Visit to Selco - Dharwad

Selco, true to its philosophy, consciously occupies really down to earth premises as its offices; reason being…….the customers need to feel at home. This is the third branch I’ve visited and I’m amazed at how they’ve made that extra effort at each of these offices. Here’s the office in Dharwad.

Selco office is one portion of this house

During this trip, I got to visit a village, actually a hamlet of around 300 people, off the highway from Dharwad to Goa.

It’s beautiful and picturesque. It’s also hard and brutal.

The pictures caught the beauty; the hard and brutal is what’s behind the scene. 

The entry to the pretty hamlet

The solar light in the kitchen of Chandana

See the solar panel on top of the hut

This brought back fond memories of times spent with grandmothers..... long gone by

Another house with the solar panel on top

Such a charming and colourful house....the old man was too :)
Don't miss the airtel dish !

Spot the solar panel?

Prasanna Hegde, Selco Regional Manager for North Karnataka and Lokeshu,
Customer Service Exec for Dharwad, who accompanied me on this visit...
Thanks to both !

The village is just 20 kms from Dharwad, which is district headquarters, yet, it’s only last year that the village got connected to the grid, and even now they get but a few hours of electricity a day. Their only real source of light are still the Selco Solar Systems. Inside their huts it is so dark, that the eye takes a long while to adjust and I was there in the middle of the afternoon. It’s hard to imagine how dark that place must be at night, with no electricity as far as the eye can see. How they co-exist with snakes and scorpions and other animals is hard to understand. When I asked one of the villagers  how he felt after he got light in his house, he says......... we could now see what we were eating, otherwise we wouldnt  know what insects were in our food. And children being able to study, women being able to cook, men being able to sharpen their farm implements (instead of wasting daylight hours on such chores) are some of the other things he mentioned. One aspect that really stood out is how each and every house which had a solar system installed,(all of them are two light systems) had one of those lights in the kitchen. I was glad to see the subtle recognition of the importance of the kitchen, and more the recognition of the woman's need.

To give you an idea of how the system works and how it's sustainable: In this village, Selco installed 100 solar systems of two lights each, over a period of four months. This was done in 2010. The cost of each system was Rs.10,500, which was way out of reach of any of these farmers. So Selco tied up with a local Grameena Bank for the loans, stood security for all the loans by creating a fixed deposit with the bank. Yet, the 15%  down-payment  of Rs.1600 was also not possible for these farmers. So Selco organized the downpayment through REEEP, Renewable Energy & Efficiency Efficiency Partnership, which is an International NGO which works on energy efficiency programs in developing countries. The loans are being paid back per schedule.

And that's the story of how 100 homes went from darkness to light in this little hamlet of Chandragiri.  

Millennials and Impact Investing

There’s a wonderful story here, and two brand new concepts

When I read an article with this tagline, I felt a deep, warm and happy feeling within, and I realized it’s because I was feeling wonderfully ratified at one level, plus, a cause I feel strongly for was the positive recipient. The cause itself, most of you know about from reading about my Selco stories, but what’s with the ratification?

Firstly, what are these two new concepts?

Millennials: A term for people born between 1980 and 2000

Impact Investing: A term coined in 2007 ‘denoting the idea that private capital can be deployed to alleviate pressing social needs like access to electricity, clean water, affordable housing, preventive healthcare........ while returning a financial profit’

Now, what is the connect?

While impact investing, more familiarly called social entrepreneurship, is being seen as the largest way to bring about social change, it is still slow to catch on, as the world has gotten used to considering any effort towards social change as an act of philanthropy. And philanthropy is considered mostly the domain of the rich with a willingness to donate, which is hugely limiting. This is set to change.

Excerpt from the article by Vilas Dhar and Julia Fetherston

Impact investment continues to suffer from limited transaction flow and anemic dollar commitments. Most relevant to stunted growth, is cultural resistance — the inertial apathy of traditional financial players who are wary of novel, risky investment structures and skeptical about trading some amount of profitability for social return. 

Enter the Millennials who conceive of financial return differently, and more expansively, than their elders. 

For Millennials, pressing social problems are not just the preserve of philanthropists or governments. Millennials consistently cite social impact as one of the most important roles of business. Of all the generations alive today, millennials are the most willing to trade financial return for greater social impact, according to a study from Merrill Lynch’s Private Banking and Investment Group.

Where I personally feel ratified, is in my faith in this generation. While the world is busy being critical of them (the millennials) for their excesses, liberties, consumptions, focus on self, bold (im)morals……at a much deeper level this shows that they have their basic thinking in a ‘righter’ place. 

You see, we all have a limited amount of energy and time, and to optimize output…… actualize potential....... we need to be at peace and fulfilled internally. But we live with so much conditioning, lack, restrictions by default, that most of our energy is spent in resisting, fighting, suppressing, working around, fulfilling what we can of those. 

The Millennials, I think are essentially those who have been allowed a freer flow to be themselves, and that is what enables them to transcend limits and think beyond themselves. When the world points a finger and says ……selfish generation…..I think they’ve actually cracked the secret of first being nice to themselves, and that’s what enables them to think beyond themselves. Selfish? Really??

If they can think social impact and then, also be willing to trade financial return for social impact, it in itself speaks loudest. Kindness and Compassion are to me among the highest on the scale of evolution. And that’s where the nice feeling :)

Palaks Diaries from Kalahandi

A month into Selco, I’d written about Palak, a girl who chose to live in the villages of Orissa to do her research for Tribal Labs of Selco Foundation. Now, two months into Selco, I continue her story:

Courtesy Google, as I couldn't download the pic she sent and this fits description of people she gave

Kalahandi……….. a name that brings to mind famine, starvation, arid, poverty and death. Apparently all this is recognized and there are a lot of schemes and funds for improvement, yet the place remains poor, a black land……. kale paani ki sazaa as it’s locally called.

Having gotten familiar with Odia, she learnt that it wasn’t ‘kala-handi’ ( black pot) as generally believed but ‘kolo–hondi’…… pot of arts, and she began to see the art, culture, and beauty of the place, and how the place struggles to come out of the kala-handi syndrome. A true case of beauty in the eyes of the beholder……. as she has also been witness to some horrific and extreme experiences.

I’ve in fact started worrying for Palak as you can see from her reaction to what she’s being exposed to.

Here’s one incident where she’s in conversation with a local woman and the impact. Read it in Palak’s own words:

”The woman told me ‘Immediate after delivery, I had to cut my umbical cord, I turned to find a blade and I struggled for few seconds as the kerosene light was not enough…….. a dog came…. smelled the flesh of the baby, grabbed it and took it away.’

When the mother narrated the incident to me, I simply stared at her face, as there was not a single expression of grief on her face.  What scared me was not the child being taken away by the dog, but how normal it was for her to live with death.  Her cold face, I will never forget. It hurt me like nothing has ever before. The one hour that I walked from this village, Pokresh to Korang, where our vehicle was parked, I felt nothing……………. Nothing at all. The next feeling I remember is of hating to be called human in any sense and being part of an independent country.  The only memory that exists today is the cold face of the mother, I cannot describe her features neither I think I can recognize her, but the expressionless face of a mother narrating the story of her own child who is no more, is what I carry today and forever.

This is just one incident, I’m sure there are thousands of them. With time, I have learned one thing, when I interact with a mother, the correct question to ask her is ‘How many ‘alive’ children you have?’ instead of ‘How many children you have?’ More than this I have nothing to say about the backwardness of this place. 

Palak, thanks for sharing your experiences. And once again, Kudos and God Bless !

The Elegant Universe - Einstein's Dream

For those who found the ‘Short History of Nearly Everything’ or for that matter the post on ‘Astronomy….’ interesting, here’s a brilliant video which visually explains fundamental physical concepts of the Universe. It starts with Newton and the apple…..yes, The Theory of Gravitation through Electro Dynamics, Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics in the search for that one Unified theory which can explain the Universe, and in the end you almost hear them asking if the concept is Science or Philosophy. It’s also interesting to get that peek into how Einstein approached his work, the passion, the faith, and more I think, the courage to be and believe against all odds.

I quote from the related book 'The Elegant Universe' by Brian Greene

Einstein showed the world that space and time behave in astoundingly unfamiliar ways. Now, cutting-edge research has integrated his discoveries into a quantum universe with numerous hidden dimensions coiled into the fabric of the cosmos—dimensions whose lavishly entwined geometry may well bold the key to some of the most profound questions ever posed. Although some of these concepts are subtle, we will see that they can be grasped through down-to-earth analogies. And when these ideas are understood, they provide a startling and revolutionary perspective on the universe. 

Guess who else is looking Inward !

Excerpts from an article by Carl Zimmer:

Michael A Fischbach, a chemist at the University of California has found a bacteria within the body which is similar to an antibiotic that a drug company is testing. He is quoted as having said ‘microorganisms are the best chemists on the planet’.

For evidence, Dr Fischbach points to the many life saving drugs that micro organisms produce. In 1928 for example, Alexander Fleming discovered that mould wafting into his lab produced a bacteria killing chemical called penicillin.

Later generations of scientists found drug making organisms in more exotic locales. In 1951, a missionary in Borneo named William Bouw shipped a box of jungle dirt from there to Europe and Dr.Kornfield discovered a species of bacteria in it that made a potent antibiotic.

Scientists today are still searching jungles, oceans and other corners of the world for micro organisms that make medicines. But in a new study, Dr Fischbach and his colleagues suggest that we should be looking inward.

Analysing the bacteria that live in our body, the scientists identified genes for making over 3000 previously unknown molecules that may prove to be useful drugs.

‘Nobody had thought to look that close to home’ said Dr.Fischbach.

We all know, (not to question the scientific level of medicine as what Dr.Fischbach is talking, which is to create antibiotics based on microorganisms from within for the larger good), that this is part of our body’s natural immunity system, right?

Any invasion of the body by the bad bacteria from the outside or sometimes from the inside, can be fought from within, and this is done well by a naturally healthy body. It’s again about keeping that balance, the energy balance within the body. Ancient systems of Ayurveda focus on restoring or maintaining this balance.

It’s really in our hands. Isn’t that an empowering feeling? Can we become aware of what we can do to get into that space of empowerment? Not just of the mind……… but through the mind, also of the body.

Astronomy with A Visual Perspective

Astronomy has always been a pet and revered subject, the night sky always fascinated….. If Vipassana was a fascinating journey inward, astronomy was, actually is, an equally fascinating journey outward……. pun intended :)

Just look at some of these concepts; it’s total science, yet, don’t they just bring out that sense of real awe and mystery ?

Spacial distances: The distances in space are so vast that light takes a long time to travel from each of those stars. And we’re talking 3,00,000 kilometers per second. Yet, its counted in light years, right? What does it imply?

When we look up at the sky what we see is actually not the present….it’s the past. For instance, say Sirius, the brightest star in our sky ( It’s one star that’s visible even through the haze and smog of a city night sky ). It takes light seven years to reach us from Sirius. So when we see Sirius today, we’re actually seeing Sirius as it was seven years back. Our nearest star, Proxima Centauri is 4.3 light years away, and that’s our nearest. Earth is 28,000 light years away from the center of milky way, our own galaxy. Stars from other galaxies are millions of light years away. So next time you look up at the sky, remember you aren’t just looking far into space, you’re actually looking into different time spans as well.

Black holes: Black holes are strangely the most dense of matter and nothing like the hole that they’re called. Like everything has a birth and death, so also stars are born and die, it just happens over millions and millions of years. When a star dies, it collapses on itself and all that matter gets into a small space of very high density. The density is so high and creates such a strong gravitational field, that not even light can escape it. It exists as a very powerful object in space, but it’s very small and completely invisible.

Here’s a five minute journey which will give you a visual perspective of size and distance in space, and trust me, through all our exposure through text books and encyclopedia, you’ll still be amazed. Thanks to my dad for having shared these slides, I enjoyed them !

Sirius is the brightest star visible in our night sky

Pollux is one of the Gemini twins :)

Arcturus is a bright star close to the popular Great Bear

Aldebran is in the constellation Taurus, it's also a clearly visible star in our night sky

Betelguese is part of the constellation of Orion ( which is  my tattoo if that helps)

Breathe again.......:)

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

So, when you read about the ethereal body, the chakras, the energy, transfer of energy through thought, and some of the other stuff in the previous post, you didn’t think all that was superstition did you? Did you accept it for total real? Did you pause to think that it could be real? It’s real for sure…… as real as you and I are…..I say this because the closer you get to what’s real, or what you think is real, the more you know that anything is ‘as real’ as you think it is.

Am I sounding confusing…..well, I’m not surprised, because I remember in one episode of Kaun Bhanega Crorepati, I thought I would have gone out at the first basic question. Amitabh Bachan asks, where does the sun rise? And the options are a) west b) north c) east d) none of the above. And pat came the answer from the contestant….east. And I find myself thinking, thank god it’s not me, I would have been out of the game right there. Because I actually found myself thinking it’s ‘none of the above’……after all, What is east? What is to rise? Where are we looking at it from? What is direction on a sphere? What about the sun and the earth being spherical, and both being in constant motion?

At that point I didn’t even dare tell anyone that that’s how I’d reacted. They’d have thought I was nuts. I only concluded to myself that I would never try to get to Kaun Banega Crorepati :) 

Today, I guess I’m willing to risk being called nuts. Reading Bill Bryson gives me the courage to actually put these questions out there.

‘Á short history of nearly everything’ by Bill Bryson, is one of those books that really gave me so much perspective, rather such a different perspective, not to speak of the loads and loads of stuff about the Universe, and our own planet. I’ve just started a reread, and I want to share the first page, so here goes:

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will exist only this once. For the next many years(we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, co-operative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under appreciated state known as existence.

Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don’t actually care about you – indeed, don’t even know that you are there.

The book as indicated by the title is really a travelogue through science, starting from the big bang theory, through evolution, through geology, physics, atoms, protons, chemistry, biology, oceans, birds, fish, you….. it’s like science coming alive, with lots of laugh aloud times too. One of my sure shot favourites.

And it’s as interesting and mysterious as energy healing and the rest of it, except this is all stuff that’s been proved through scientific labs ….but then electricity existed before Edison let us know, right?