With our beloved cycles and Ortlieb bags, which we still use almost every day

Dear all, 

We will close our betterplace fundraising event “12,000 km on cycles for adequacy in rural India” in support of the glass half full in the next few days as it has fully and successfully mobilised the support we were hoping for. 

With your outstanding contributions, we have raised 2,551 Euro through this event alone, of which 2,502 Euro went towards our daily expenses during this incredibly intense 3-month trip. As you most likely already heard or read somewhere in our blog or Facebook entries, Kalyan and I covered 5,162 km in these 90 days, getting in-depth insights into the lives of villagers and tribals in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. Thanks to the hospitality of so many individuals and NGO’s we managed to nearly pay for all our on-road expenses during these 90 days from the funds raised here. This means, our real expenses were almost half of what we had anticipated, i.e. not even 50 Cents per km.  

We are still traveling on and off – with Wiebke mainly working out of Auroville in Tamil Nadu and Kalyan working on the ground at ProtoVillage in Andhra Pradesh to implement our lessons learnt one by one and make use of the political support offered. As opposed to original plans and for reasons already mentioned in earlier posts, we will not travel through the other 26 states of India right now – aka, no additional km funding is required right now.  

However, we do explore ways to continue mapping the social landscape of India ourselves as well as independent from our own very limited capacity. For this purpose, we work on ways to invite others into this (ad)venture as many friends and volunteers expressed their eagerness to come along with us or contribute in a region/dimension of their choice. We will still use our 12 dimensions to cluster change makers and their solutions. At the same time, we aim to create a framework that makes it easier for others to figure what exactly to map, how and where. This thinking process is supported by TFOEM and their initiative Searching for Goodness as well as by ATMA Mumbai. 

PS: The remaining 48 Euros raised through this event were donated for a computer cable, which is urgently needed right now, along with a new laptop to replace Wiebke’s MacBook that refused to swim :-). If you can support us in replacing it, please visit us on the main tghf betterplace page or check the direct bank transfer options on our blog  

Thank you all for enabling us to go on this journey and come out of it renewed in spirit and strenghtened in intention. Your donations, cheering along the way, sharing of stories, helping us through our many technology (and other) challenges and always having an open ear when needed!!! 

With love,
Kalyan + Wiebke

We are delighted to introduce our new partner for collecting contributions made in Germany. Please welcome Dominik Schmengler , Founder of department of tomorrow and the association For Fair Education . With this change, all donations made from Germany and India are again fully tax-deductible.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Invest4Charity again who made sure until now that all contributions made, always arrived where they were needed speedily. We are very sad to hear that Invest4Charity will not continue and wish Adeep, Mark and everyone else involved with Invest4Charity successful new (ad)ventures and cooperations.

Until now, I had checked out amongst others

• Annapurna, the biggest farm with dairy and crop production ensuring Aurovilians have organic fresh produce;
• Auroville Village Action Group (AVAG) who work directly with the villagers inside and around the bioregion of Auroville and cover everything from micro credits to sanitation and social work, currently setting up 9 different social enterprises for income generation;
• Sadhana Forest – the most consequent experiment in reforestation and living in harmony with the nature across all dimensions – from cooking and generating/using energy via natural materials for washing dishes/clothes all the way to living the vegan life;
• some of the oldest and newest construction materials like compressed bricks and ferro cement researched Earth Institute and Centre for Scientific Research (CSR) or
• the ones used right now at the all-eco-friendly International House like the indestructible roofs made from Tetra Paks, a shower that looks like a Tipi and windows from old bottles;
• Eco Femme, a project that aims to get over some  really old and outdated traditions regarding women’s cycles, e.g by offering seminars and making re-usable sanitary pads available to them

There was more and I promise, I will talk about them in more detail as soon as I have a computer again (I drowned my beloved MacBook and am still mourning), rather than depending on the generosity of other people to lend me theirs and compatibility issues since we carry all “appled-devices”. But I’ve got tons of notes and videos and photos and they will be delivered sooner or later!!!

So, after just one week at ProtoVillage in Andhra Pradesh I left Kalyan again to work his super magic all by himself – I mean, check out what he’s been up to since we got off our cycles a couple of months ago:  “Some of the things that kept me off facebook for sometime: Drinking water distribution – check, model toilet accessible to all three villages in the cluster – check, permit to build 220 toilets – check, maisons setting up a company – check, villagers agree to grow fodder in 120 acres – check, deal for 10 cows for dairy pilot – check, Fun – Check!!!”

I returned to Auroville and decided to dive in even deeper: not just with interviews but some hands on volunteering as well as looking into the community building site of things.

During my first visit, I had met B from International House (formerly American Pavilion), one of the few residents who live here for over 30 years. B is an amazing fountain of knowledge, experience and wisdom, always prepared to share a good story or two, never in a hurry.  He invited me to stay at the campus of International House  upon my return – et voila, here I am. I arrived after a sleepless overnight bus ride from Bangalore on Monday morning and immediately felt like back home. The sounds of nature after a hectic day in Bangalore – birds singing, the frogs croaking and… oh puppies barking. There is puppies… Hmm, I’m allergic but they’re so cute and the future watch dogs, so very necessary too!!!

Anyways, B (kindness in person), yummy fresh organic food and the sound of nature continued to be my companions for the day and everything flowed. By lunchtime, we had visited a Korean artist who makes the most gorgeous accessories from waste material like old audio tapes, I was registered with residential services, had a pass to Matrimandir (not an easy thing to get!!!!) and agreed with Manu which volunteering activities at International House I could participate in. I chose the gardening versus construction work on the roof and next morning we started.

Getting up at 6 am is surprisingly easy. It’s still nice and fresh outside, best time of the day really and Sunder, in charge of the garden here, had promised tea before we start. He showed me how to make it with our own fresh lemon grass, tulsi (holy basil), cinnamon and Hibiscus flowers. With a little dash of lemon – magically – the tea turned red, just like the color of the Hibiscus flowers. Yumm!!!

Herbal tea with ingredients fresh from the kitchen garden

After that, it was off to work. Real work. Sunder had already prepared new garden beds that needed compost to improve the soil. For a couple of days now, we covered the beds, created more plots, turned the soil and took out the weed.

Armed with mumpty and other tools, we turn the soil

It’s hard work but there is nothing better to quieten the mind and strengthen the body. When you see how there’s actually stuff growing that you can put in your mouth without having to worry where it comes from and what pesticides have been used on it – it just feels good. And knowing how much work everything is, how much sweat goes into each little tomato, each sprout of spinach, each stem of lemon grass – you suddenly don’t just consume it. You savor the food that’s been grown and looked after and harvested. You appreciate the time and effort gone into it and… you go slow 

Sunder watering the new garden plots

It’s hard work but there is nothing better to quieten the mind and strengthen the body. When you see how there’s actually stuff growing that you can put in your mouth without having to worry where it comes from and what pesticides have been used on it – it just feels good. And knowing how much work everything is, how much sweat goes into each little tomato, each sprout of spinach, each stem of lemon grass – you suddenly don’t just consume it. You savor the food that’s been grown and looked after and harvested. You appreciate the time and effort gone into it and… you go slow 

So, check out what you eat, enjoy it and if you don’t – maybe, it’s time for your own kitchen garden?? I definitely look forward to the time when we get around to the idea of creating kitchen gardens at ProtoVillage!

Video 1: Salt and Blood

This is a short movie by our dear friend Pankaj Trivedi from www.hornokplz.tv about the salt farmers in the Little Rann of Kutch (Gujarat), which Kalyan visited as part of our journey. It’s a heartbreaking story, their working and living conditions are nothing but pathetic. Despite all else we’ve seen, this is one story that moves me to bits every time I’m thinking of it.

We’re currently exploring ideas and partnerships to see if we can cut out some of these middle men who cause the difference between the earnings of the salt farmer and the price we pay for the salt we eat. It’s 1:1,000!!! Anyone with ideas or experiences in this area, please contact us on info@tghf.org (infoattghf.org)

More photos of the day with the salt farmers

Video 2: Income Generation at ProtoVillage, Part I

This is the 1st in a planned series of presentations regarding our work in progress. This 1st part is a general overview of income generating opportunities specifically developed for the conditions at Tekulodu in Andhra Pradesh, the location of ProtoVillage. It is also an experiment to present with video and/or without any technology using hand-drawn icons.

I thought, one or the other might be interested in some facts and figures that I learnt about at the introduction on Saturday. For this, I have shared my notes as pdf document (see the notes on my Intro to Auroville) but for the lazy ones, here’s a summary of the ones I was willing to type up for you…

• The dream for this Utopian township in the making – belonging to noone in particular but humanity as a whole – was a long standing one. It came to The Mother in the 1930s but it wasn’t until 1966 that the Indian Government gave its backing and UNESCO passed a unanimous resolution commending it as a project of importance to the future of humanity.
• The town is just outside of Puducherry (earlier called Pondicherry), a former French colony now Union Territory and some 160 km south of Madras (previously Chennai). But most of Auroville belongs to Tamil Nadu.
• Auroville was thought out to accommodate up to 50,000 people but right now there is some 2,200 Aurovilians in over 90 independent communities scattered over the entire area.
• Auroville has nationals from 46 countries, most notably from France, Netherlands and Germany. Interestingly, there is no African nationalities, neither is there any Chinese or Japanese.
• Some 40% of the population is Indian in the meantime, a fact that concerns some and delights others. Most of these are villagers from the villages surrounding Auroville, only a smaller portion comes from other areas of India to the township. Many of the Indians attracted to Auroville are from lower castes based on principals such as living in harmony above and beyond castes. However, it usually takes at least up to the 2nd generation for these families to be fully integrated.
• At the same time, 4-5,000 villagers from outside and inside Auroville are working here every single day.
• Three villages are located WITHIN Auroville’s green belt and belong to Auroville property. This isn’t always easy for either party but on the bright side it leads to serious attempts to live with each other in harmony and grow beyond ego and cultural differences.
• Auroville Foundation is active in a number of ways to improve the lifes of the villagers around them. It boosts a variety of special projects in education, forestation, tailoring, gardening, dental prevention and other health care projects.
• Auroville Village Action Groups (AVAG) liaises with villagers. They also work with over 250 women self help groups (SHG’s) and have given micro credits to over 50,000 villagers (only 800 of them are men, for very good reasons).
• Some 40% of Auroville’s income is derived from it’s commercial units that sell products like the windmills, food, clothes or consult on the various topics in which they gathered an impressive expertise.
• An Aurovilian who works full-time (35 hrs/week) INSIDE of Auroville, receives a so called maintanance of 6,800 rupees per month, plus free lunches at Solar Kitchen (worth some 1,000 rs) and health benefits. All up, a package of some 10,000 rupees. Other rates can be applied but noone is to be paid more than 3-times the basic maintenance.
• The maintenance does not apply if you work outside of Auroville, at least not if it’s not an Auroville project. This can cause some serious distraught for social workers engaged in village development projects of long standing but not officially started by Auroville.
• Aurovilians with savings are not receiving any maintanance either.
• Also interesting: if you choose not to work at all and you’re healthy, work is available, etc – you’ll have to pay the same amount to the communal funds, which people receive as a basic maintenance!
• There is no private property. This applies to residencies that people live in as well as businesses, which they run. If you built a house within Auroville, your right to live there usually gets respected for your and your children, unless you leave Auroville for longer than 5 years.
• Also, each Aurovilian business is supposed to contribute at least 33% of their profits for communal services. We were told however, that’s not always been adhered to.
• Only 6% of funding for Auroville comes from the Indian government in comparison to 15% of the income being contributed by Aurovilians themselves, guests and friends of Auroville.

In general, we learnt that The Mother didn’t believe in prescribing rules or regulations, simply because we don’t yet know any other way of governing a place like this. Her preference was to convince and make the recommendations appealing, understood, sensible rather than reinforcing them. This, of course, may and does result in anything from very wide interpretations of recommendations to plain abuse.

Want to know more? Check out Auroville in a nutshell or the personal Notes on my intro to Auroville

… and humanity as a whole. What a vision!!!

My day of arriving here was pure bliss. A hearty welcome by the staff of Verite was followed by a delicious breakfast and moving into my incredibly lofty hut on 4 granite pillars. After a good rest I settled in the guest lounge taking up my ‘virtual office’. Internet is not always working and my Airtel mobile card doesn’t work at all. But hey, that might be a good thing.

Day 2 started with an early morning breakfast with healthy fruit, porridge and tea. Then I took off to explore Verite’s ILC (Integral Learning Center) where during the season they offer an incredible number of workshops and seminars on the subject. Right now it’s quiet and only the office staff is there but it’s still worth a visit.

Already the entrance to this learning space enchanted me. You come in and look at a beautiful pond with plants and fish,  which come and give you a wonderful pedicure, nibbling away at your toes, heels and soles of the feet. It’s tingling at first but veeeeery pleasant.

Next you see some smaller cubicles to the left, supposedly for individual treatments or 1-on-1 sessions and a very inviting open space to the right, a view to the offices including the library. I ventured into it and honestly, I wouldn’t know where to start. There’s books on the Mother and Sri Aurobindo about the vision for Auroville, there’s all sorts of spiritual and psychological readings, travel guides to India and much, much more. I could easily spend an entire month just sitting here. But that’s not my job – for this time around.

I did indulge in a meditative session with the fish though and as I scribbled away in my notebook whilst the fish attended to what they must have thought to be a pair of extra ordinarily rough feet, I heard a wonderful sound. When I followed it, I discovered this huge wind-sound play (no idea what they’re called in English), playing very soothing tunes. It’s bigger than myself and yet, the tones it evokes, are so soft and tender – a meditation in itself…

But now, enough of leisure time. I strolled about the property checking out the alternative energy supplies. At the photo gallery you can see one of the solar panels on the ground as well as a whole row of them on the roof of the ILC. There’s also a windmill, which seems to be widely used in Auroville as I come across it again and again. It’s so colorful and making the funniest noises. Feels like back in the last century…

After yummy lunch with organic produce from the Verite gardens and other organic farms in Auroville including fresh orange juice and cream cheese, I took off to the Visitors Centre to attend a 2 hr introduction to Auroville. First ride on a bicycle (rented for only 25 rs/day from my guesthouse) since leaving Bhuj in Gujarat… Not anything like my bike (gosh, I look forward to Kalyan bringing our bikes back with him from Ahmedabad next week!!) but a very comfortable Holland-kind-of bike where I sat very straight and did the 3-4 km to the centre quite easily.

The ground of the visitors centre is big enough to get lost and boosts all sorts of facilities including boutiques where you can buy everything made in Auroville, restaurants, cafes, video rooms, exhibitions, medicinal gardens, an alternative technology trail, a water treatment plan and even a picnic area. The only place that’s not here is the one I looked for: Solar Kitchen. Ooops, back onto the bike again and off to Solar Kitchen, just a couple of kilometers away. For a moment, I feel like hopping onto that fancy mini train they have but decide that’s ridiculous after having survived our this big cycling journey through Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Oh and then… my cam went out of battery. Darn!!! It was just enough for one of the funny toilet signs and did not last to click the Solar Kitchen. However, this way I could totally focus on the fabulous intro  that French Aurovilian George gave us there for over 2 hours. I’ll make sure to post my notes here in due time (i.e. when I figured out how to upload my supa-dupa smart pen notes). In the meantime, I can only recommend to browse around the Auroville website (www.auroville.org) including its shop (www.auroville.com), which delivers worldwide!!

Yesterday, I ventured out even further. I cycled through some of the villages inside and outside of Auroville, seeing how different the standard of living and life in general are. There is quite a few initiatives working with the villagers, like the Auroville Village Action Groups (AVAG). I have interesting conversations with staff from Verite, even get to meet one of the 4 founders and slowly, get a more realistic picture of the current reality of this amazing Utopia in the making. Keep tuned in for more details…

Photos of Day 1 in Auroville
Photos of Day 2 in Auroville

We are back at Tekulodu, the location of ProtoVillage where we apply what we’ve learned during our journey.

Right now, we’re brainstorming income generation opportunities with the villagers. There’s a whole list of rural enterprises, which can come out of this, from growing fodder for cows, supplying milk to dairy plants, prototyping and producing farm equipment, making Khadi products like yarn, garments and cosmetics, producing monthly consumables like soaps, shampoos and other cosmetics and of course, growing vegetables and grains.

We started looking at land we can use for this purpose and this album shows what a typical day of labour looks like for a villager. Ironically, these villagers work on the land of the so called SC’s (scheduled castes as in scheduled for ‘positive discrimation’), who themselves won’t even show up on their fields anymore. It’s hard labour, paid for by the government with 144 rupees per day – part of the NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme active for 100 days/year), which is quite a lot. Women and men are paid the same, by the way.

Photos of tghf back at ProtoVillage

Driving through Bangalore as we do often, one day we discovered to our astonishment that there was a Gandhi Institute for rural development and energy just ‘en route’.

So, on May 24, we took the time to pay them a visit and were kindly welcomed even though the lady in charge had just locked her office to leave for the day. She told us about the purpose of the institute, which is to inspire and train village officials in the application of sustainable rural technology. What she could not tell us is how much of these ideas actually get applied by the people trained but then again – it’s government, right??

After some overview in the office we were shown the biogas kitchen unit, which produces enough energy for a family of 4 from their kitchenwaste. It only needs 2 kg of kitchen waste (cow dung or similar can be used too), 10-15 liters of water – et voila!! Ready to cook 3 meals a day or burn for about 2 hrs.

Unfortunately, it started raining cats and dogs after that part, so we had to postpone Part II of the guided walk-around the gardens, which showcases a whole array of useful devices for rural India like solar cookers or water filters.

Check out the photos of the day here

In 3 months and across 4000km, we have had amazing opportunities to learn what, in the meantime, has significantly changed our perspectives towards development. The people we have met along our journey have collectively

• afforested over 100,000 hectares of wasteland and thus raised food security and income generation opportunities through agriculture;
• transformed over 25 villages into prospering villages with staggering improvements in overall income, health, education, etc;
• played a major role in creating the Right to Information (RTI) Act and more recently, forced the government to design a new bill to deal effectively with official corruption;
• set up dozens of schools and created innovative, inspiring learning spaces;
• started a voluntary (!!) bloodbank;
• rehabilitated thousands of HIV positive prostitute mothers and their kids;
• built scores of affordable rural technologies – many of them with an open-source/copy left philosophy of sharing their insights;
• divised eco-systems that truly integrated stakeholders in a National Park and its surroundings to combine ecological goals like saving the last Asian lions with the needs of the communities living amongst them in harmony;
• developed disaster management systems that include blueprints for innovative traditional do-it-yourself shelter options;
• helped illiterate rural women setup and run million rupee enterprises;
• revived nearly lost traditions in handicraft to empower tribal communities as artisan entrepreneurs as a means to develop an entire region;
• worked relentlessly for over a decade to promote sustainable practices like organic farming; or
• assisted people to get their health and balance back by setting up nature cure clinics;

to name only a few examples.

This is by no means all that we wanted to learn. But we are so excited about some of the things we have learned – particularly in terms of understanding the importance ofs traditional socio-economic patterns in a rural system – that we decided to extend our ‘offroad break’ to put this learning into practice.

Right at this very moment, a unique opportunity to do this at tghf’s sister initiative ProtoVillage emerged. And it makes so much sense: here, we have substantial local support, the lessons learnt are very much needed and what better way of sharing with you all than by collaboratively implementing them in the field.

The pattern we are thinking of at the moment is that every 3 months of tghf journey across various parts of India will be followed up with a period of 3-6 months of implementation. This will not only gradually enrich the quality of our journeys, but will also provide a live and dynamic environment where it is all collaboratively realized through practice.

When we took a break, we were very happy listing things that worked. For example, our approach of ‘traveliving’ – traveling and living with the natives & locals – won us many friends. They so easily and trustfully let us in into their lives and we are convinced, we learned more through observation and conversations naturally evolving than we could have with our initial structured questionnaires. At the end of visiting one region, after being ‘handed around’ from one changemaker to the next, we always ended up with quite a rounded picture of its particular characteristics and the perspectives of the various stakeholders (including the subjects of each intervention) on development.

Also, having spoken to so many people from various villages about their conditions along our 12 dimensions of adequacy, our conversations became much more refined towards the end of the first leg. And it is only now that we think we can confidently take the next steps towards developing a somewhat standardised format for mapping the current conditions in rural India as well as the perspectives of the changemakers who act to improve them. Only  now it seems realistic to aim towards building an analytical framework that is powerful enough to go beyond statistics to derive actionable perspectives, firmly grounded in our philosophy of sustainable development. This will happen through an iterative process, again with ample opportunity for all of you who’d love to contribute.

And having such a system in place, this will ultimately make mapping India’s current conditions and social landscape independent of us… How amazing would it be if you too would travel through the country with the same mission, consequently contributing to the common pool of knowledge? Or to join us and get your hands dirty implementing the insights derived??

Very excitedly yours,
Kalyan + Wiebke

The Mumbai Suburban Railway system is an offshoot of the first railway built by the British in India in April 1853. It carries more than 6.9 million commuters on a daily basis, which means more than half of the total daily passenger capacity of the entire Indian Railways!! During peak hours, 550 people travel in a carriage built for just 200 (or 4,500 passengers on a train for 1,700). That means there’s up to 16 passengers per square meter!!! I guess the term Super-Dense Crush Load to describe this phenomena, must have been coined right here in Mumbai, where it’s one the highest in the world. Not even Japan’s notoriously famous trains are that over crowded.

Now all of this sounds seriously off putting and yes – dangerous – too. There is a horrific number of deaths involving commuters slipping whilst boarding or leaving trains, executed by power cables when riding on roofs to avoid the crowd or not being quick enough when crossing the tracks. And everybody in the right state of mind would agree that the Indian government needs to provide appropriate infrastructure to avoid such a high toll. But since our entire mission (and my single biggest personal challenge) is an effort to see the glass half full, I was wondering: how on earth could I apply that here and what makes me use the local trains voluntarily?

For one, it’s extremely cheap (yesterday, I paid 6 rupees, i.e. 10 euro cents for a 35 min ride of approx. 20 km). Secondly, it’s faster than taking an auto rickshaw, taxi or any other means of transport, especially during peak hours (and there is no danger of the auto driver trying to cheat me, an experience I recently used to exercise freshly acquired skills in standing my ground).Thirdly, these local trains have perks like ‘ladies compartments’ where no men are allowed. We girls get to choose if we want to be intimately close to each other within our own gender or be bold and mingle with the guys (noops, there is no ‘gents only compartment’). Fourthly, it’s my chance to learn life-saving skills like typing messages on the mobile with another 15 people in your square meter gently or not so gently pushing, anxiously clutching their (or shuffling my) bag or learn Hindi phrases like ‘the next station is…’. I learn to cope with smells from ok to appalling (nothing in this humid heat smells really enticing) and get to check out the latest fashion trends in close detail.

But most importantly, exercises like this can be one of the purest lessons in flow (sometimes upgraded to lessons in free fall). Because in reality I know, I scrounge because I’m plain scared of so many people so close to me. I pull out with the excuse it will take me just as long taking into account the time reaching the station. And I tell myself I don’t really care about the difference in price (12 vs. a minimum of 300 rupees) and that of course, I could do ‘it’ any time I really wanted to. And all that for what? Well, good question. For what, then??? And the simple answer is (again): it’s outside my comfort zone.

So I let go, I decide to do it just to do something different. You’re scared, I ask myself??? Great, go there…. What an opportunity to get rid of another of these stupid fears, imagined problems. And of course, as most of the times, I realize, it’s not that hard at all. Simply put, I’m just learning a great deal more about myself by sharing rides – if in a jeep with another 22 passengers or on a train carriage with another 549 – than by having any vehicle and a perceived sense of security. And yes, most of my fears were vague and imagined. The real scare factors can be easily avoided by not riding on the roof or being careful when getting on and off. I’m proud I made it, I’m proud I understand the codes on the platforms like F for fast train and S for slow train. And I feel a bit more independent (and Indian) once again…

More info on Mumbai trains here