Be the Change?

Laxmi's Footprint. . . Diwali

The last weeks of October and beginning of November were sort of reenergizing experiences that gave me a lot of positivity on my time here in India. After a week of Diwali, I spent a week in Panchgani, a hill-station five hours away from the hustle and bustle that is Mumbai for work with Magic Bus on a peer leadership camp, and then found myself at an awesome conference in a tropical paradise. . .

Diwali with friends and family

After Laxmi Pooja, Diwali

Magic Bus Peer Leader Camp

Diwali was a special time to see a really fun holiday in Mumbai. It was nuts! Fireworks going off left and right, outside your bedroom window at 4am and under your rickshaw; bonding time with new friends and their families; everyone being so happy and eating tons of sweets. I felt so excited to be here. Then, I spent 5 days with 40 teenagers from slums across Mumbai for a weeklong peer leadership retreat that I helped develop and facilitate. The week was inspiring to say the least; it fueled my motivations to sit with 40 of these smart and enthusiastic kids that were from some of the least privileged urban neighborhoods across the world. We opened up about our lives, discussed overcoming ones family and community restraints, and discussed how to make change. Then, I found myself with the opposite: intellectuals, politicians and some of the most privileged and elite of India mixed with the middle class to talk about bigger issues to change a bigger community: our world. Huge topics from the environment, cancer, poverty, democratizing media, the Palestine-Israel and Kashmiri conflict to corruption and Bollywood were discussed, including innovations from nanotechnologies to a flying car. 

Peer Leader at Organic Farm in Panchgani

Bollywood THINKing: 
Kiran Rao, Imran Khan and Abhay Deol

Sain Zahoor, amazing Sufi Singer
This is a private VIP event I snuck into . . . 

Where was this? After the peer leadership camp, I headed to Goa for THINKFest. Goa is a weird and special place in itself. Although it is gorgeous and a very special place naturally, and also one of the friendliest as Goans usually offer a laid and kind attitude, the amount of foreigners dominating the land gives it a sort of strange, artificial feeling compared to most other parts of India. There are so many white people, that it almost felt like a new European colony (here's one Indian's point of view). For these reasons, I was always skeptical on going, but I am really glad I chose to. Aside from an amazing conference, renting a scooter and cruising to various tropical beaches and through palm jungles all around the area made me feel so revitalized after an initial two months in busy and polluted cities like Mumbai. I guess you aren't in India unless you get a situation with extremes!

Magic Bus Peer Leader Camp

These weeks inspired me to think about a lot, but also just confused the hell out of me. There I was, talking to some kids about their lives living in slum neighborhoods like Dharavi, BPT, and Jogeshwari, hearing about what its like to live off of Rs.10/day ($ 0.20), have one outfit, fear of their parents wanting them to get married when their 15, drug abuse, the country forgetting about their existence in these huge slums in a crazy city like Mumbai as they live their lives in shanty scrap metal houses, and then I am sipping champagne and listening to Frank Gehry talk about creative architecture and the "modern world" that we live in (here) and some American guy talking about a flying car he built (no joke).  I sat in a circle on a porch of a farmhouse in Panchgani with kids sharing our experiences of being trouble youth (I used to be one) and then just two days later I am sitting in the Grand Hyatt hearing Imran Khan talk about making movies that matter without the interference of corporations (here).

Dayamani Barla, Jharkhand activist, speaks on Just Development

A little taste of Goan Beauty:

Goan shacks

Aram Bol, Goa

The world is crazy, but especially India is mind-blowing as always for me right now. People tend to not trust what I have to say about the world, so I thought I would dedicate the rest of this blog to sharing a few reasons with backup why India is special for those who want to know more about this place, and for those who think they know enough. Here is India in a few facts and numbers:

• India is predicted to be the fastest growing economy by 2013 (source).
• India is the ninth largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the fourth largest by purchasing power parity (source). India should overtake Japan in 2013 to become the third-largest economy in the world at purchasing power parity (source). 
• There are 1.17 billion people here (source), almost one sixth of the worlds total population living on 2.4% of the world's land (source). Nearly half of which, or 456 million (42% of population), live in extreme poverty on less than $1.25/day (source). 100's of millions more live just above this line.
• Today, India accounts for the greatest burden of newborn deaths in the world. According to 2009 estimates, 908,000 newborns die each year (almost 2400 per day) in India alone – accounting for 28% of the total global burden of neonatal deaths and and a staggering 55% of under-5 deaths in India (source).
• India is full of rich people and tons of money (two of most expensive weddings were Indian: source, the most expensive home in history of 27-stories was build in Mumbai: Antilia, and two of the richest people in the world are Indian: source), as well as tons of food (one of the leading economies of agriculture in the world source and for example, produces 1/4 of the world's eggplants source), however still nearly half of India’s small children are malnourished: one of the highest rates of underweight children in the world, higher than most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. More than one-third of the world’s 150 million (68 million: larger than the population of most Western European countries and almost double of California) malnourished under-fives live in India (source).
• Indian is the third least consumer of meat in the world, only eating 11.5 lbs. annually. Compare that to Americans at 275.1 lbs. annually (a funny source). 30% of Indians are pure vegetarian (no animal product whatsoever) while an estimated 42% are vegetarian but do not consume eggs. Even the "nonveg" population do not eat meat frequently, with less than 30% consuming it regularly (the reasons are partially economical, partially cultural; wiki veg by country).
• 80% of children, 70% of pregnant women and 24% of adult men are deemed in some form anemic in India (source).
• They say that Indians save more than Americans and are in less debt: it is estimated that Indians save up to 62% of their income, while the average American saves only -5% (this percentage is actually debt) to 10% (source).
• India is extremely fragmented in terms of development, with the national life expectancy being 63.7, but the life expectancy of Mumbai being as low as 56.8 (source).
• India is said to be the largest democracy in the world based on it being the democratic government with the largest population, 700 million of which are eligible voters (thats almost 2x the entire size of the US, source).
• Corruption runs so deep in politics, that even Parliament has it's fair share of criminal politicians (about 162 of about 802 members of Parliament have some sort of criminal case against them: source). It is estimated that 40-50% of GDP, in the neighborhood of $600 billion, is from the informal market (source). In fact, India has lost more than $460bn since Independence because of companies and the rich illegally funnelling their wealth overseas (source). Although they are doing somethings though?
• Over the past three years, an average of 700 NGOs open daily in India, and the country is now home to 3.3 million NGOs (source source).
  
• Child marriage is big issues here. In some parts of India, it is estimated that 80% of girls married are under the age of 15 (source). This is no stranger to big cities like Mumbai either; most of our kids in our program face this problem in their communities.
• Mumbai: In Mumbai the population density is about 45,662 persons per square kilometer (source) - almost double compared to all of NYC (the densest city in the USA) which is about 26,000 (wiki). Half of Mumbai lives in poverty (source), half the city lives in slums--which only comprises of 6% of the total land area (source), 1.2 million live on less than Rs.20/day ($ 0.40) (source) and there are about 100,000 people sleeping on the streets (source).
• The other Mumbai: there are plans to complete several, very expensive residential skyscraper projects that include the "World One Tower," a proposed second tallest residential tower in India on land taken from a mill that used to employ 7,000 people and will require 14 million man hours and $400 million to complete; the Indian Tower will be the tallest building in India at 126 stories, double size of the current Imperial Tower, which cleared thousands of slum homes for its construction. All this is somehow part of the plan to make Mumbai "slum free" by 2015, yet these buildings (and others alike: Palais Royale and the Lokhandwala Minerva) will hardly be for the people that had to leave the land for their completion, as they will cost upward millions of dollars.
• And then there is Antilia: supposedly the most expensive and largest home in world: estimated at $1 billion to build, 27 stories high, 600 staff to run it, and situated on the most expensive block of the tenth most expensive road in the world, Altamount Rd (cost of upward $10 million/square meter). All for 5 people. And as of last month, they won't move in because they're unhappy with the design.

This country is big, fast, contradictory and special in so many ways compared to the rest of the world. My appreciation for India expands everyday. There are so many problems stacked right next to many virtues that world can learn from it (like having a pretty great appreciation for family values and marriage and possibly being happier than most Western countries). For example, having so many problems is intense to think about, but thinking that no one is doing anything is just wrong. The efforts and creative thought that happen here inspire me, even though it is hard to see at first.

The ending note of the THINKfest conference is in order to make change happen in our world, no matter what you do, you have to be creative. Thinkers are needed everywhere to challenge the barriers that surround most professional fields and personal lives. It seems like no secret, yet most people don't really question things or think beyond their limits. And it is not just India, the world has even greater problems than India has to offer, and my own country of the good ol' USA could use a whole entry itself to point out it's own blasphemy. In any context though, it is hard to be the change you want to be though when people are maintaing broken system systems, or even the most developed countries that are supposed to be the example are not upholding democratic values that they preach (source and Colbert Report). It is so difficult to help empower these kids at this camp when it seems so impossible for many of them to be the changes they want to make. Still, there is always a horizon. I guess we all need to think bigger, overcome our differences and unite in our struggle, a cliche still not yet lived (like here).