A new experiment is completely changing lives in the rural areas of India by bringing luminosity where there used to be darkness.
The New York Times published an article titled, "Husk Power for India". Electricity, which is prevalent in the lives of many in developed nations, is a pure luxury in remote areas of developing ones. What was once fed to animals now is used to generate electricity - rice husks.
Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the skills to make a life long idea come alive. He led the development of his electricity equipment that generates power from rice husks and other farming waste and now he sells it to villages across India.
Sinha is what could be called a social entrepreneur because he feels business is a solution to key social issues. "Business leaders must realise that the world's poor need investments more than handouts," he says, adding, "these are customers, not victims."
The article motivated me to think about offering things in a different way that made me ask myself, "what is the most perfect form of giving?" Is it edification, commerce or disaster aid? There are so many ways to create a difference. One way of giving can seem more productive or practical than other ways depending on the way it is given expression, viewed or put into practice.
I then came to delineate there were eight segments to giving as a way to see this. So, let me chart out the eight differences; which in effect are often 'stages' of giving as well.
Phase one: Exigency - salvaging and helping others who are suffering due to natural calamities, epidemic diseases or other insurmountable problems.
Stage two: Relief - providing relief from long-standing hunger, poverty, diseases, handicaps or discrimination which otherwise would continue or worsened because of the lack of information, education or resources.
Stage three: Remedying and defense - internally, bodily and psychologically. Many people carry injuries that may be invisible but could be severely confining their lives. Giving the remedy to release the buried trauma creates better facilities for them while giving proper protection gives them a sense of defense.
Stage four: Education - giving better education, information and skill training to create empowered and creative solutions to resource generation while supporting individuals to discover their unique talent to thrive.
Stage five: Inspired investment - giving a help, capital or resources to those who have great talent to alter the situation. This gets used many times as the resources become more and passed on to other people who again produce more out of the prospects given.
Stage six: Tenability - working together with the people in the local surroundings, creating tenable groups - ambience-wise and reciprocally.
Phase seven: Empowerment - enabling and motivating the people to release their true ability and power to make a change. In this group of sharing, the aim of giving changes from 'giving to the people who want' to 'giving people a chance to give to others' and to the society.
Phase eight: Caring - just doing whatever we want to do to cherish and care for others. No tactic or expected result exists in this phase of giving. 'Giving' does not even exist here in the conventional sense of the word, as there is no sense of ownership or reasoning or yearning to alter anything. This is where we do not even have to worry about anything, we give as a part of our own delightful sense of being.
What we also see is that at each of these eight phases of sharing there are many things that the giver gets in return.
One: Sense of relationship
Two: Sense of wellbeing
Three: respite from hurt (our own)
Four: Thankfulness for our own ideas, gifts and conditions
Five: Long-term sense of involvement and fulfillment for our own life
Six: Improved environment for our own life and for the lives for all those we love and care for
Seven: Soul gratifying encouragement and devotion to our own purpose
Eight: Affection
Giving has many planes and understandings upon the basis of the giver and the beneficiary. And the 'levels' do not explain which one is higher than the other. All are imperative.
I was fortunate to have an experience early in 2008 while travelling with a group of dedicated businessmen through India to see how we could be more useful in our giving. I was blessed to have one exceptional happening that made me think about what 'effectual giving' actually meant.
We were in a small town one day. Four of us had just called a taxi to take us to another town in the vicinities. We bargained with the driver with care as our hotel staff had told us beforehand that we could be duped since we were not local.
We halted briefly in front of the local train station for a short recess on the way. While the others went to use the restroom, I tried to chat with our taxi driver standing near his vehicle. With his limited knowledge of English and a wonderful smile that showed his blackened front teeth, he told me that he had a house on the suburbs of the town and he had a sweet wife and two lovely kids who went to the local school - I felt a strong bonding with him.
I appreciated the fact of his having such a wonderful family and told him that I too had two little ones of almost the same ages as his. When the others were back the driver suddenly invited us to come to his house and have lunch. I took it only as a formality that was customary courtesy. But after taking us to the town center and leaving us there, he told us that he would wait for us until all our wandering in the town was over. And he really did. I was actually quite astonished to see him still remaining glued to the side of the road next to his taxi more than one hour later. We got into the taxi and he drove fast up the road to where he had his family.
When we arrived we were actually quite shocked to see how he was living. It was almost like the same condition (if not worse) to the lifestyle of people living in slums we had visited previously. From the nice new taxi he was driving, who could have imagined
As the car turned into the narrow unsealed road between the hut-like houses that were constructed with crudely made concrete blocks and painted mud walls, we felt contrite about having agreed to his invitation. For a brief moment I felt mortified. "How could I have exploited the generosity of a man who didn't seem to have anything and I didn't even get any edible stuff or presents for his family", I thought.
As we got into his house, we saw a small pot and a stove on the mud floor. His shy sweet wife smiled and blushed at the sight of visitors and vanished into the cupboard sized storeroom of the house. As I looked around, I saw the man's neighbours giving the woman a few cups over the crumbling concrete walls. They simply didn't have enough cups in their house. There was just a single small room that had a lone cot and an old galvanised trunk adjacent to it.
The taxi driver quickly pulled out three hand-woven rugs from the chest and rolled them out on the small patch of mud floor putting one on the bed.
Soon the cups of tea and some snacks arrived. All his children and children from the neighborhood came to see us and stood in the doorway. All six of us were totally squashed in the tiny room. I curiously asked him where all his children were sleeping. I thought they probably had another space somewhere. To my surprise, he cheerfully pointed the chest and said it was their bed with his beaming smile.
He happily told us that he was an amateur dancer in the town and showed us some plaques on the sill above the bed. Enthusiastic to show us his dancing proficiency, he ran outside all at once. From somewhere music came flowing into the tiny room. He had no apparatus for music within the house, it was coming from outside. Surprised, I looked around to see him reversing his vehicle towards the back of his house keeping the doors open with the radio of the car blaring forth!
The time quickly passed (dancing together and having more cups of tea) and it was finally time to say thank you for their great hospitality and head on our way. As we stood up to leave and thank him and his wife, he reached to the best looking rug on the bed, rolled it up and handed it to us. It was one of the only few things he had. I could not believe he offered it to us.
We all respectfully refused his gift and came out saying goodbye to every one waving at us. We got perplexed about this whole thing. Should we have offered some cash to the family as they obviously had limited means? Should we have agreed to take his wonderful gift?
As I was thinking about this awe-inspiring experience after a few days, I considered our begging off his gift. He looked crest-fallen that we didn't accept the gift. It wasn't only the rejecting of the gift that remained in my mind.
I understood that the sense of unease I felt was really ensuing from viewing him as unfortunate. I was perhaps thinking that I couldn't possibly accept something from a person who had very little.
But did he actually have modest means? Maybe he had other things - a lot more.
Maybe the perfect gift we could have given him then was to accept his gift in total surrender and gratefulness.
Every act of sharing and taking are indispensable for us to fill our world with profusion and satisfaction in equal measure for both sharer and taker. We can start doing this instead of evaluating and validating one over another. The beautiful act of sharing and taking requires no additional elucidation.
Manoj Sinha's words continue to reverberate in my mind, "these are customers, not victims." I can picture the happy faces of the rural folk who are now pleased to have power in their hamlets and the kids who now can read books and happily do their homework at night. - 14915
The New York Times published an article titled, "Husk Power for India". Electricity, which is prevalent in the lives of many in developed nations, is a pure luxury in remote areas of developing ones. What was once fed to animals now is used to generate electricity - rice husks.
Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the skills to make a life long idea come alive. He led the development of his electricity equipment that generates power from rice husks and other farming waste and now he sells it to villages across India.
Sinha is what could be called a social entrepreneur because he feels business is a solution to key social issues. "Business leaders must realise that the world's poor need investments more than handouts," he says, adding, "these are customers, not victims."
The article motivated me to think about offering things in a different way that made me ask myself, "what is the most perfect form of giving?" Is it edification, commerce or disaster aid? There are so many ways to create a difference. One way of giving can seem more productive or practical than other ways depending on the way it is given expression, viewed or put into practice.
I then came to delineate there were eight segments to giving as a way to see this. So, let me chart out the eight differences; which in effect are often 'stages' of giving as well.
Phase one: Exigency - salvaging and helping others who are suffering due to natural calamities, epidemic diseases or other insurmountable problems.
Stage two: Relief - providing relief from long-standing hunger, poverty, diseases, handicaps or discrimination which otherwise would continue or worsened because of the lack of information, education or resources.
Stage three: Remedying and defense - internally, bodily and psychologically. Many people carry injuries that may be invisible but could be severely confining their lives. Giving the remedy to release the buried trauma creates better facilities for them while giving proper protection gives them a sense of defense.
Stage four: Education - giving better education, information and skill training to create empowered and creative solutions to resource generation while supporting individuals to discover their unique talent to thrive.
Stage five: Inspired investment - giving a help, capital or resources to those who have great talent to alter the situation. This gets used many times as the resources become more and passed on to other people who again produce more out of the prospects given.
Stage six: Tenability - working together with the people in the local surroundings, creating tenable groups - ambience-wise and reciprocally.
Phase seven: Empowerment - enabling and motivating the people to release their true ability and power to make a change. In this group of sharing, the aim of giving changes from 'giving to the people who want' to 'giving people a chance to give to others' and to the society.
Phase eight: Caring - just doing whatever we want to do to cherish and care for others. No tactic or expected result exists in this phase of giving. 'Giving' does not even exist here in the conventional sense of the word, as there is no sense of ownership or reasoning or yearning to alter anything. This is where we do not even have to worry about anything, we give as a part of our own delightful sense of being.
What we also see is that at each of these eight phases of sharing there are many things that the giver gets in return.
One: Sense of relationship
Two: Sense of wellbeing
Three: respite from hurt (our own)
Four: Thankfulness for our own ideas, gifts and conditions
Five: Long-term sense of involvement and fulfillment for our own life
Six: Improved environment for our own life and for the lives for all those we love and care for
Seven: Soul gratifying encouragement and devotion to our own purpose
Eight: Affection
Giving has many planes and understandings upon the basis of the giver and the beneficiary. And the 'levels' do not explain which one is higher than the other. All are imperative.
I was fortunate to have an experience early in 2008 while travelling with a group of dedicated businessmen through India to see how we could be more useful in our giving. I was blessed to have one exceptional happening that made me think about what 'effectual giving' actually meant.
We were in a small town one day. Four of us had just called a taxi to take us to another town in the vicinities. We bargained with the driver with care as our hotel staff had told us beforehand that we could be duped since we were not local.
We halted briefly in front of the local train station for a short recess on the way. While the others went to use the restroom, I tried to chat with our taxi driver standing near his vehicle. With his limited knowledge of English and a wonderful smile that showed his blackened front teeth, he told me that he had a house on the suburbs of the town and he had a sweet wife and two lovely kids who went to the local school - I felt a strong bonding with him.
I appreciated the fact of his having such a wonderful family and told him that I too had two little ones of almost the same ages as his. When the others were back the driver suddenly invited us to come to his house and have lunch. I took it only as a formality that was customary courtesy. But after taking us to the town center and leaving us there, he told us that he would wait for us until all our wandering in the town was over. And he really did. I was actually quite astonished to see him still remaining glued to the side of the road next to his taxi more than one hour later. We got into the taxi and he drove fast up the road to where he had his family.
When we arrived we were actually quite shocked to see how he was living. It was almost like the same condition (if not worse) to the lifestyle of people living in slums we had visited previously. From the nice new taxi he was driving, who could have imagined
As the car turned into the narrow unsealed road between the hut-like houses that were constructed with crudely made concrete blocks and painted mud walls, we felt contrite about having agreed to his invitation. For a brief moment I felt mortified. "How could I have exploited the generosity of a man who didn't seem to have anything and I didn't even get any edible stuff or presents for his family", I thought.
As we got into his house, we saw a small pot and a stove on the mud floor. His shy sweet wife smiled and blushed at the sight of visitors and vanished into the cupboard sized storeroom of the house. As I looked around, I saw the man's neighbours giving the woman a few cups over the crumbling concrete walls. They simply didn't have enough cups in their house. There was just a single small room that had a lone cot and an old galvanised trunk adjacent to it.
The taxi driver quickly pulled out three hand-woven rugs from the chest and rolled them out on the small patch of mud floor putting one on the bed.
Soon the cups of tea and some snacks arrived. All his children and children from the neighborhood came to see us and stood in the doorway. All six of us were totally squashed in the tiny room. I curiously asked him where all his children were sleeping. I thought they probably had another space somewhere. To my surprise, he cheerfully pointed the chest and said it was their bed with his beaming smile.
He happily told us that he was an amateur dancer in the town and showed us some plaques on the sill above the bed. Enthusiastic to show us his dancing proficiency, he ran outside all at once. From somewhere music came flowing into the tiny room. He had no apparatus for music within the house, it was coming from outside. Surprised, I looked around to see him reversing his vehicle towards the back of his house keeping the doors open with the radio of the car blaring forth!
The time quickly passed (dancing together and having more cups of tea) and it was finally time to say thank you for their great hospitality and head on our way. As we stood up to leave and thank him and his wife, he reached to the best looking rug on the bed, rolled it up and handed it to us. It was one of the only few things he had. I could not believe he offered it to us.
We all respectfully refused his gift and came out saying goodbye to every one waving at us. We got perplexed about this whole thing. Should we have offered some cash to the family as they obviously had limited means? Should we have agreed to take his wonderful gift?
As I was thinking about this awe-inspiring experience after a few days, I considered our begging off his gift. He looked crest-fallen that we didn't accept the gift. It wasn't only the rejecting of the gift that remained in my mind.
I understood that the sense of unease I felt was really ensuing from viewing him as unfortunate. I was perhaps thinking that I couldn't possibly accept something from a person who had very little.
But did he actually have modest means? Maybe he had other things - a lot more.
Maybe the perfect gift we could have given him then was to accept his gift in total surrender and gratefulness.
Every act of sharing and taking are indispensable for us to fill our world with profusion and satisfaction in equal measure for both sharer and taker. We can start doing this instead of evaluating and validating one over another. The beautiful act of sharing and taking requires no additional elucidation.
Manoj Sinha's words continue to reverberate in my mind, "these are customers, not victims." I can picture the happy faces of the rural folk who are now pleased to have power in their hamlets and the kids who now can read books and happily do their homework at night. - 14915
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