localites and the children looked delighted to see us. Each one of us would have been greeted atleast over a hundred times by the enthusiastic young children of the school.

The next destination was the steel city, Jamshedpur. We were in the Russi Modi Centre of excellence for a mind boggling panel discussion on the ‘Agro Based Industries’. The heated debate in the freezing temperature was followed by some breathtaking cultural show showcasing dance from different parts of the country. This was the first and only night in this journey when we stayed outside our train. The next day a short site visit to Tata Steel was followed by a film on making of the steel and Tata steel. Shashank rightly emphasized on the nation building aspects related to the making of Tata steel and the town of Jhamshedpur around it.

Culturals @ Jamshedpur

 From the steel city, we set off to the rustic villages yet again. Deoria, in UP this time armed with our Biz Gyan to set out to develop the district of Deoria. Armed with the facts and figures collected from the natives of Deoria who were with us during the journey, we set out on the yearly training exercise, with the yatris divided into various groups based on their interests in different sectors like Education, Healthcare, Tourism, Manufacturing, Agriculture etc… We got down in Gorakhpur as early as 6’o clock for a warm welcome by the villagers. It only got better as we reached the village, there were elephants, garlands, loud blaring music, and lot of dancing. We were touched to see our names inscripted in stone. There were more than a thousand villagers who had come to see us.The discussion with the localities helped us fine tune our plan, which were presented. One group in each sector was declared the winner and given an opportunity to comeback to implement the plans.

Back in train and back to the milling grind of the city. The capital city Delhi was our next stop. Unmindful of the foggy evening and the nearly 10 hrs delay of the train, the previous year yatris had come to give us a warm welcome with  Artis and garlands. After yet another hero’s welcome, we went on to meet the real hero, Anshu Gupta of Goonj. The insight and humanity with which Anshu spoke about a number of sensitive issues gave our heart a skip. He spoke not just about reuse and recycling of garments, which is what they primarily do but also about touching real life stories which clearly showed the need and impact of the work being done by them. We also visited the shops and processing centers of Goonj where the eager women had been waiting for us all day. Kudos to Anshu and his team for saving lives and restoring dignity to the lives of people through their work.

Back to the villages again. This time we were in Tilonia, Rajasthan. The world famous Barefoot College invited us with a puppet show in the station and a brief on the work they were doing. We were quite surprised to see how well they were able to train illiterate women on highly skilled jobs of building circuits, solar energy, electrification, and dentistry including the complicated root canal therapy procedures. Women from all over the world who speak little Hindi or English have been trained and have gone back to their countries and successfully brought solar electricity to their homes and even their towns. A number of electrical engineers in our Yatris were truly stunned by the sheer complexity of the tasks that is being handled by them.

Gram Vikas School, Bhuvaneswar

It was so difficult to believe that we were already in the flag end of the journey. We had had a lot but we were hungry for more.

We were in the last stop of this epic journey, Mithapur in Rajasthan. After a very warm welcome by the Tata Chemicals, we quickly visited the archives, the rock garden and were briefed about a number of eminent people who were the reason behind the majestic industry that stood there. After that we went onto the exhibition centre of Okhai, the cutting and stitching units and also went to the different villages were the Okhai team worked with the village women folk. It was interesting to note the amount of difference this work had brought onto the life of the villagers. I would consider my encounter with these women as the pinnacle of the entire Yatra. There was this illiterate woman from this remote village, who looked at us and asked us what we are going to do to build the nation, once we go back after the yatra. This woman was not talking about earning a few extra bucks or about improving her village, not even about building an enterprise, she was talking to us about building the nation.

To her, and to the thousands of people in different parts of the country who gave us a warm reception and hosted us and looked at us the future of this country, I owe to give my best in building this great nation to greater heights and greatness, in bringing dignity into the lives of my countrymen and equality of opportunities for all and compassion in every relationship. I shall strive to be the best that I can be in whatever I do.

Bharat Mata Ki Jai !!!!! Jai Hind!!!!!!!!!!!

Jai Ho!!!!!!!!!!!!!