The journey towards compassionate living is spreading its gentle roots all over the world. And for me, it was a decision long brewing. 

I was quite the activist in college, that friend who begged you not to eat meat. But I never made the connection that dairy was just one side of the beef and leather industry. 

My journey as a nursing mother who prioritised my child’s needs hammered in the cruelty of the dairy industry. The egg industry is no different. Apart from the fact that 90% of commercial eggs come from chickens jammed into battery cages, male chicks are considered waste and ground within hours of hatching. 

The switch to vegan, plant-based living had happened in my head, but I needed to learn how to modify my diet, and bring in the right alternatives to ensure my family got adequate and appropriate nutrition. 

Being vegan doesn’t necessarily mean healthy eating. You could eat junk and miss out on vital nutrients whether you are non-vegetarian, vegetarian or vegan. 

To understand better, I attended a workshop by SHARAN, or Sanctuary for Health and Reconnection to Animals and Nature. This organisation, helmed by Dr Nandita Shah, is devoted to spreading awareness about holistic health and living a sustainable and compassionate life. 

The workshop reiterated my concerns with dairy. Not only were we consuming a “growth serum” needed to fatten up a 45 kg calf to a 450 kg adult bovine, with it we were also ingesting hormones, pus cells and antibiotics fed to the animals. 

The impact of animal and animal product consumption on our planet and human health is no secret. The cruelty in these industries isn’t either. So why do we continue? 

The planet first 

SHARAN celebrates a whole foods, plant-based lifestyle, which at its crux advises you to “eat how nature gives” — whole, unrefined or minimally refined ingredients. Simply put, coconut instead of coconut oil, dates instead of sugar or jaggery, brown rice instead of white, and whole wheat instead of maida. 

I started cooking oil-free, adding more coconut, sesame and groundnuts in gravies and even parathas to add healthy fats. I use few refined ingredients, if at all. At restaurants, we eat plant-based vegan meals that may or may not have refined ingredients. This has made the transition easier and sustainable for us as a family.

As a transitioning vegan, I needed to find dairy alternatives for my coffee and curd for my meals. Dairy alternatives are easy to make and cheaper if made at home. When I started my vegan journey, I, too, made plant-based milk, curd and cheese at home, but recently, I’ve sought options that could be procured with little effort. 

My morning cup of coffee needed a dash of milk. After trying oat milk, cashew milk, coconut milk and soy milk, I settled on almond milk, which I now purchase from Planet 1st. 

Chirag Tandon, founder of Planet 1st, started his journey towards veganism more than 20 years ago. “I passed a butcher outside Bandra station… saw chickens hanging without the skin… I stood there for 30 minutes to see how the chicken came to my plate. That very day, I decided to stop (eating) non-vegetarian food, but continued with dairy and eggs.”

“While I was proud I wasn’t harming animals, I was a hypocrite by consuming dairy and eggs,” he says, adding that as a result, he decided to keep animals and animal products off his plate. 

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Chirag says he became passionate about understanding dairy alternatives after the birth of his child. He didn’t want her growing up on cow’s milk, or plant-based milks available in the market, as many had preservatives, thickeners, and additives, and came in packaging that couldn’t be reused or recycled easily. Almond milk has a short shelf life, which didn’t make business sense. He decided to use the proprietary thermal process method that allows a sealed bottle of plant milk to stay good for 10 to 12 days. Once opened, it needs to be consumed in 2-3 days.

Planet 1st began operations in February 2021 and offers almond, cashew, coconut, nut-seed and millet milk in 500 ml glass bottles, supplied once a week. Empty bottles are picked up at the next delivery. Planet 1st’s almond milk claims to have 13% almonds compared to the 3-5% in branded almond milk. At Rs 285 a litre, almond milk is an expensive alternative to dairy milk. The Planet 1st team has worked on a millet milk that is healthy and competitively priced at Rs 85 a litre. 

‘Where do you get your protein?’ 

My next hurdle in going plant-based was curd. I learnt to make groundnut curd at SHARAN, but that didn’t suit my palate. I came across a recipe for groundnut curd by Susmitha — better known as ‘Veganosaurus’ on Instagram — and her method of steaming the groundnut milk changed the final output. The emulsification of groundnut oil into the water resulted in thick, creamy curd. This became my go-to recipe. When One Good’s groundnut curd became available in Mumbai, I moved to that. 

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Abhay Rangan, the founder of One Good, formerly Good Mylk, has had an amazing journey as an entrepreneur, fuelled by passion and the fervent need to help people move to plant-based living. His parents made the shift to veganism many years ago, inspiring him and his sister to follow. 

The shift was easy, he says, as his mother made all the alternatives and ensured neither taste nor health was sacrificed. They wanted to do more for the cause, “an ambitious family,” Abhay says. The mother-son duo started delivering vegan products across Bengaluru, sowing the seeds for One Good. 

Abhay says the foundation of his company is being affordable and accessible. “The excuse I would often hear was that veganism is expensive for me, because the alternatives are expensive. We thought we’ll have one alternative that prevents people from making excuses.”

One Good, which started out of a kitchen, is today one of the foremost plant-based food companies in India. Apart from plant-based curd, milk, butter, cheese, it also has plant-based dressings, plant protein, supplements and chocolate. Over the last few months, they have offered freshly made cashew oat milk to certain localities in Bengaluru. As Abhay puts it, “We are expanding pin-code to pin-code.” 

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Given the niche products and low-density demand spread across the country, one of the biggest challenges faced by plant-based entrepreneurs is cold-chain logistics. 

Vijay Pandey of Health on Plants (HOP), another Bengaluru-based company, knows this all too well. When I asked him about the limited availability of HOP products in Mumbai, he mentioned the challenges of the cold chain. 

The most frequent question vegans are asked is, “Where do you get your protein?” If you eat a well-balanced whole foods plant-based diet, you get sufficient proteins, but athletes like Vijay need more. 

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Vijay’s journey into veganism began in 2009, when he attended a session by SHARAN. Over the course of that year, he turned vegan. As an athlete, he needed to fuel his ultra marathons. He didn’t have confidence in the plant protein powders available in India. If he upped his lentil intake, the total calorie intake would go up. In order to up his proteins but stay fit and lean, he looked towards tofu, which contains essential amino acids, is low on carbs, and a good source of calcium.

Tofu is made using a simple process, but it’s not easily scalable, and the product is highly perishable. The complaints about most brands in the market was the rubbery, bland taste. Vijay felt there was a need to customise tofu for the Indian palate. “Indians tend to consume tofu with their curries, a replacement for paneer. So what you get in Southeast Asia may not gel with our Indian culinary sensibilities.” 

So he “started reading about different methods, and how it’s made in China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and America.” 

With the tandoori tofu variant, I think, HOP has thrown the issue of compatibility with Indian cuisine right out of the window. One of the popular HOP variants, this pre-marinated tofu lends itself to Indian cuisines, even vegan biryani, which is a regular at my home — made with HOP tandoori tofu and One Good Curd. 

HOP also offers tempeh, a protein super-house, as well as two plant-based curds, soy milk, cheese, and ready-to-cook products like tofu koftas, burger patties and momos. Recently, HOP re-launched Soy Milk — or as they call it, a Soy Drink — which they say doesn’t have the additives, thickeners, oils, sweeteners and comes with the promise to not taste beany. This is available in major cities across India when purchased from the HOP website, and hopefully soon in local stores.

‘Where do you get vegan products?’ 

Online grocers like Big Basket stock limited vegan alternatives. Enter specialist grocers like Rare Earth and Greend India in Mumbai, Plantarium in Hyderabad, Earth Story in Chennai, and online marketplaces like Vvegano, Vegandukaan and vegan-friendly ones like Urban Platter. 

Greend India was a boon for me. When brands have a limited distribution network, delivery charges make it expensive for a small family unit, and specialist stores like Greend step in. 

Sephra Abraham started Greend India in 2019 as a young, 25-year-old vegan. Sephra came across veganism while living in Spain. “It is a mind game,” she says. “The minute I made my decision, I never went back.” 

In 2016-2017, the vegan community in Mumbai was small, so she had few options to purchase vegan products. That led to the idea of a platform for vegans. She started as an e-commerce platform in 2019, and opened the physical store in March 2021. Greend India is the second such physical store in Mumbai, with the other popular one being Rare Earth, opened in 2019 by Shammi Sethi. 

Sephra believes the plant-based movement is blooming, people want choices, good quality products hence the growing number of startups in the plant-based food industry. Business is good, Sephra says, with the afterglow from the success of the Sustaina-Bash held on 26th February 2023 in Mumbai. Curated by Greend India, the Sustaina-Bash & Vegan Pop-up had over 15 vegan plant-based food companies, lifestyle and fashion brands, a special vegan menu and a live band at the rooftop bar of a popular restaurant.

At one such similar pop-up market, I chanced upon Break of Dawn. Pardita Mascarenhas, the founder, went vegan in 2015. She realised there were many stumbling blocks to staying on course. For her, it was the lack of good quality and affordable dairy alternatives.

She started making almond milk for herself, her family and friends. The appreciation she received gave birth to Break of Dawn in June 2017. Pardita wanted to offer fellow vegans, transitioning vegans and health conscious people “fresh preservative-free, stabiliser-free almond milk at their doorstep at the crack of dawn”. Her guiding thought was, “If dairy milk can be delivered at your doorstep, then why not almond milk?” Hence, the name. 

In the five-and-a-half years since its inception, BOD has become well-known for plant-based, oil-free feta cheese, parmesan, ‘nogurt’, tzatziki, granola, crackers, bliss balls, and the recently launched luscious cream cheese. 

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With sobriquets like “doodhwali”, “feta aunty” and “almond queen”, Pardita believes, “If food isn’t tasty, we will not succeed in helping people transition.” I’m not surprised that over 80% of her customers aren’t vegan or even lactose intolerant, they simply love BOD for the freshness, quality ingredients and superior taste.

Another brand that got me my favourite guilty pleasure is Nomou. This Mumbai based ice-cream brand was started by Hemali Gala and Samir Pasad in 2020. Nomou is a rich, creamy ice-cream offering 21 flavours and made with coconut milk or cream, soy or almond milk and sweetened with palm sugar, which has a lower glycemic index than refined sugar. Nomou had me hooked for their taste and clean label.

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The first step 

This move to vegan plant-based living might feel like a tectonic shift, because food is ingrained into our memories, sense of belonging, and associations with home. Who doesn’t have a family favourite to lean on after a hard day? 

This journey, therefore, depends on alternatives. When I shifted to a plant-based lifestyle in 2018, India was waking up to veganism and many entrepreneurs were starting to offer vegan plant-based alternatives. This made it easier for transitioning vegans like me. If you are tempted to start your journey towards compassionate living, then begin with foods that are purely for pleasure, and not for sustenance. 

Surely, these shouldn’t be at the pain or suffering of a sentient being? As beautifully encapsulated by Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Written by Bhavani; Edited by Divya Sethu

“Statistics say that there’s one person with autism for every 60 people,” notes Parul Kumtha, a parent advocate for autism, in her TEDx talk ‘Inclusion: A Celebration of Diversity’. This means that there could be one in our locality, school, or even workplace. 

The definition of autism has undergone a paradigm shift from 1911 to 2013 — from being thought of as a childhood condition to our current day understanding of it as a spectrum condition. 

“Most people with autism are like you and me,” explains Parul. “What sets them apart is their different ways of perceiving the world — they think, sense and feel differently.” This shouldn’t be understood as a deficit, but rather a strength, as it breaks the neurotypical pattern of being and paves way for out-of-the-box methods of doing things. 

This World Autism Awareness Month, let’s get to know autism better, especially from the point of view of how adults with autism find their space in the world of work and livelihood. 

While around 10-20% of the world population comprises neurodivergent people, it is estimated that 85% of them are unemployed. This data is from a study by Deloitte USA, because no such data exists for India. This not only sheds light on the scant awareness around autism, but also the lack of neurodivergent inclusive practices at workplaces in the country. 

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is just a different way of being.  

In their quest to adapt to the traditional organisational ecosystem, which is often not the neurodivergent way of being, people with autism and other neurodivergent conditions experience a magnitude of challenges in accessing education, work and just going about their everyday lives. Societal stigma, limited awareness and access to reasonable accommodations like quiet zones at work, or flexible deadlines and different shift timings, have been unable to accommodate people with autism. In turn, they struggle to understand, accept and assimilate into neurotypical ways of being. 

Why inclusion is not a compromise 

“There has been a realisation that diversifying the workplace brings forth specific unique skills such as creative thinking, problem-solving and orientation to detail, [as well as] sustained working for repetitive jobs that follow a routine,” says Renu Muralidharan, Ex. Lead of Access Ability BRG (Disability and Caregiver Resource Group) at J P Morgan Services India Pvt Ltd.

Meanwhile, Radhika, who leads neurodiversity practice at v-shesh — an impact enterprise that prepares job seekers with opportunities and organisations with disability inclusion — notes, “People with autism can be found in diverse fields, ranging from corporates to startups. They can be chefs, artists, music producers, singers, dancers, writers, and poets, and can take on any role and be successful in that. It is important that whatever they do makes them happy.”

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Success doesn’t always mean a white-collar job at a multinational. It looks different for each person. What is important is ensuring that they can live up to their potential.

It is also important for employers to consider a holistic inclusive hiring process to truly open the workplace to such candidates. These most often include some very basic changes in processes, rooted in understanding the challenges faced by the candidate, tapping trigger points in the environment and the hiring process, and coming up with ways to include them into the organisational ecosystem. “Flexibility in no way means a compromise, lowering standards, or providing preferential treatment to get that tick in the box. Such practices cannot scale for a corporation,” says Renu.

Inclusion enablers like v-shesh have been actively engaging with employers to adapt their selection processes by moving away from formal interviews to more structured interaction (case study based or work trial based). This ensures that rather than focusing only on communication and interpersonal skills, or the ability to adhere to the traditional office space and routine, we need to focus on whether the individual can perform the core tasks required in the job role. 

Maria, a trainer at v-shesh, says, “We train them for jobs, not by pushing them to fit into an office setup, but by simulating a safe and formal environment which they themselves mould into. This gives them the confidence and preparedness to join the workforce.”

The process can also benefit from a conversation with the parents or caregivers to understand the candidate’s learning process, trigger points, social skills and other behavioural patterns. This helps in ensuring that the candidate’s needs are taken into consideration, and that they are included in the workplace fully. 

There’s no single way of being 

An important aspect of ensuring an inclusive work ecosystem is the training and sensitisation of peers after the candidate has joined the workforce. This involves imparting general awareness on neurodiversity as well as a candidate-specific briefing only for the manager and concerned buddy. This fulfils two purposes — it helps the peers know the candidate’s needs better and accommodate them in a suitable manner; and allows the candidates to know that they can be themselves and share their accommodation needs.

Providing reasonable accommodations and individualised workplace solutions can make work a more positive experience. These can include work trials to help the employer and candidate get comfortable with each other; use of assistive technology, buddy and mentor support systems; mental health support at work to navigate stressful situations; and support in career progression and advancement, which can be encouraged by simple, achievable goals, and offering frequent reviews and feedback sessions to assist candidates with areas of concern. 

“So, one thing we should remember is to never generalise and accept each individual as they are”, says Mihir Kapse, a person with autism who graduated from IIM-Bangalore two years ago. Therefore, while adopting an inclusive hiring approach is an important step, it must be tailored to fit the needs of individual candidates.

“Individuals on the autism spectrum can flourish in an equitable and welcoming work environment, thereby avoiding underemployment and undervaluation,” says Shweta, a trainer at v-shesh. 

Aside from employers, candidates and their peers, parents and caregivers, and educational institutions also play a significant role in laying the foundation for inclusion at the workplace. This can be done by sensitising students, teachers and staff; understanding the needs of candidates with autism and neurodivergence; and supporting them through placements and internships. 

In this age and time when careers are blooming, the need of the hour is to realise that there’s no single way of being, and extract the most potential out of human diversity to flourish as a society. It is important to be aware of and sensitive to people’s needs and make workplaces safe, accessible and inclusive.

Written by Kavya Mukhija and Vaishnavi Ganesh of v-shesh Learning Services Private Limited; Edited by Divya Sethu

A decade ago, when Dibyajyoti Borgohain decided to quit her prestigious job at an international school in Hyderabad, she was quite determined to start something of her own. 

Coming from a family of regular professionals, she had very little knowledge about entrepreneurship and enrolled herself in an entrepreneurship development programme, where her life took a new dimension. 

During the course she met Madhavi Pomar, a nutrition expert from Tirupati, with whom she found common ground in wanting to provide nutritious food to their children, which became the motivation behind their millet-based food processing company Rigdam Foods.

In 2014, the duo entered the startup world with this venture, and found it to be a different ballgame. 

“You are never too old to set another goal, I firmly believe in this,” the quadragenarian tells The Better India.

She continues, “During our course, we would talk about the rising unhealthy food habits, especially among the children. As mothers, we were concerned about our children’s health. While working at school, I noticed many children suffering from obesity and type-I diabetes.” 

The duo decided to work on the super crop millet, which, despite centuries old, was on the verge of going extinct. Dibyajyoti shares that hailing from Assam, she did not have much idea about millets. But when she learned about its benefits, she immediately zeroed in on the crop. 

Learning the primary knowhow of millets from Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), Dibyajyoti and Madhavi opened the venture with the savings from their previous jobs. The venture was incubated under research institutes like Agri Innovation Platform – ICRISAT;  NutriHub – IIMR; and NSRCEL-IIM Bangalore.

The tool to tackle malnutrition

Speaking about the innovations of the product, Dibyajoti notes, “When we started experimenting with the products, we realised that children will want tasty food. So we came up with a wide range of innovative millet items such as choco balls, biscuits, breakfast bars, nutri-bars, and so on. All our items are safe, hygienic, and use 20-25% less oil compared to other fast foods.”

When Rigdam started its journey, they would collaborate with farmers to make their products. The food sold by the brand is designed and conceptualised by the duo, but to avoid high costs of setting up a manufacturing unit, they now collaborate with third-party manufacturers for production. 

“The prices of Rigdam snacks are what makes it out of the box,” Dibyajyoti explains, adding that all the products are priced between Rs 10 and Rs 50. “Our main aim is to provide customers pocket-friendly, on-the-go-healthy snacks items.”

Rigdam Foods, in collaboration with the Assam Agriculture Department, has also supplied around 1,000 millet baskets to national and international delegates attending the G-20 meetings in Assam. Dibyajyoti feels lucky to contribute to her home state through the venture.

“Working in this sector from the last few years, we have witnessed that malnutrition is not just a problem among the economically weaker section. Rather, it is also present among middle-class and higher income sections. It is because people lack a nutritious diet, and there is more prevalence of junk foods among youngsters. The quick food delivery apps are contributing to people eating more outside food, which is usually more tasty, but less healthy,” she adds.

The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 5 India Report 2022 states that 35.5% of children below the age of five in India are stunted, and 32.1% are underweight. Millet is a whole-grain crop that can help tackle these issues with all round development — FSSAI says that the food contains 7-12 % protein, 2-5 % fat, 65-75% carbohydrates and 15-20% dietary fibre. It is also high in calcium, zinc, fibre, and iron, and can go a long way in alleviating malnutrition.

“We want a better world where everyone gets quality and healthy foods. We can proudly vouch that our sincerity, dedication and hard work has shown results. Our turnover was over Rs 24 lakh last year, and in the International Year of Millets (2023), we are looking forward to reaching more and more people,” Dibyajoti says.

The rise of millet 

Madhavi explains, “Our journey was quite different, as well as eventful. We started with the thought of wanting children to eat healthy and nutritious food, but with time, we learned a lot more. People also accepted and showed tremendous trust in us. This took our confidence to a next level.”

Madhavi feels that her previous stint as a research scholar in National Institution of Nutrition has helped her a lot in designing the products in Rigdam. Meanwhile, she opines that Dibyajyoti is equally passionate about developing different nutritious products.

For the duo, customer satisfaction is a priority. Till date, they have served more than 20,000 customers from various parts of the country. 

One customer, Dr Sandamita Deka, shares, “The millet products produced by Rigdam Foods are highly nutritious, yet tasty. I have been using their products for the last two years. Being a doctor, I always prefer healthy foods. Rigdam’s cookies and choco balls work best.” 

The duo further says there has been a sharp increase on the use of millets. People are slowly learning that millets provide both food and nutrition security. In fact, the production of millets increased from 14.52 million tonnes in 2015-16 to 17.96 million tonnes in 2020-21. India is among the top five exporters of the crop in the world. The crop is also easier to grow, for it needs less water and can sprout in even extremely dry seasons. 

The pride of Assam

In an attempt to make millet more popular, Rigdam Foods helped the Government of Assam set up a first-of-its-kind ‘Millet Cafe’ at Assam Secretariat, Dispur, by collaborating with local women entrepreneurs as technical and knowledge partners.

Surobhi Borgohain, the proprietor of the Millet Cafe, says, “Rigdam has tremendously supported me in opening this shop. Dibyajyoti is a great teacher and leader, and has efficiently provided all technical support to the cafe.”

At the Millet Cafe, Surobhi sells millet payokh (kheer), khidchi, pasta, noodles, and jolpan (a traditional Assamese breakfast), and earns around Rs 2,000 per day. She also plans to open another shop in Guwahati and engage with more local farmers. 

Meanwhile, Dr Pranab Kumar Mahanta, agriculture adviser, APART (Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project), notes, “It is really a matter of pride to see Dibyajyoti, a woman from Assam, working at such an extensive level on millets in Hyderabad.” 

He adds that 15 districts of the state — Kokrajhar, Dhubri, Goalpara, Bongaigaon, Baksa, Udalguri, Barpeta, Kamrup, Nagaon, Morigaon, Sonitpur, Karbi Anglong, Jorhat, Golaghat, and Tinsukia — have been selected for production of finger millet, foxtail millet and proso millet.

As per Dr Mahanta, in states like Assam, the awareness on millets is rising slowly but steadily. Millet crops are beneficial because they need less fertiliser, water and can grow in any weather condition, so we believe in the coming days more farmers will also get associated with the initiative.

As for Dibyajyoti and Madhavi, Rigdam has changed their lives, they say “It is respect more than money that we have earned,” Dibyajyoti notes. “My message to the upcoming women entrepreneurs is believe in yourself, keep trying with patience and persuasion, and success will definitely be yours.” 

Rigdam Foods is available in Amazon. You can also reach them at rigdamfoods@gmail.com; info@rigdamfoods.com. For more information, visit their website or Facebook.

Written by Sayantani Deb; Edited by Divya Sethu

Sources:

Millets in PDS a game changer for combating malnutrition, climate change: Written by Abhijit Mohanty, Bindu Mohanty for Down to Earth; Published on 27 January 2023

What NFHS-5 Data Shows: 1 in 3 Children below 5 Years of Age are Stunted, Underweight: Written by Shobha Suri for News18; Published on November 2021

A brightly painted auto rickshaw, with no driver, has two visitors seated inside, listening to Indie pop from the early years of contemporary rock music. Adjacent to it is a space dimly lit and adorned with temple bells hanging from the ceiling and pillars, inscribed with Vedic hymns. Sonorous chants from the Vedas echo around. The sounds contrast, even as strains of the musical notes seamlessly merge.

Folk songs and classical ragas, playback singers and Bharat Ratna artistes, freedom struggle and popular films — the seemingly disparate sections rub shoulders merrily here at a one-of-its-kind Indian music museum in Bengaluru. Revealing the wide diversity and history of Indian music, the Indian Music Experience (IME) museum is an awe-inspiring tribute and treasure trove.

A nation whose dance and music tradition dates back to over 2,000 years deserves this and more. There is, of course, the Sangeet Natak Academy, but it focuses more on performances — this was the thought that M R Jaishankar, the chairman of Brigade Group of Real Estate Developers, found himself thinking. But India needed something that also showcased the rich history of music, he realised while visiting the Grammy museum in Los Angeles. Roughly ten years later, his dream came true, and the IME was open to the public. 

“The Indian Music Experience music came into being as a community development initiative,” Jaishankar explains. “Though I’m not a connoisseur, I’m passionate about music: be it Western classical, Carnatic or Bollywood songs of yesteryears. I wanted to create something that will make the younger generation aware of India’s rich heritage in art and culture.” 

He continues, “This need was further driven home when I visited museums in the West and realised that Indian culture is far richer. In Seattle, I saw the Jimmy Hendrix museum, and that made me think that if a whole museum can be dedicated to a single musician, India, which has thousands of musicians, also needed a museum to showcase its heritage.” 

“IME, promoted by the Indian Music Experience Trust, is doing a creditable job of nurturing various forms of music. We wanted an interactive approach so everyone could craft their own unique experience when engaging with the exhibits.”

‘Can you imagine a world without music?’

This question is posed to the visitors at IME on the storyboards that adorn its walls. Pause and think. Beginning with a mother’s lullaby to the chants recited at a funeral, our lives are interwoven with musical tones, melodies and rhythms for every occasion and every mood. Whether we use it to communicate like in folk songs, or to emote as a lover does, celebrate a cricket win, or add to the gaiety of a wedding, we cannot do it without beats and notes. Music has also been used to inspire the masses into social action. All these notions come alive at the museum.

What makes IME unique is the interactive aspect of the museum, with its touchscreen display and headphone sets in each section. Here, you not only explore artists and genres, but also find the opportunity to learn the different facets of music, thanks to IME’s learning centre, which offers classes in Indian classical music, western and instrumental music.

The museum has three sections — galleries, sound garden and the learning centre. Three floors house nine galleries, and sport many storyboards with vignettes of music information, artefacts from the lives of renowned Bharat Ratna artistes, documentary films, and much more. If you have the time to spare — at least half a day — you can read lesser known and interesting stories. For example, how the harmonium came to India, or the first words to ever be recorded and played back.

Designed by internationally renowned Gallagher & Associates, who designed the Grammy Museum, IME is an aesthetic feast for the eye and ear. From the huge posters of Bengaluru’s youth haunts like Brigade Road and Commercial Street, to the inset bioscopes displaying Bollywood songs from across time, the visual art accompanying the folk music, and the ‘Gallery of Stars’ with massive billboards guaranteed to ring in nostalgia, a lot of thought has gone into the design of this museum.

Art in progress 

One of the aims of the museum is to make Indian music accessible and lovable to the youth. “We have achieved that. On an average we have the most number of young people among the visitors,” notes Preema John, the director of IME museum.

That may explain why the galleries start with one on ‘Contemporary Expressions’, covering Indian pop and fusion music and the cacophony symbolised by the autorickshaw. After that, the chronology falls in place, ending with the Legends Gallery, a treat for music lovers.

“It took around ten long years of raising funds, doing the research, design and building,” points out Preema. “The institution is one of the rarest of its kind to have been conceptualised, built and opened. So many experts were involved in the work. For instance, for the section ‘Songs of Struggle’, we worked with Sumangala Damodaran, who has over 15 years of research experience on songs of resistance.” Similarly, for each section, scholars were involved.

Preema, who took over the baton from Carnatic vocalist Manasi Prasad last October, is a student of art with an expertise in arts administration and curating. A JNU student of art history and art criticism, she has worked across the country for various arts projects, also having run the show at the Kochi Biennale.

Yet another innovative aspect of the museum is that it encourages volunteer docents. Trained by IME, they help with school tours and free weekend tours of the museum. The youngest is 15, and the oldest an 82-year-old enthusiast from the nearby Brigade community. “We see them as extensions of our community at the museum. We see the museum as a community space,” says Preema.

The IME is a piece of art in progress, “with so much to still do”, she notes. 

“Like everything else, the way music is used and performed keeps changing and we need to keep abreast of contemporary changes and update our exhibits. By the end of the year we plan to have a section on tribal music, which is an inalienable part of our music traditions. While we have permanent exhibits and robust programmes in schedule, we plan to provide artistes space to talk of new strains of music and also about production of music.”

Right now there is one performance every week. The plan is to have two major events annually.

What can you expect? 

Beginning with an introduction to Indian classical music and going back to the Vedas more than 2,000 years ago, the galleries cover Music of Dance, Carnatic, Hindustani, ghazals, folk music, and end with filmy music. From Indian rock bands to classical music, you can be transported to any mood you seek. Basic concepts of sruti, raga, tala, gharana, dhrupad, and so on are explained. Visitors can check out their pitch and the more adventurous can even compose their music.

My favourite was the enclosure titled ‘Samay Chakra’, which depicts the time of day or season allotted to various ragas in Hindustani music. Seated in the dim lit room, playing one of the spellbinding notes from Tansen’s compositions, with clouds chasing one another on the ceiling, it was easy to go into a mesmerised trance.

In the folklore section, the Rajasthani kavad box is fascinating with the storytelling tradition it unfurls with each window that opens out. Do not skip the storyboard of ‘A Story and a Song’ which is enchanting in its plot and message. Here, you can sample songs from across the country, talking of birth, death, weddings and festivals. Touchscreens let you hear the sound made by each instrument, featuring around a 100. The ‘Songs of Struggle’ transport you to the pre-Independence era — you can hear the sounds and speeches of freedom fighters, or the many versions of Vande Mataram.

From kinds of music and instruments, the museum goes on to touch on the inventions of phonograph, gramophone, microphone and leading to today’s digital age, with a studio where you can sing a Bollywood number and get the recording mailed to you. Amazing stories of women musicians of yore, who recorded with the Gramophone Company a hundred years ago, will come as a surprise. Why haven’t we heard of these path breakers, one wonders? 

Thomas Alva Edison’s narration of the first ever recording, and the playback of the sound, can transport the imaginative visitor back in time. It was a popular nursery rhyme. Check out which that was.

All through the journey, delightful visual leitmotifs adorn the floor in a play of light and shadow.

Emerging from the cocoon of music, into the front yard of the museum, the science of music entices the visitor to put his head into a hollow in the rock and hum away. Frequency and resonance chapters of physics come alive, and you can study the varying sounds in different media — wood, brass, aluminium or stone. The Sound Garden was developed by Foley Designs, with concepts coming from Swaram, an organisation from Auroville.

The museum cost around Rs 40 crore to build and most of the money came from sponsors, both institutional and individuals, alongside grants from the Ministry of Culture and the state government. Among those involved with the project for the longest time, beside the founder, was veena maestro Dr Suma Sudhindra and Carnatic vocalist Manasi Prasad.

Meanwhile, the learning centre presently has around 171 students pursuing a 5-year diploma course, with 12 teachers who come in for sessions. The centre also offers mrudangam, keyboard, drums and guitar classes. Both online and offline classes are available at subsidised rates, says the director, adding that the IME is looking at university affiliations. Another plan on the anvil is to start short term music appreciation classes for adults with some inclination towards music. Through project ‘Svarita’, the museum takes music into the lives of socially disadvantaged children. 

Entrance tickets are priced at Rs 150 and 250 during weekdays and weekends respectively, with a discount for seniors and kids. Bengaluru residents who are often in a fix when it comes to entertaining guests with holiday spots can count on IME. It is a day well spent, unless you suffer from anhedonia.

(For more details visit https://indianmusicexperience.org/)

Written by Jaya K; Edited by Divya Sethu

When B Anusha was in Class 7, her physical education (PE) teacher encouraged her to play for her school in the Rural Cricket Tournament for Girls, hosted by Anantapur Sports Academy (ASA). 

Anusha comes from a remote village called Bandlapalli in Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh. Her parents are farmers who have a small plot of land, and her father also works as a tractor driver for hire. Playing sports seriously was not considered an option for her. But the then 13-year-old left-arm spinner was named the best player of the tournament and received a scholarship from ASA to attend their residential academy.  

Anusha, now 20, has since played for the Andhra Pradesh Under-16, Under-19, and Women’s Senior State teams. 

“Playing sports at ASA has helped [me] in many ways,” she says. “It made me more confident than I ever was. It gave me exposure and financial help through playing for the senior State team, which I needed …Alongside, playing sports at ASA has given me the opportunity to train in one of the best cricket facilities in the state as I was able to improve cricketing skills.”

Anusha is currently in her third year of under-graduation at PVKK Degree College, where she is pursuing a B Com in computers. But her dream is “to continue to play cricket at a higher level and [one day] represent the Indian women’s team.” 

A major emphasis on the grassroots 

ASA is part of the Rural Development Trust (RDT), which has been working in communities in Andhra Pradesh for over 50 years. In the late 70s and 80s, the Trust taught kabaddi to encourage children to be active, but this was done in an informal way. Sport became a formal, and integral, part of its programmes only in the late 90s. That’s when the ASA was born. Over time, the ASA programmes have expanded to include eight sports — cricket, football, hockey, judo, tennis, kabaddi, softball and, most recently, archery. 

“In the beginning, our programme used to provide financial and material support to teams travelling out to participate in tournaments,” Moncho Ferrer, programme director of RDT, says. “Later on, we started organising events such as grassroots level tournaments and camps to ensure children access their fundamental right to play in a safe and quality playing space, which later grew to a year-long programme with an emphasis on holistic development of children at all levels of the programme.”

The organisation’s programmes follow a traditional pyramid structure. At the bottom is their grassroots programme, which is conducted entirely in government schools in each community. Then there are the development centres, and at the top sits the residential programme, which is based at the ASA sports village that was built between 2000 and 2002. 

“The major emphasis lies on the grassroots,” Sai Krishna Pulluru, executive director of ASA, says. “All the sports have a grassroots programme except tennis. We also have around 104 or 105 [development] centres, which include youth clubs, government schools, and sports centres.”

According to Pulluru, the difference between the grassroots and development centres is that the latter have their own physical infrastructure, such as computer labs and classrooms, and they provide English classes as well as nutrition. The residential programme at Anantapur Sports Village is for children who have the potential to excel at sport. 

ASA also runs leagues from August to December for each of their sports where matches are held every Sunday. The rural cricket tournament is the longest-running league, and arguably the organisation’s crown jewel. According to Pulluru, over 100 villages used to participate in the tournament, with the final being held in Anantapur at a pristine cricket ground. However, it was recently restructured and now features 16 teams each in U-12 mixed-gender, U-16 and U-19 age categories. It has also been renamed the Ananta Premier League (APL).

ASA also runs an athletics meet exclusively for girls. 

“In these leagues, we scout talent and provide full scholarship — academics, boarding and lodging, and access to competition — to whoever can pursue this,” says Pulluru. 

‘Joy and happiness’

The programmes have been tailored for children ranging between the ages of 6 and 18. Over time, life skills were added to the programmes, for instance, a coach may conduct a session on topics such as communication, inequality, or gender awareness. 

Pulluru estimates that 6,700 children were part of the programme at the beginning of the season, and roughly 1.5 lakh have gone through the programme over the years. 

“It is a dream for me to be part of this kind of programme,” he notes. “When I finish my work, step out of my office, and watch the children playing, I can see the real joy on their faces. That is what gives me a sense of joy and happiness. That is one thing that really drives me.”

In 2016-17, ASA started a mixed-gender festival where girls and boys compete together, though this is reserved only for younger children. The age depends on the sport — for cricket it is U-12, for football under-9, and for softball U-14. Participants are brought to a single location once in two months and the festival is held over two days, with the final round being played at the Anantapur Sports Village. 

Y Lahari, a 12-year-old from Dharmavaram, was first introduced to ASA when he played in the mixed-gender U-9 football cup a few years ago. In 2021, at the age of 11, he was given a scholarship to attend the academy. 

“I like playing [football] because I can make a lot of new friends and also visit other places,” Lahari says. “I can maintain fitness by playing sports regularly.” He credits ASA with teaching him new skills such as teamwork and communication, as well as values such as respect and fair play. 

“I am interested in refereeing,” he adds. “I want to become a professional FIFA referee where I can referee national and international matches.”

ASA relies mainly on volunteer coaches and physical education teachers – “They are the backbone of the programme,” Pulluru says. The programme has also created a pathway for participants to become coaches. “Not everyone can make it to the next level. To build a sports culture, you need more coaches.” 

ASA encourages those who are interested to join the one-year Youth Leadership Programme and become volunteer or shadow coaches. As part of the programme, they are given the chance to organise events and conduct workshops. ASA then supports those who complete the programme and wish to become professional coaches by helping them get their coaching licences from the various state associations.

In particular, ASA wants to increase the number of female coaches in rural areas. “Though there is still a long way to go, it’s worth noting the changing perceptions among the wider community (particularly parents, teachers) about boys and girls equally playing sports,” Ferrer says. “The programme has enabled youth to gain skills to enhance their higher education and livelihood opportunities, particularly as a coach and/or a referee.” 

‘Sports made me who I am today’ 

One of those coaches is P Hindu Kumar (24). He was selected for the residential programme as a 14-year-old in 2014 and is now a coach with the organisation. He comes from a village called D Honnur, and says his parents were “very happy” when he was selected, because it meant he would get a good education and could also keep playing sports. 

“Sport made me who I am today,” Kumar said. “It gave me a career opportunity as a coach, [and] I learned a lot through playing sport; most importantly believing in myself and in my team, and helping each other to achieve a goal, which are the most important aspects in any part of life or profession.”

The programme also taught him to develop empathy, he says. “[The] programme supported me when I was in need, as I come from a family where my parents are farmers and daily wage workers,” Kumar says. “Today I can display the same qualities as a person and professional working with children who have the same background as mine.”  

To measure the outcomes of its programmes, ASA uses different parameters for each level of their pyramid – Grassroots, League and Empower. At the grassroots level, they use the number of the children they have in the programme plus the number of clubs they have set up. In the case of the leagues, which are open to all the clubs, they measure the number of children who participate from each club in the league. At the empower level, they track the number of youth leaders and volunteers in the programme, as well as the number of internships and employment opportunities that they can facilitate.

ASA also uses a socio-emotional development index to track qualities such as self-esteem and self-confidence among the children, as well as social skills such as communication and relationship building. The organisation has also developed a gender equality index that at the programme level factors in the number of female coaches, the ratio of girls to boys in each centre, and the overall ratio of girls to boys across all their programmes. ASA also has a section on gender in its questionnaire for children between the ages of 10 to 15 that aims to measure their perception of gender equality. Students must rate how much they agree or disagree with statements, such as “I believe members of the opposite gender can equally participate in sport” and “I believe everyone is equal”. 

As far as funding goes, ASA benefits from being part of the Rural Development Trust, which has its own sources of revenue. On top of that, the academy has project partners such as the La Liga Foundation and the Rafael Nadal Foundation. However, according to Pulluru, funding from corporates remains challenging because of a lack of information on how they can use CSR funds in tribal and rural areas.

“In the early years of ASA, many had questioned what an NGO had to do with sports, but now we see numerous sports for development programs doing great work across India,” Ferrer says. “So, we feel humbled to see the trust we placed in a new programme back in the early 2000s has managed to evolve and grow to become this big in reaching approximately 8,000 children every year in eight different sports. Over the years, we have had numerous individual achievements, but of late, to share, I see B Anusha, recently being shortlisted for the Women’s Premier League (WPL) auction as an accomplishment for her and our programme.” 

Written by Sharba Tasneem; Edited by Divya Sethu

‘Start up, speed up, scale up’ — this is the mantra of I-Venture @ ISB. With an approach that is as comprehensive as it is intensive, all the initiatives of I-Venture @ ISB are designed to provide startups with the resources and support they need to bring their product or service to market and achieve rapid growth. 

This accelerated growth eventually opens up options for startups in terms of access to market, mentors and finances. I-Venture @ ISB’s commitment is to build and create continuous opportunities for the startup ecosystem — whether for the startups themselves, or the enablers.

Recently, the incubator has begun onboarding startups from the healthcare domain under the programme I-Heal @ ISB. It has also laid the groundwork to support edu-tech startups under the EduRise programme. This is an outcome of I-Venture@ISB’s focus on domain-specific initiatives where renowned mentors and investors from the domain would work closely with startups and fine-tune them with their expertise and experience. I-Venture @ ISB is already interacting with startups, investors, and different ecosystem enablers to bring everyone onto a platform that will assure better interaction and deeper engagement.

The recently launched second cohort of their flagship initiative, I-WIN 2.0 (Women of Innovation) brings women entrepreneurs to the fore. The last cohort, I-WIN 1.0, supported 16 women-founded/ co-founded ventures. The programme, which was conducted over a span of six months, organised a ‘Demo Day’ to mark the completion of the first cohort on 24 September 2022. 

I-WIN is already propelling women-founded/co-founded startups in their scaling-up journey by hand-holding them in every possible way. Thirteen of the 16 founders pitched their ventures to investors. This resulted in a series of discussions, deal negotiations, and finally, investments. Currently, three startups are in the final stages of closing their deals.

Professor Bhagwan Chowdhry, faculty director I-Venture @ ISB says, “It’s vital that innovation, entrepreneurship, and startups become part of the narrative in India and be seen as career options for the youth. We expect a maximum number of people to take advantage of and apply for the programmes at I-Venture @ ISB, where we are turbocharging the entrepreneurial spirit of the country.”

In addition to programmes that support and incubate, I-Venture @ ISB also hosts events that contribute to building a better startup ecosystem in the country.

For instance, I-Speak @ ISB is a platform for startups to interact with successful entrepreneurs, understand their journeys, and learn from their experiences. I-Connect is a platform for the community to get together and network. It encourages the exchange of knowledge and experience through peer learning. Similarly, I-Hustle @ ISB is a platform for startups to interact with Investors, while I-Mentor @ ISB facilitates interactions with various domain experts.

Another pioneering initiative is the Blockchain Impact Lab, a dedicated space in the ISB campus at Hyderabad, exclusively for startups working on Web3 technologies. Through the Impact Lab, I-Venture @ ISB aims to create a support system and peer learning platform that the founders can benefit from.

Saumya Kumar, director I-Venture @ ISB, says, “India has been a trailblazer when it comes to anything Web3. We have the world’s largest blockchain developer ecosystem, which puts us at an inflection point on a global stage. Internationally, our work is already being recognised for the contribution that it is making to the Web3 ecosystem. The Blockchain Lab in I-Venture @ ISB aims to leverage these opportunities and equip deep-tech blockchain startups with technical know-how, accreditation, and policy support from the government. We want to provide such training to more Web3 enthusiasts and pioneers across the country in the coming months and have already started with Web3Wednesdays in Bangalore.”

With the incubator spreading its wings beyond its parent campuses at Hyderabad and Mohali, it is now poised to take charge of the entire startup ecosystem in India. Some commendable accomplishments of I-Venture @ ISB over its first year are:

• Over 250 startups incubated, Over 50 women-led startups supported
• 28 startups have received financial assistance from I-Venture @ ISB under various schemes
• Over 100 startups have raised a follow-on round of funding
• Portfolio startups have collectively raised more than Rs 2,200 crore
• 178 mentors and domain experts onboarded from various industries
• Over 500 investors and industry connects achieved 

More details at https://i-venture.org/; Follow I-Venture @ ISB social media

The I-Venture @ ISB’s Social Impact Accelerator is a dynamic programme that is driving change and creating social impact. It is dedicated to supporting early-stage social entrepreneurs who are tackling some of the most pressing social and environmental issues of our time.

Here, social entrepreneurs receive a wealth of resources and support to help them refine their business models, develop their products and services, and prepare for growth and scale. From mentorship to training and access to funding, I-Venture @ ISB’s experienced team of advisors and mentors work closely with entrepreneurs to help them take their ventures to the next level.

What does the programme entail? 

One of the unique features of the accelerator is its focus on impact measurement and evaluation. The programme helps entrepreneurs define and measure the impact of their ventures, ensuring that they are creating real and lasting change in the world. Through this rigorous evaluation process, social entrepreneurs are equipped to create meaningful and sustainable impact and to effectively communicate their results to stakeholders.

I-Venture @ ISB also offers access to funding and investment opportunities through its extensive network of investors and partners. The accelerator has a proven track record of helping social entrepreneurs secure funding and take their ventures to the next level.

Two startups from last year’s cohort are apt examples of the kind of social impact that the accelerator has helped create. 

A sustainable future for all 

Pune-based ZeroPlast Labs, founded by Aditya Kabra and Kadhiravan Shanmuganathan, is tackling the problem of plastic waste by producing bioplastics out of agricultural waste. The startup has developed a patent-pending technology to upcycle biomass waste into bioplastics and biocomposites.

Meanwhile, Mumbai-based Aumsat Technologies, founded by Riddhish Soni, Karan Behar, and Vikram Gulecha, is addressing the critical issue of water scarcity and management. The startup is using AI-enabled hydrological analytics derived from satellite data, land data, climate data, soil moisture data, and ground-water modelling algorithms to enable rural farming communities and public utilities to accurately measure and manage the ground-water resources.

“Aumsat has, in fact, already secured funding of Rs 1 crore under ANIC by AIM, NITI Aayog. ZeroPlast Labs has also secured HDFC Bank Parivartan SmartUp Grants, along with Aumsat,” says Saumya Kumar, director of I-Venture @ ISB. “We look forward to supporting more such impactful startups.”

ZeroPlast Labs and Aumsat Technologies are just two of the several startups that have driven incredible impact with the support of the I-Venture @ ISB Social Impact Accelerator. By providing comprehensive support, the programme continues to empower entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into reality, create meaningful change in their communities and beyond, and build a more sustainable future for all. 

If you are a startup in the social impact sector that is at least a year old, and feel that you have a compelling solution, I-Venture @ ISB could help you accelerate your growth journey. This could be your opportunity to join the leagues of changemakers and change drivers in India’s startup ecosystem.

For more details, visit https://i-venture.org/social-impact-accelerator; Applications to I-Venture @ ISB’s Social Impact Accelerator 2.0 close on 31 May 2023.

Throughout Radha’s (name changed) younger life, large bruises, severe nose bleeds, heavy menstrual cycles were her “normal.” “I hated physical education classes, because my ankles and knees would swell, I was in constant pain and was labelled as ‘lazy’, as opposed to my true desire to be very athletic, but without pain.” 

Like so many others with an undiagnosed bleeding disorder, Radha and her family didn’t realise that her condition had a name — ‘Haemophilia‘.  

May 8 marks World Thalassemia Day, so let’s tread through the maze of blood disorders, and understand what they entail, how they manifest at workplaces, what accommodations can help people navigate the strenuous alleys, and how we can make workplaces more inclusive for those living with these medical conditions.   

What are blood disorders? 

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, gives disability status to three blood disorders: Thalassemia, Haemophilia, and Sickle Cell Anaemia. However, because these are invisible disabilities, it becomes tricky to navigate reasonable accommodations (provisions or changes required for PwD to perform to their fullest potential), awareness campaigns, and sensitisation attempts.  

Sickle Cell Anaemia, Thalassemia and Haemophilia are all serious blood conditions — chronic, life restricting and makes people more susceptible to several other health complications. However, each one of these can be managed with awareness, proper care, diet, medication, and by guarding against common complications. 

Shaking off a bias 

Although India houses a large population of people living with blood disorders, not much is known about them. It is estimated that 10,000-15,000 children are born with Thalassemia every year in India, who could benefit from timely diagnosis and treatment. However, the awareness of checking for blood disorders and providing appropriate treatment remains poor. Similarly, as per a report by The Financial Express, over 1.36 lakh people live with Haemophilia in India but only 13% cases have proper diagnosis. 

The fact remains that the very term ‘blood disorder’ evokes a sense of fear. The invisibility of these conditions goes on to create a major gap between those in and outside the community, making it difficult for the former to advocate for their rights, ask for required accommodations, and even explain what a blood disorder entails, to a layperson. 

The unconscious biases are the most difficult to shake off. Many people continue to be under the impression that blood disorders are debilitating conditions requiring a high level of care. Often, recruiters and managers question whether a person with a blood disorder will be able to complete their tasks at work, follow a schedule, and be available when required. This creates more anxiety in the mind of job seekers and professionals and impacts their mainstreaming. 

Aarti Batra, who lives with Thalassemia, writes in a LinkedIn Post, “I am so tired of explaining that Thalassemia is a disability”. When asked about her experiences, she tells us, “Employers often have no idea about blood disorders and the accommodation needs of people with such conditions. This perpetuates a vicious cycle of lack of awareness, lack of willingness and limited opportunities to mainstream jobs.”  

The bottom line 

The reasonable accommodations required to mainstream persons with blood disorders are rather straightforward. The first step towards doing so is building awareness about these conditions and being empathetic to the manner in which it affects the lives of those who live with the condition. 

Gagandeep Chandok who is the president of the Thalassaemia and Sickle Cell Society of Bangalore and lives with Thalassaemia, says, “People with Thalassaemia need a blood transfusion every two to three weeks, and the excess iron building up in the body needs to be removed with iron chelation medicines and subcutaneous Iron chelation injections, which is administered for a period of 10 to 12 hours time. These challenges are real and need reasonable accommodations for persons with blood disorders to get their best self to work.” 

The bottom line remains — empathy is the core ingredient in the concoction of an inclusive environment for someone living with a blood disorder. 

“Blood disorder may be a life-threatening condition, but it is not a life sentence. Though you may feel alone, there is a large community of people with blood disorders and their caregivers, medical practitioners, etc, who are there to help, guide, and educate,” says Rajasthan-based Piyush, who lives with a rare combination of Polio and Haemophilia. 

“I religiously adhered to my treatment schedule and somewhere during my growing years, Haemophilia began to fade into the background of my life, and I formed an identity outside of my condition.” 

Piyush currently works remotely with an MNC and resides in Bhilwara, Rajasthan. “But I never hid the fact that I have Haemophilia. There have been situations where in the first meeting, people have asked me what my life expectancy would be and would hiring me mean an additional financial commitment to the company,” he recalls. “Rather than getting perturbed, I have learnt to take these comments as an opportunity. My myriad experiences have taught me that people are inherently inclusive and empathetic, what is missing is awareness. Self-disclosure and self-advocacy are most important, given that people with conditions such as ours especially, cannot function in silos.” 

Lack of awareness and an enabling environment can prevent people from disclosing, accessing, or continuing in the workplace. Common best practices for an inclusive workplace include:   

• Enabling environment for self-disclosure  
• Time flexibility/adjustment in work timings, for treatment and related issues; fixed shift and fixed off/no night shift to enable managing treatment better 
• Extra leaves (over and above what is entitled) for fatigue, pain crisis, infections, hospital visits et al 
• Financial assistance for the affected person/caregiver to meet the medical expenses; revised insurance schemes  
• Posting/transfer/work travel for persons with blood disorders and their caregivers in cognisance with the knowledge that optimum treatment/emergency care (if needed) is available in select cities only 
• Access to assistive devices and technology, basis need  
• Adjustment to workplace — ergonomic furniture, temperature control, air quality/cleanliness management, etc. 

Written by v-shesh; Edited by Divya Sethu

This article is part of #MakingSportWork, a series launched by The Better India and Sports and Society Accelerator. The series celebrates India’s independence with stories of heroes who have spent years working to improve lives around them through sports. Stay tuned for inspiring tales of those who are #MakingSportWork.

When Suheil Tandon started Pro Sport Development (PSD) in 2013, he did so with the intention of helping talented underprivileged and marginalised youth pursue excellence in sports.

In India, resources for sports are the main problem, not ability.

PSD aimed to do its part to fill that gap and help develop the next generation of star athletes.

However, an incident at the start of their first project gave Tandon pause. 

A promising 15-year-old female weightlifter did not return to school after the summer holidays. When PSD asked the school authorities about her, they discovered that her family had arranged her wedding during the break. For the girl’s family, her potential weightlifting career was irrelevant to her future.

“This news hit me and the team hard,” Tandon, who is 33, says. “We were faced with some harsh realities in the context that we were working in, and it made all the sporting achievements seem inconsequential.”

In the short term, Tandon tweaked the programme to include the wider benefits of sports, but PSD was still geared towards building medal winners. By that measure, it was a success, with the athletes earning over 25 medals on the national stage. But by then Tandon had realised focusing primarily on sporting achievement in isolation would not address the larger social barriers to playing sports in India, particularly for girls. So, in 2015, PSD officially expanded its mission.

“At this point, we took a conscious and strategic decision to change our vision and move forward by utilising sports as a tool for the holistic development of young people,” Tandon says. In other words, the organisation would seek to develop a young person’s overall human potential through the promotion of an inclusive and sustainable sporting culture.

Tandon had always been passionate about sports, having played and watched multiple sports growing up, but it wasn’t until he was studying mathematics and economics in college that he discovered a career in sports was a viable option. “With some sound advice from a family friend working in the sports industry, I decided to pursue a sports management degree from Loughborough University in the UK,” he says.

That’s where his interest in developing athletes at the grassroots level first took hold, which led to the creation of PSD with the support of family and friends.

Today, PSD works in 15 states across India and has reached out to 11,412 young people, 51 per cent of whom have been girls. Its two core teams are based out of Delhi and Bhubaneshwar, respectively.

“Whenever PSD works in other states, we do so in collaboration with local organisations, while our team members from Delhi or Bhubaneswar travels to these locations,” Tandon says.

Through its activities, school children are given access to structured physical activity and sports-based programming, which in turn helps them develop soft skills such as teamwork and leadership.

PSD has also taken on the more ambitious goal of changing the perception of sports in the country. “[In India] Sports is not considered a fundamental right that all children and youth must have access to, as defined by the UN,” Tandon says. “Neither is sports considered an activity that can be utilised to drive positive change within the lives of young people and within communities.”

The impact of their work can be seen in the personality development of children such as Shibani Pradhan, whose father drives his own auto rickshaw. Pradhan was 11 when she joined the PSD program in Bhubaneswar. Now 14, a class 10 student at Saraswati Sishu Vidhya Mandir, Pradhan used to play games with her friends but didn’t know much about organised sports. Now she enjoys playing cricket and badminton in particular. 

She says taking part in PSD’s programs has been “a lot of fun” and she has learned what is expected of a team player in sports, as well as learning about leadership. There have been important benefits off the field as well. “I am much more comfortable talking to boys,” she says. “We have learned there is not much difference between boys and girls. [The program] has also improved my studies because I have become mentally stronger. My communication has also improved.”

The centrepiece of PSD’s efforts is the Community Sports Program (CSP), which has reached over 3,000 children in Bhubaneshwar. The CSP also involves developing community trainers and teachers thereby ensuring the program is local, sustainable, and inclusive.

During the lockdown, PSD had to switch to an online model that included live workshops for those who had access to an internet connection. Among them was Srabani Patra, currently a class 10 student at Saraswati Sishu Vidya Mandir school in Bhubaneshwar. It was through CSP in 2021 that Patra learned about gender stereotypes, particularly in the home, where parents treat sons and daughters differently. “I want all parents to see their sons and daughters equally,” she says.

The workshops gave Patra the confidence to discuss gender norms with her father, Krushna Chandra Patra, which in turn has led her entire family to start questioning existing gender norms in their community.

It’s precisely this kind of change that PSD hopes to inspire across the country as the organisation grows. It’s also how the organisation measures the success of its programs since it changed its mission in 2015. According to Tandon, the organisation uses “quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to evaluate the outcomes and impact of the initiatives”. Participants fill out surveys at the start and end of programs to analyse personal development. PSD also interviews trainers, peers, teachers, and parents to gauge the nature and extent of any changes.

When it comes to the CSP, the increase in physical activity is one measuring stick. Beyond that Tandon says, “success for us is defined by the soft skills and values they are able to develop and implement in their daily lives, as well as their change in attitudes towards gender norms and stereotypes, and a better understanding of how to articulate life choices and make decisions concerning their own lives.”

While counting the number of medals its athletes won was easier, their current approach is undoubtedly more satisfying. “The best part of my job is that it does not feel like a job,” Tandon says. “During my travels, I also get to interact with young people who have benefitted from their participation in sports, which is always great to experience first-hand.”

Written by Team Billion Plus; Edited by Yoshita Rao

Not everyone was sleeping peacefully on those wintry nights of November 2021 in the quaint Chandrapur village of Bhadohi District, Uttar Pradesh. A few of them were anxious and frightened about their family members, who were not in touch with them for almost a month by then.

A woman received an important call that night, the feeble voice of her brother telling her a little about the ordeal they are facing, asking for help. Then the phone got cut off, and her brother mentioned recharging his phone, so that he can call back again.

A month ago, 10 people from Chandrapur were approached by one contractor from Karnataka, Malikarjun Vitthal Khedge, who offered them Rs 10,000 each per month to work in a sugarcane plantation in Walsang, near Solapur in Maharashtra. Though it was 1400 km away from home, their destitution and inability to find work in the lockdown period made them take up the offer pronto. 

Their family members found solace in this arrangement and understood they would return in six months. They needed the money, after all. They bade a happy goodbye to their families and started their journey with the contractor, oblivious to what lay ahead.

Labouring in sugarcane plantations is strenuous and back-breaking work. Their days start at dawn and they have to work in the field till midnight. The 10 people toiled hard with a belief that the remuneration will be good, sleeping a few hours in makeshift plastic tents in the midst of the plantation, eating the meagre food in the cold and dry rural Maharashtra in that piercing winter. The contractor, before handing over them to the plantation owner, had given them Rs 500 each as an advance and told them that they would be paid regularly every month.

After one month, when they asked the plantation owner about their salary, they were aghast to hear that they had been sold to him for Rs 6 lakh and that they were not going to get any money from him. The contractor had sold them to work as bonded labourers. They were threatened that if anyone tried to run away or contact their family members, they would be punished.

How to save lives

Practising bonded labour is a crime under Section 374 of the Indian Penal Code and we have The Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act, 1976. Despite that, we have some bleak statistics in India. According to the US Department of State report estimated 8 Million (80 Lakh) Indians are victims of trafficking and most of them are compelled to work as ‘bonded labourers’. The National Crime Records Bureau reports that in the Year 2020, 1714 people were trafficked in the country. Out of this 180 were from Uttar Pradesh, fortunately, 174 out of them were rescued. Uttar Pradesh has 35 Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) and has implemented a Victim Compensation Scheme for specific crimes including human trafficking and the 6 sections of POCSO (Protection Of Children from Sexual Offenses) Act. 

As soon as the sister in Bhadohi got that call, she approached the Video Volunteers (VV) team – community journalists Anil Kumar and Shabnam Begum, and Anshuman Singh, VV’s Field Producer. 

It was Jessica Mayberry and Stalin K who founded Video Volunteers in 2003. The team empowers India’s poorest citizens to right the wrongs they witness, using the most evocative medium of videos, to solve their problems. 

Intuitively, Anil Kumar knew what was happening, he had seen these contractors luring away people before. He mobilised the community and went to file a report in the local police station. They were assured in the police station that they will look into this matter.

Meanwhile, the VV team recharged the only phone one of the labourer’s had kept hidden from their perpetrator. They started calling the VV team late at night, whispering, while a few of them were guarding and making sure nobody could find a trace. They told about the inhuman, coercive working conditions and the location and details about the contractor who sold them. One of them mentioned: “We never get sufficient food and get beaten up if we try to protest. This is worse than a prison, we do not even get time to take a bath.”

A fortnight passed and their relatives did not hear anything from the police. They went to the police station again, but this time they got abused and told that nothing could be done, as those men had left home willingly. They are Musahars (a Dalit community), the years of subjugation had made them meek but resilient, they came out of the station broken hearted with a determination to get their men back. They contacted VV to tell them about their plight.

The VV team then met the District Commissioner (DC) and Superintendent of Police (SP) about this issue and Anil Kumar could tell the top cops about the phone conversations he had with the labourers. They knew the exact location by now and the SP contacted the Solapur Rural Police about the matter. Anshuman Singh helped the Anti-Trafficking Cell of the Maharashtra Police to arrest the contractor from Karnataka and the Solapur Rural Police made sure that he returned back the dues to these unfortunate labourers. The police then rescued the 10 people and got them train tickets to Bhadohi, constantly keeping track of their journey.

The VV team received them in the station and when they arrived in their village, it was a moment of sheer joy. Anshuman sent their pictures to the Solapur Police and thanked them for their prompt action. The reunited families of Chandrapur village are grateful to the police and the VV team, and they are vigilant now of any new contractors arriving with these kinds of offers. 

In the last 10 years, Video Volunteers has reported 85 cases of trafficking and migration, and 15 cases have been resolved through intervention and collaborative action, resulting in the rescue of 40 people across India.

By Nilankur Das for Video Volunteers; Edited by Yoshita Rao

To become a changemaker and learn mobile journalism, apply for free Buland Bol training by Video Volunteers. For more information, follow them on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Sources:

Trafficking in Persons Report June 2021

National Crime Records Bureau 

#MakingSportWork: We celebrate the potential of sport to build a #BetterIndia with opinion pieces, stories and profiles of how sport can improve the lives of every Indian. Read more from this exclusive series by The Better India and Sports and Society Accelerator here.

Victories and medals bring to the fore the life stories of their winners, shining a light on the challenges they have overcome on their paths to success. This was evident at the recently concluded Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Achinta Sheuli’s incredible journey, Avinash Sable being ‘weeded out’ of a talent identification programme as a youngster, and why Tejaswin Shankar needed the help of Delhi’s High Court bar before conquering Birmingham’s high jump bar made for compulsive reading. 

These proved to be an unmissable backdrop to India’s story at the quadrennial event. The steady upward trajectory of success for India was reinforced at this edition with many first-time medalists and athletes succeeding in a variety of disciplines, including lawn bowls, judo and athletics. These are positive indicators of a promising future for Indian elite sports. 

India’s Avinash Sable bettered his own national record by almost a second to win the silver medal in the men’s 3000m steeplechase at the Commonwealth Games 2022.@avinash3000m @birminghamcg22 #CommonwealthGames2022 #Birmingham22 #SilverMedal #TheBetterIndia⁠ pic.twitter.com/5M1dWq1smn

— The Better India (@thebetterindia) August 6, 2022

While achievements at major sporting events remind us of the soft power and great joy we derive from the international successes of our compatriots, they also give pause for thought. What is sport’s role in our society? What more can we do with it? Awakening the system to the full potential of sports, and the role it can play in building a healthier, fitter, more inclusive, and empowered India, is a project we must all get behind.  

The health of Indian sports is, for some undefined reason, measured primarily by the country’s final standing on the medal table. The National Sports Awards points system is, naturally, designed to tabulate international victories. It is not uncommon to hear stories of parents pleading with PE teachers and coaches to develop their still-toddler wards into Olympic champions. These can be read as positive trendlines. However, to get the most out of what sports have to offer us, we must expand the measure of sporting success beyond medals alone, and recognise that sport does not have only one story to tell.

https://t.co/E1mKgNXnQt Video: Mirabai Chanu Creates History, Wins India’s 1st Medal at Tokyo Olympics pic.twitter.com/ix4dbUIBDh

— The Better India (@thebetterindia) July 24, 2021

It is difficult to justify the extent of public spending on elite sports if we do not take a wider view of its role in society. While success contributes to national confidence and identity, it must also play an ambassadorial role in the campaigns for universal physical literacy and universal access, recognising that every Indian must be presented the opportunity to live an active and healthy life as a matter of right.  

These goals of universality play vital social roles. They require a system-wide approach that identifies and addresses the fault lines in our population’s access to play, movement, and activity. The anecdotal success of elite athletes – achieving against the odds, as they often do – and survivorship bias can paper over these cracks. They mask the reality of a vast swathe of our population that will never experience the joy of sport or have the chance to build a healthy relationship with their body through movement, activity and play.  

The goal of delivering universality of opportunity and experience not only gives elite sports the chance to find their wider social purpose but also demands a multi-pronged approach from the system. Public and private participants will have to act together on many fronts, including good governance, support structures for access and progression at the population scale, enabling livelihoods and sustainability, ensuring safe sport, integrating rights-based approaches into decision making and finding a way for physical literacy to be embedded in education.  

#LovlinaBorgohain 🙏
Her parents were pitied for having three daughters. She trained with borrowed gloves. And created history by winning India’s 2nd medal at #TokyoOlympics! pic.twitter.com/yy418Sai3Q

— The Better India (@thebetterindia) July 30, 2021

Several states have launched programmes and policies that could potentially position sports as a tool for social inclusion and empowerment. Odisha has launched several schemes that take a 360-degree approach to making sports a part of the State’s culture and empower the youth, including the first Olympic Values Education Programme in the country. 

The Haryana Sports Policy among its goals has envisioned the use of sports as a tool for social and economic development, and the promotion of positive values at home and abroad. Mizoram meanwhile in its Sports Policy has a stated goal of working to use sports for the differently-abled, older persons and women. Through its policy, it is working to increase access by reducing barriers and encouraging participation. 

Additionally, Mizoram plans to run affirmative-action programs to increase participation, as well as make sporting infrastructure more ‘friendly’. Jharkhand has launched the SAHAY (Sports Action Towards Harnessing Aspiration of Youths) scheme to motivate the youth of Naxal-affected areas towards a positive life by giving them an identity through sports. These are just a few examples of a growing number of such initiatives that are driving awareness and participation across the country.

Broadly, the objectives of these programmes include the development of athletes as leaders and role models; leveraging sports programming intentionally for local, state and national social development; asking sport-related sectors to incorporate social development objectives; using sports events to benefit host communities and local economies; and building a spirit of volunteerism, social entrepreneurship and giving back.

This establishes a powerful narrative to build on from national to community levels. The policy structure can target mass participation with a concerted focus on underrepresented segments of society, including gender and disability. The capacity building and skill development within government, social enterprise and civil society initiatives can be enhanced to address access barriers at national, regional, and local levels. 

When sports and physical activity are pitted as opponents to academic achievement, both ‘sides’ lose. When they are seen as complementary aspects of a wholesome life, both can win. Using sports to drive activity levels, and promote interactivity and teamwork among diverse groups, can produce healthier, happier, more well-rounded individuals. 

The things we measure and what we celebrate also deeply influence our notions of success and meaning. A great precedent for this would be to look at sports through the lens and perspective of what the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has done for the education sector.

The ASER, released by leading education non-profit Pratham, is biennially published and is a benchmark national analysis based on a citizen-led household survey that provides nationally representative estimates of children’s schooling status and their foundational reading and arithmetic skills.

As with the measurement of educational outcomes in ASER, a concerted effort is needed to map the status of access to sports and activity levels across the country on a periodic basis. This will help us understand the systemic gaps and monitor progress and the success, or lack thereof, of initiatives targeted at bridging access gaps. Profiling and celebrating the efforts of social entrepreneurs, and initiatives that have selflessly used sport for social change, can result in sport being recognised as a tool each one of us can use to connect with and contribute to the lives of those around us. 

With these efforts, as the gates progressively open to a wider population, the talent pool of elite athletes gets wider and deeper. Increasing opportunity puts into play virtuous cycles involving elite success and social goals. The rising tide can then truly lift all boats.

Nandan Kamath & Desh Gaurav Sekhri are Co-Founders of the Sports and Society Accelerator. More about the organisation at www.sports-society.org; Edited by Yoshita Rao

Sources:

ASER report

When we think about the monuments built worldwide in memories of wives, mistresses or love interests, one unforgettable name is the Taj Mahal built by Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, Mumtaz. 

But the list of ‘love’ monuments is endless with tragic stories such as that of Boldt Castle and Dobroyd Castle. Have we ever thought of sculptures made by women in memory of their husbands or love interests? If you look closely at the history of Western India’s stepwells – ancient water stores, also known as stepped well/staircases – you’ll find many of them were commissioned and patronised by women. The intriguing part is they were built in memory of their loved ones.

The etymology of stepwells includes forgotten civilisations in the form of exquisite artistry. In the Indian subcontinent, stepwells have been used since the Indus Valley civilisations about 5,000 years ago. Ancient Great Bath with stairs excavated at the Mohenjo Daro is the most famous example of the stepwells. Since they are more profound, these stepwells collect water during the seasonal monsoons and evaporate slowly. Historically, such water wells provided necessities such as drinking water for the semi-arid regions of India.

When we look at the history of stepwells built on the Western side of India, we find the patrons or inspirations of at least a quarter of Gujarat’s stepwells have been queens, mothers, daughters, mistresses, or goddesses.

“It is now also come to light that many of the stepwells were built by women – queens, wives of affluent traders, ordinary women and servant girls. Not only did women commission stepwells as patrons, but they also frequently served as an inspiration. Stepwells are often built in honour of a virtuous wife, a benevolent mother, a beloved mistress or a local goddess. The articulation and embellishment inside these structures are often expressive of this feminine character creating a delicate spatial filigree.” (Purnima Mehta Bhatt, Her Space Her Story)

Relation between stepwells and women

‘Water is female; they are the maternal, procreative aspect of the absolute’. (Zimmer, Myth and Symbols in Indian art and Civilisation)

It is not the first time that nature has been associated with feminine entities. Throughout history, the earth has been associated with muliebrity. Water is often equated with fertility and abundance in semi-arid landscapes, both literally and symbolically. In ancient times, giving water for public use was considered one of the most extraordinary acts of charity. Routines and rituals, however, linked women directly to the stepwell. In many villages of the region, fetching water, washing, and cleaning from wells are still everyday routines.

Historically, at the stepwells, women could socialise freely without being observed by men in the open spaces of village squares (chowk) or royal courts (darbar). It was a place where women would find solace in exchanging household stories, discussing politics, and seeking the company of other women. 

Socially, they offered women a way to transition from the domestic sphere into the public domain when they were deprived of this opportunity for the most part. Furthermore, it sends the message that networking is essential for emotional support. With this brief window of freedom, the women could move away from their daily lives of constraints and oppression in a patriarchal society where they were treated as mere objects.

Folklore has it that in the Sabarkantha district of Gujarat, there is a stepwell known as Balasamudra; a woman unable to produce breast milk usually visits the well; a blouse or top is dipped in the water, after which when the cloth is worn, the magical qualities of the water will enable her to nurse her child successfully. 

In many stepwells today, shrines have been constructed, or stepwells have been converted into temples. In Gujarati, the Mother Goddess referred to as ‘Maata’ in these shrines and temples is always worshipped as an incarnation. despite being recognised as a shrine it was acquitted of any kind of invasion by raiders. It’s still a religious place but in terms of secular ethos.

Morna Livingston of Thomas Jefferson University writes, “After a thousand years, the wells may be near the end of their natural lives, and their decay too far advanced to be checked, but in most cases, the attention to the goddess can hold off the ruin of a stepwell a while longer.” 

Stepwell inscriptions provide valuable information related to stepwells, providing historians with insights into women donors who were otherwise obscure or overlooked in historical records of the time.

The practice of digging wells in remembrance of the dead was widely prevalent, corroborated by both epigraphic and oral traditions. Wells were built to honour a deceased relative. This act is referred to in Sanskrit text as ‘istapurta’ ( a pious work or sacrifice which confers merit).

Notable Stepwells

Known as the Rani ki Vav or Queen’s stepwell, the Patan monument placed on the list of World Heritage sites is a royal foundation, traditionally associated with Queen Udaymati, the widowed wife of Solanki ruler Bhimdeva 1 (1022-64). It was because it never served as a temple with outstanding treasury and had already fallen into disuse by the Muslim raiders that the Patan stepwell escaped detection. 

Prabandh-Chintamani, composed by Jain Monk Mertunga in 1304, mentions that “the stepwell was commissioned in 1063 and was completed after 20 years”. 

The stepwell was later flooded by the Saraswati river and silted over. Construction of the stepwell followed the Maru-Gurjara style, reflecting the mastery of this complex technique and the beauty of detail and proportion. The ornamentation of stepwell depicts the entire universe inhabited by gods and goddesses, nymphs, celestial beings; men and women; monks, priests and laity; animals, fishes and birds, including real and mythical ones; and plants and trees. Following the flooding of the Saraswati river, this stepwell was submerged for many years beneath the world. 

After a long leap, the Archaeological Survey of India excavated and restored it in 1986. UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site in 2014.

Adalaj stepwell, aka Rudabai stepwell, built in 1555 combining Hindu and Islamic elements is a unique waterwork. Platforms and galleries built into the stepwell’s side make it stand out from the rest.

Its story is of unrequited love and events centred around it. Rana Veer Singh, a Hindu leader of the Vaghela dynasty, ruled this region, known as Dandai Desh (located around 20 km from modern-day Ahmedabad) in the 15th century. 

Mahmud Begada, the ruler of a nearby kingdom, attacked Rana’s kingdom. The Rana was killed in battle. The beauty of his wife Rani Rudabai made Mahmud fall in love with her. In grief at losing her husband, Rani agreed that Begada should first build the stepwell before proposing marriage to her. The well was built in record time after King Mahmud agreed to the contract. Upon the completion of the construction, he reminded Rani of her promise to marry him. On completion of the stepwell, Rudabai decided to end her life. Rani circumambulated the stepwell with prayers and jumped into the well as a mark of devotion to her husband. The well was left untouched by King Begada. To this day, each visitor prays for Rani Rudabai’s spirit which some believe still haunts the well.

Bai Harir Sultani Stepwell, aka Dada Harir, located within the residential suburban area of Ahmedabad was commissioned in 1485 AD by Bai harir a Royal Nurse in Gujarat sultanate’s court. It is said to have cost 3,29,000 mahmudis (the standard silver coin of the Gujarat sultanate) to refresh men, birds, insects and plants, and at last to please God with its richly-carved walls, a small cupola on each side and, under them, spiral stairs leading down to the water. The well bears two inscriptions, one in Sanskrit on the south and one in Arabic on the north wall, of the first gallery.

As per the Sanskrit inscription engraved on the marble slab, “the general superintendent at the door of the king’s harem and the powerful, religious, chief councillor of king Mahmud”. 

Forbes calls the stepwell ‘the nurse’s well’, which corresponds with Blochmnn’s translation of the Arabic inscription, which names the builder as ‘Sri-Bai Harir, the royal (slave) nurse’. 

The history behind these stepwells strongly beckons women across the centuries, in an era where historical interpretations have largely neglected women.  

(Written by Ardent Geroy; Edited by Yoshita Rao)

Sources:

Rani Ki Vav

Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Ahmedabad

Her space her story, Purnima Bhatt 

Steps to Water: The Ancient Stepwells of India, Morna Livingstone

Zimmer, Myth and Symbols in Indian art and Civilization

#MakingSportWork: We celebrate the potential of sport to build a #BetterIndia with opinion pieces, stories and profiles of how sport can improve the lives of every Indian. Read more from this exclusive series by The Better India and Sports and Society Accelerator here.

When Aditya KV was a Teach for India fellow in New Delhi, he had four disabled students in his class who were often left out of games or sports. On top of that, they were being picked on by the other kids as well. Naturally, this affected them emotionally, socially and academically.

A passionate sportsperson who believes his time on the football field and basketball court taught him invaluable life skills, Aditya decided to use sports to help these students. He began a football programme for his class and by the end of the year, he saw a significant improvement in the attitudes of all the children, not just those four students. “The other kids became more open and friendly with these kids. Sports created an environment of inclusion,” he recollects.

That experience opened Aditya’s eyes to the obstacles disabled kids faced in Delhi NCR and how sports could help them. 

So, he decided to leave his corporate career behind and dedicate himself to making changes on a larger scale. In 2017, he founded Umoya Sports to empower one million students with and without disabilities. He chose the name ‘Umoya’, which is a Zulu word that means ‘spirit’, to serve as a guidepost for the organisation. 

The Umoya team identified three challenges faced specifically by Children with Disabilities (CwD) that they wanted to address:

• A lack of quality in-school programmes that provide holistic development to students with disabilities;
• A lack of social skills development and social integration of CwD because of social stigmas and misconceptions about disabilities; and
• The physical and mental health issues faced by CwD as a result of frequently being excluded from sports/physical education in schools and the community. 

The first part of Umoya’s strategy to tackle these problems involved creating year-long programmes that build a child’s fundamental movement and play and also teach them foundational sports skills. “We assess the child, understand the existing skill sets, strengths, and areas of improvement, and then we customise the programme activities so that the activity is skill appropriate and relevant for the child,” Aditya says. They also make modifications to their existing programmes for those with disabilities, under the educational programme known as ‘Adapted Physical Education’.

One of their students in the Adapted Physical Education programme is Mupu, a young girl with autism, who joined a few months ago. “The two long years of COVID threw most of the kids into inactivity, including my daughter,” her father Mahesh Kumar says. “When we heard about Umoya and its plan of individualised and group sports for kids with special needs, we were keen to go and check about the plan and structure they would put forth in helping my kid learn and benefit from sports.”

In Mupu’s case, the teachers observed that she wasn’t comfortable handling a ball, so they created fun activities where all she had to do was hold the ball and run or throw it. In this way, they built up her confidence with a ball and now she even plays basketball and volleyball. “I love bringing Mupu to Umoya,” her mother Poonam Jha says. “I am a big fan of their approach to building on the individual skills of a particular game gradually. In the last two months, this has made Mupu more confident in those skills.”

According to Mupu’s parents, as a direct result of Umoya’s programme, their daughter has become more energetic and more confident, which means she is more open to tackling new challenges. Her communication has also improved, and she is using more words and sentences. “Previously it was mostly her and me, especially during the lockdown,” Jha says. “Now I can sit and relax while she learns from the Umoya team. At home also she has started following our instructions more sincerely.”

For Jayanti, whose son Neil Moshahari is also autistic, the patience Umoya’s team has with the children and their focus on the overall development of the child is what she appreciates the most. “I was looking for an overall sports activity but couldn’t get one till Umoya’s programme,” she says. “Neil’s transitions are better, and he is happier to come for his classes. He has made some connections with his peer group and I must appreciate the effort every member takes to build a rapport.”

Umoya’s programmes have also changed her relationship with her son. “It has definitely made us both more patient,” she says. “Umoya has helped me see my kid beyond therapies.”

According to Aditya, Umoya assesses the progress of the children, and thereby the success of its programmes, using three parameters: 

• Developmental skills of motor coordination, agility, cardiovascular strength, and flexibility;
• Ball skills of shooting and ball control; and
• Social skills of confidence, teamwork, and patience.

“For us, the success of the programme is not to make Tendulkars and Ronaldos but rather to build an opportunity for children with disabilities to experience sports, build life skills, become confident, and lead an independent and enriching life,” Aditya says. 

The second part of Umoya’s strategy is partnering with sports brands and corporates to create inclusive sports events that bring together those with and without disabilities. One example of this is the Sportability Academy at Modern School in New Delhi. Umoya is the knowledge consultant for the Academy and is designing its sports programmes for children with special needs. 

Since it was founded five years ago, Umoya has reached over 12,000 children directly or indirectly and has recently launched pilot programmes in Mumbai and Bengaluru. “Our ultimate goal is to witness a day where every child, disregarding their (dis)ability, gender, religion, socio-economic background, has equal access to Right to Play,” Aditya says. 

Written by Team Billion Plus; Edited by Yoshita Rao

#MakingSportWork: We celebrate the potential of sport to build a #BetterIndia with opinion pieces, stories and profiles of how sport can improve the lives of every Indian. Read more from this exclusive series by The Better India and Sports and Society Accelerator here.

Nitish M Chiniwar had set his sights on a career in motorsports. He had worked in garages in Bengaluru, getting his hands dirty as he learned the ins and outs of engines. 

Then he moved to the United Kingdom, where he earned his Masters’s in Motorsports Engineering. But when he began interviewing with racing teams, including some F1 teams, he kept hitting the same wall. As a non-European, Chiniwar needed a work visa but none of the teams were willing to sponsor one. 

Finding his path unexpectedly blocked prompted Chiniwar to think deeply about opportunities, specifically who gets them and who doesn’t. Going down that path led him to a new career. 

So, in 2016 he founded Bridges of Sports (BoS), a not-for-profit organisation that is dedicated to developing the next generation of Indian athletes while also creating opportunities for neglected tribal communities to become part of mainstream society.

The first community they worked with was the Siddi community in Karnataka. The Siddis were brought to India from Africa as slaves over 400 years ago. After Indian independence, they wound up living apart from mainstream society and have struggled with racism and poverty. 

To identify promising young athletes, BoS worked with the Uttara Kannada District Athletic Association to conduct training camps and monitor athletic competitions across all talukas for the U-12, U-14, and U-16 categories. Those athletes who met qualifying standards were then invited to the main residential centre for testing and training to help them develop to their full potential. 

“Our focus has always been to build a hyperlocal sports ecosystem which will not only produce sustainable talent but also support the social and economic development of the community,” the now 32-year-old Chiniwar says. “Over the years, we are seeing the results of our strategy and the opportunities for the model to be replicated at scale.”

Currently, the organisation has 25 children enrolled in their track-and-field centre of excellence in Mundgod, Karnataka, and is in the process of supporting another 240 children from the Adivasi communities in Nashik, Maharashtra. 

Over the last six years, they have helped more than 10,000 kids.

According to Chiniwar, the biggest challenge they have faced so far has been convincing the members of the community to buy into the project. They solved that problem by including the community in its core team of coaches, sports scientists, and physios to the point where 60% of the team is now local. In addition, it has also built a network of community volunteers who help scout athletes and conduct training camps and competitions in the villages. 

“With our model, the community has now become stakeholders of the project,” Chiniwar says. “More families are now open for their children to pursue sports as one of the career options and they understand that with BoS and the local ecosystem, their children would at least become part of the coaching, scouting and administration system if they are not able to achieve international success.”

Chiniwar and his team also convinced schools and colleges in the area to provide free admission to its athletes, which gives the community another reason to support the programme. 

Getting the community on their side has been one of the high points so far for Tenzin Choejor Zongpa, the sprint coach and head of performance at BoS. Tenzin was born in Mundgod, though his parents are originally from Darjeeling. He has a degree in Physiotherapy and was working in a hospital in the Western Ghats when he read a few articles about India’s athletic performance at the 2016 Rio Olympics. “It made me question why to date we as a nation have missed two medals (Ed’s note: Milkha Singh in 1960 and PT Usha in 1984) in athletics by a whisker and never came close other than that,” he says. 

He decided he wanted to do something about India’s lack of athletic medals and went back to school to get his Master’s in Exercise and Sports Sciences from Manipal University. During his final year in 2019, a team from BoS visited their Sports Science Lab with some of their athletes. The more Tenzin learned about them, the more it seemed like a natural fit for him, and he joined them in July 2019. 

“As a coach at BoS, it’s easier to track down and work on certain things that are needed to improve the athletes at both the performance level as well as a person, because we have a home-like system where everyone lives together,” Tenzin says. “The feeling of family makes the conversation easier and clearer with both the athlete as well as their parents.”

He also stressed the need to involve families in decisions regarding their children and to give them regular updates as a way of gaining their trust and confidence. 

To determine the success of their programmes, the organisation uses training data and race performance as well as measuring the psychological and social development of the athlete. “Our long-term success is defined by success in sports along with the employment of athletes who were part of the BoS system but might not have achieved success as an athlete,” Chiniwar says. 

Coping during COVID

The lockdown threw up a new challenge for the organisation, as it couldn’t run its regular programmes. Moreover, the Siddi community (employed as casual labourers) lost most of its income since there was no work for them. Chiniwar and his team came up with the idea of helping five families start their own kitchen gardens to provide an alternate source of income for the community. As an added benefit, growing their own food would ensure better nutrition for their children too. BoS then went a step further and bought the produce for their hostel. 

“We realised that working closely with the community outside of sports and supporting them during tough times will help build resilience for the programme itself,” Chiniwar says. 

More recently, they have set up a scholarship system that rewards athletes as they progress from winning state medals to national medals by supporting their families with financial or in-kind assistance. 

The coaches also benefit from being part of the organisation. Tenzin, for example, was able to complete his World Athletics Level 1 Coaching Certification from NIS Patiala in 2020. And in July this year, Tenzin travelled to the UK to work and train at ALTIS, a leader in sports performance education that also offers an elite training environment.

The now 19-year-old national champ Kokare has also travelled with Tenzin to ALTIS to train. 

Kokare was 16 when she entered a local competition organised by BoS after her teacher convinced her to compete in the 100m and 200m races. Kokare had never raced competitively before and ran barefoot, yet she qualified in both events. “I didn’t know anything,” she says in a phone interview. “Sir told me to run and that I might get a prize.” 

At first, her parents were reluctant to let her leave home and live in a hostel by herself. “They were scared,” Kokare says. But the BoS team convinced her parents that it was safe for their daughter and that they would help both Kokare and her parents. Over time Kokare dropped the 100m and turned into a 400m runner instead (she also competes in the 200m). Two years later she justified the decision by winning bronze in the Girls-Under 18 400ms 400m at the 2021 Nationals with a personal best time of 58.31. 

“I have got an opportunity and I want to take advantage of it,” she says. “I want to show my people what we can achieve and also bring a good name to the village.”

Along with her training, Kokare is studying commerce at the Government Composite Pre-University College in Mundgod. But her ambition now is to represent India and win an international medal. Her idol and inspiration is Allyson Felix, the legendary American 200m and 400m runner, who is one of the most decorated track & field athletes of all time. 

Training outside the country and meeting other athletes from all over the world for the first time has given Kokare added motivation and belief. “If they can do it, we can do it, and we can do it better too.”

Written by Team Billion Plus; Edited by Yoshita Rao

#MakingSportWork: We celebrate the potential of sport to build a #BetterIndia with opinion pieces, stories and profiles of how sport can improve the lives of every Indian. Read more from this exclusive series by The Better India and Sports and Society Accelerator here.

When Satinder Bajwa was coaching the Harvard University, USA, men’s and women’s squash teams, around 2006, the university’s Athletic Director asked all the coaches to do something for the community. So, Bajwa created Kids Squash, a programme that gave young people in the community the chance to play squash at Harvard on the weekends. 

Shimla-born Bajwa found his way to Harvard via a colourful, circuitous route. He was a trainee aeronautical engineer with British Airways, followed by a brief career as a squash pro, and then manager-mentor of the legendary Pakistani squash player Jansher Khan, during six of the latter’s eight world championship titles.

Once Jansher retired, Bajwa moved to Harvard as the university’s Director of Squash.

There, Kids Squash turned out to be a hit and it got Bajwa thinking. “If people in America needed this, then those in India probably needed it much more,” Bajwa, who is now in his early 60s, says. “I decided I would add an academic and yoga component and opened Khelshala in India in 2009.”

Together with a member of his extended family, Bajwa bought a plot of land in Attawa village that lies within Chandigarh city limits. Today, Khelshala occupies the basement and ground floors of the building they constructed, while the first and second floors have been made into a hotel. 

It began with 35 children, most of whose parents were labourers, domestic helpers, or rickshaw drivers. But by the second year, they had a waiting list. Buoyed by this early success, Bajwa opened a second site in Majra village, Punjab, in 2012, and this time focused on tennis. 

The after-school programmes at both centres cater to about 125 students over the year. 

Khelshala charges the parents about Rs 100 a month because the nominal fee encourages them to take the programme seriously.

“We found that charging nothing had no meaning,” Bajwa says. 

In Attawa, the students arrive at Khelshala around 3 or 3:30 pm. The teachers at Khelshala help the children with their homework, lead them through an English newspaper reading, and hold general knowledge sessions. Some teachers also help those in classes 9 to 12 with advanced math and science. The kids are only permitted to play squash after they have completed their academic work for the day. They are also taught yoga three days a week. Another important ingredient at Khelshala is service – the students are given the collective responsibility of sandpapering the squash courts and keeping the facility clean. 

But the biggest challenge lay in convincing the parents that sports could help their child do better in life, including academically. The parents also expected to see results immediately. 

“Explaining to the parents who are not educated is the biggest challenge,” says Sujata Singh, who oversees Khelshala’s programmes. “They don’t understand that this process will take years. It is slowly changing but it remains difficult. They expect everything from us, and we have to tell them to be patient; that we are not cheating them.”

Singh works as a teacher in a local co-ed school before heading over to Khelshala. She says there is a big difference between the children who attend Khelshala and those who don’t. She adds, “[We give them] holistic development, so you can easily identify them … There is a change in their personality, their way of talking, their way of behaving, and their thinking process.”

For her, education is the only way these children can break free of the “conservative and restrictive society” from which they come. “If we can change 200 students, then we can make a change in the wider society also,” Singh says.  

Of course, this requires the children to put in long hours. Subhashini, who is 17, joined Khelshala in 2017. Her mother is a maid while her father lost his job during the lockdown. Her day begins at 4 am and she arrives at Khelshala for squash practice an hour later. When her school ends at 2 pm, she goes back to Khelshala until 6 pm and after freshening up manages another hour of squash practice late in the evening. 

The effort is worth it, she says, because the benefits are tangible. Subhashini says, “Before I came to Khelshala, I struggled to read in English. I shared that with my teachers, and they gave me a lot of help. Despite COVID, I got 85% in class 10 because of their help.”

There’s also been a change in her personality. “We know how to handle ourselves,” Suhasini says. “Thanks to squash, we feel confident that we can speak to anyone.” 

Suhasini is currently doing her plus-2 in Arts at the local Government Model Senior Secondary School and dreams of becoming an IAS officer. “If I focus, then anything is possible,” she adds. 

Before joining Khelshala, Suhasini played kho-kho and even competed at the Nationals. But she prefers squash because she can keep playing the sport beyond school and college, unlike kho-kho. 

That’s one of the big advantages of squash, according to Alisha Mashruwala, one of Khelshala’s trustees and a former member of the Harvard women’s squash team under Bajwa. After graduating, Mashruwala co-founded an education company called OnCourse. “A lot of people who are high up in corporates are all playing squash,” she says, adding, “The managers at Goldman all play squash. When you get the opportunity to talk to people and aspire to do things like that, it is a big deal. [And] everyone is willing to help everyone else in the squash community.”

Bajwa compares it to the kind of network a student can build by attending a good college. “When you put a racquet in the kid’s hand, you have elevated his or her network from 2 to 9 out of 10 [friends]. Some of my kids at Khelshala are Facebook friends with Mukesh Ambani’s nephew because they play squash.”

One of Khelshala’s students, Priya, recently received a Young Indian Fellowship at Ashoka University, Haryana. “She is now a mentor at Teach for India. She went from strength to strength,” Bajwa reveals. “Then we have three girls right now pursuing their Bachelor’s in Physical Education. They are good at sports. One of them has already done a coaching course at the Squash Federation of India, so she will have a coaching certificate under her belt [when she graduates]. A couple of kids have been ranked in the top 10 of juniors. One got invited to the national team trials.”

There have been similar successes at the tennis centre as well. “We had a kid at Majra who is now a [tennis] coach at India School of Business,” Bajwa says. “That’s a highlight. He was a boy from a village who had never seen a tennis court [before joining Khelshala]. Another kid is coaching at an elite private school in Chandigarh.”

Here students are encouraged to explore other opportunities around the sport, such as becoming a referee or a coach, or even learning how to string racquets. 

But Bajwa claims the biggest highlight of running Khelshala is seeing how “even a kid who is not good enough to play a match is enjoying squash and having a better outlook on life. Even those kids who are not naturally gifted and are average at sports and education, are showing traits of confidence and are aspiring towards a better life.” 

Newer goals

The organisation seems to have weathered the disruption caused by the COVID pandemic, but it took a combination of sacrifice and ingenuity to get through it. The staff agreed to a 50 per cent pay cut and switched to online tutoring. They also did a fundraising campaign to buy phones for the children. 

As if that weren’t hard enough, Khelshala’s FCRA license also expired while government offices were shut, which cut off their funding from the United States, where Bajwa could tap into his squash network. According to him, half their yearly budget of Rs 23 lakh came from international sources. 

“You can either give up or look at other channels,” Bajwa says, adding, “One of my friends – Anil Nair (eight-time India national squash champion) – kept telling me, ‘Satinder, there is more money in India than you think. Don’t just take the easy way out’.”

Forced to improvise, Bajra leaned on his trustees to raise money to fill the gap and they have done so. Another former squash student of his also offered Khelshala Rs 10 lakh this year to fund the renovation of their courts and their track. Thanks to these new funding sources, Khelshala is creating an international fund that will provide financial aid for their children to go to college in the United States.

Their experience with online teaching led to another unexpected outcome. Three months ago, Khelshala started an online chess program. Someone whose son and daughter are national-level chess players in Mumbai approached Bajwa about starting online chess classes. “I would never have entertained that [before the pandemic]. But squash is physical chess and now we have mental chess and the two connect very well,” Bajwa says.

Khelshala’s Attawa location is now back to full strength, with almost 60 per cent of their students being girls. “We are very happy about this,” Bajwa says. However, their Majra site hasn’t bounced back the same way because the migrant labour left during the pandemic. Bajwa also found that when the children turned 14, they would often leave to join their parents as farm labourers. “We can’t hold on to them,” he says. 

Their new strategy is to focus on the children who live in the area and to convince the local schools to send their students to Khelshala as part of the curriculum. 

Then there is the desire for Khelshala to evolve as well. “I am actively looking to scale Khelshala to greater heights,” Bajwa says. 

Written by the Billion Plus team; Edited by Yoshita Rao

A sandy beach destination, Diu is known for the Ghoghla Beach which has a Blue Flag certification – an honour by the Foundation for Environmental Education that says the waterbody meets its standards. But beyond its pristine beaches lies the city’s heritage. 

“The Diu Fort was listed as one of the Seven Wonders of Portuguese origin in the world, which houses a chapel, a former residence of the governor and several other aspects inside the fort,” says Maria Victor, 38, who founded Make It Happen in 2011. An experiential travel company that started as a hobby travel venture, evolved into a community-led local experience initiative in Goa. 

“Soon we were invited by Diu Smart City, a government initiative, to set up heritage walks there. They saw the value of having heritage experiences to capture the essence of the city,” says Maria.

While Diu has been long known for being a Portuguese territory, Maria says, it has had a long-standing maritime heritage connection even before the Portuguese arrived. “It has palatial Havelis with Indian as well as influences from the eastern coast of Africa. It is also a fortified town where we have different communities living together,” she adds.

You can find more details about Diu Heritage Walks organised by Make it Happen on their website.

If you’re planning to visit Diu, here are 10 heritage structures that you cannot miss.

1. St Paul Church

St Paul’s Church is the largest functional church in Diu. Dedicated to Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, its construction was completed in 1601. Sharing close similarity with the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa, the church is known for its intricate sculptures and stunning Jesuit architecture by Indian craftsmen architecture. The church boasts rich wood carvings, a splendid facade, intriguing volutes and shell-like motifs.  

2. Gangeshwar temple

Situated amidst serenity and scenic beauty, the Gangeshwar Temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva. This ancient Hindu Temple is located on the seashore and is believed to have been built by the Pandavas 5000 years ago. The temple is famous for its five Shiva Lingas under a rock-cut cave. Only the tip of these rocks can be seen whenever there is a high tide as the sea water submerges them.  

3. Pani Kotha

Pani Kotha dates back to the era when Malik Aiyaz was the governor of Diu before the Portuguese arrived. The Portuguese reconstructed Pani Kotha and called it Fortim Do Mar which translates to Fortress of the Sea. They built a small Chapel in the fort in 1638, dedicated to Our Lady of Victory and a lighthouse as well. Pani Kotha also served as a jail during Portuguese rule. Pani Kotha was built at the mouth of the creek, north of Diu and can only be accessed by boat.

4. INS Khukri Memorial

Inaugurated on 15 December 1999, the INS Khukri Memorial is dedicated to the crew aboard the warship of the Indian Navy that was martyred during the Indo-Pak War in 1971. The memorial comprises a scaled model of INS Khukri F149  enclosed in a glass case. Names of all officers and sailors of the ship are displayed at the top. There is an open-air theatre towards the sea with seating arrangements for visitors. From the memorial, one can get a beautiful view of the setting sun over the Arabian Sea.

5. Diu Fort

This enormous monument had a residence for the nobles, a warehouse, barracks for the soldiers, a house of arms and ammunition, a prison, a church, and a chapel.

On the Fort stands a giant structure, now housing the lighthouse which serves as a navigation aid to the fishermen, and is considered the tallest structure in the Fort. The Fort has stood the test of time witnessing various siege battles fought to gain control over the island of Diu. The Fort was upgraded at various stages with over 70 cannons installed at all sides and defensive bastions that were built to make it a formidable structure. Diu fort is one of the Seven Wonders of Portuguese origin. This further highlighted the importance of the Fort and put it on the world tourism map.

6. Old town of Diu

This street highlights the local heritage through residential buildings colloquially known as Havelis. The functional and devotional buildings were built, maintained and conserved in the Old Town of Diu. The beauty of the Old Town’s a reflection of the wealth brought into Diu by the historically privileged contacts of Vaniyas and the journey of Vanzas, who was an integral part of the lucrative textile trade with East Africa.

7. Jagdish temple

Shri Jagdish is a form of Lord Vishnu and this residential Haveli has been repurposed as Shri Jagdish Mandir. Earlier only an image of the deity was placed at the end of Suraj Vav Chowk in the Old Town, which was bought from Odisha. The main idol is 300 years old and cut from a single piece of wood. This double-storey facade has carved stone work, floral design, and figures of sadhus and pandits soldiers and lions painted in bright colours.

8. Khukri Warship Museum

INS Khukri P49 was the lead vessel of her class of corvettes, in service with the Indian Navy. The ship was named after INS Khukri F149, the only Indian Navy ship to be martyred in combat.

Khukri was launched in 1986 and decommissioned in 2021. On the 26 of January 2022, the warship was formally handed over to the administration of the Diu district and was converted into a war museum. Travellers visiting the Khukri warship museum will get fascinating insights into advanced weaponry, Naval combat techniques, the life of Navy officers and crew aboard a warship and the Legacy of INS Khukri P49.

9. Tower of Silence

A dakhma, also known as the Tower of Silence, is a circular raised structure built by Zoroastrians for the deceased. Built by the Parsis as an excarnation site for their dead bodies that are eaten by vultures. The Tower of Silence in Diu stands as a testimony to the migration of Zoroastrians from Persia to India.

10. Nuno Da Cunha

Nuno Da Cunha is credited for building the Diu Fort in 1535 which was a result of a defence treaty between Bahadur Shah of Gujarat Sultanate and the Portuguese. This large statue was installed in his memory in Diu Fort and was later moved to the garden of the Collector’s office.

Edited by Yoshita Rao; All image credits to Make It Happen

“My family finds it difficult to sleep during summer. Even though we have a fan, it blows hot air from the sheets which gives us a headache. I feel giddy during the summer and my children develop heat boils and rashes,” shares Ratna from Bengaluru. 

Ratna is one of the numerous people battling inhumane heat stress conditions under poorly ventilated, heat-absorbing tin-roofed house structures of India’s marginalised urban settlements. While most of us reading this might not have a first-hand experience of what it feels like to live under a tin-roofed heat-absorbing house, the peril of heat stress might not seem as alien today as it may have once felt. Intense heat episodes are excluding no one, not just locally but also globally in recent times. 

Heat waves killed over 20,615 people from 2000 to 2020 and are the second deadliest natural force in India, after lightning. 

Temperatures even touched the 40 degrees Celsius (°C) mark in March 2022 across large parts of central and western India. ‘Beating the Heat: A Sustainable Cooling Handbook for Cities’, a guide published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2021, warns that cities worldwide could warm up by 4°C on average by 2100. This is more than double the 1.5°C goals set under the Paris Agreement — because of the urban heat island effect. 

The high density of buildings, asphalt and concrete, and minimal vegetation create extra sweltering ‘heat islands’ in cities. This is exacerbated by waste heat from energy-guzzling air conditioners, exhaust from vehicles and industrial processes and heat reflected from glazed façades. 

A study conducted by the environment group World Resources India (WRI) mapped the October 2020 heat and the risks attached to it. It revealed that informal settlements in Mumbai consisting of metal roofs and poor ventilation were 5 degrees warmer than the formal housing in the vicinity. With outside temperatures soaring, these homes become unbearably hot to inhabit and often do not cool down adequately till midnight, augmenting the societal injustices the owners of these homes already battle with. 

As a response to the increasing heat stress, governments have started formulating Heat Action Plans (HAP). HAPs are primarily designed as adaptation plans with suggested preventive measures and protocols to battle increasing occurrences of heat waves and escalating temperatures. 

According to the IMD, a heat wave occurs when the temperature crosses 37°C in the coastal areas, 30°C in the hills and 40°C in the plains. 

In India, Odisha has been the first state to have a HAP in place as early as the year 2000, following the 1998 death toll due to severe heat, with intermediate revisions to the plan to deal with ballooning heat conditions. The HAP movement however gained momentum only after 2013 with the Ahmedabad HAP, which was instrumental in influencing other states, cities and districts. As of 2022, 17 states in India have already declared heat wave conditions and warnings which has catalysed them to work on their HAPs. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has developed a national framework for the plans in addition to establishing guidelines and supporting capacity building at the state level. 

At an overarching level, the HAP framework focuses on:

•  Establishing early warning systems and inter-agency coordination
•  Capacity building/training programs for healthcare professionals
•  Public awareness and community outreach
•  Collaboration with non-government and civil society. 

The framework makes it incontestable to suggest rewording the presently titled ‘Heat Action Plan’ to ‘Heat Reaction Plans’. While the HAP framework reflects cautionary and responsive mechanisms with reactive and adaptive connotations, it fails to take active steps towards addressing vital aspects of the built environment which have a colossal impact on heat stress conditions. This lacuna exists even though one feature of the early warning systems in the existing HAP framework recommends staying indoors at certain hours during peak temperatures. The burning question is: Are the indoors equipped to deal with heat stress with outdoor temperatures soaring as high as 40°C?

Heat adaptation and mitigation 

A glance at our cities and built spaces today will indicate an amalgamation of marginalised settlements, middle-income and affluent housing which vary in their social, spatial and structural characteristics. Marginalised settlements are characterised by both overcrowding and cramped spaces built with temporary makeshift materials such as scrap metal, and tin, which are heat-emitting materials, with minimal or no access to daylight or ventilation. 

According to the 69th National Sample Survey report, the poorest households in urban areas have only 8 sq m of housing space per person. This is drastically deficient compared to the minimum 12 sq m recommended by the World Health Organisation to ensure the health and well-being of a person.  Contrastingly, affluent and middle-income housing are either over spacious or sufficiently spaced and mostly constructed with heat-trapping concrete and ill-considered ventilation design. While air conditioners have become a means to achieve thermal comfort in built spaces for affluent and most middle-income populations, marginalised populations who rely on fans and bear the brunt of power cuts are rendered most vulnerable to increasing temperatures. This glaring inequity in urban areas demands scrutiny, given the fact that a typical one-tonne split AC in India consumes as much power as 25 ceiling fans. It is non-negotiable vital to ensure more sustainable, affordable and just alternatives to meet human cooling needs on our heating planet. Architecture is an undervalued gateway to achieve this. 

Can you build a gorgeous #ecofriendly house in 125 days? Mahesh Krishnan did so with just Rs 18,500 and some #YouTube lesson.
Made of #clay and palm leaves, this #sustainable home stays naturally cool in summers.#NaturalBuilding #MudHome #Bengaluru #Architecture #Organic pic.twitter.com/f1UHHD6Txk

— The Better India (@thebetterindia) August 9, 2022

A vital architectural objective is to design indoor living conditions that are responsive to and regulate the micro-climate to ensure thermally comfortable and habitable conditions, by using locally available resources as building materials. Traditional houses were successful in doing this without air conditioners or other insensitive mechanical means of ventilation. Vernacular architecture thrived on passive, nature-based ventilation design and local materials which were innately resilient to the micro-climate of the region. Houses of mud with small punctures or latticework openings in Rajasthan, houses of stone in North India, houses of bricks and wood with large windows in South India in addition to thick-walled houses in hotter regions and thin-walled structures in coastal regions, supported meeting cooling needs without air conditioners. 

One would wonder if it is possible to revive traditional climate-sensitive and socio-ecologically just architectural practices in a world that are addicted to profit-making architecture that thrives on the comfort and tastes of the affluent and the misery of the monetarily underprivileged. 

As improbable a possibility as this may seem it does exist. There are examples of traditional and modern architectural partnerships that prove the benefits of the marriage of traditional and modern architecture which provides a middle ground that can play a vital role in minimising injustices provoked by insensitive built space design. 

Bidyut Roy, a designer who works in the Bolpur region of West Bengal in collaboration with local masons, extensively uses adobe bricks, cob walls, thatch roofs, elephant grass and bamboo in his designs are exemplary. One of his buildings involves a concrete structure with an infill of sundried adobe blocks. Here, traditional adobe blocks give the advantage of thermal comfort while modern concrete structures provide building stability. There are similar examples of architects who have collaborated with indigenous communities to construct environmentally responsible and comfortable house structures. There is an indisputable need and immense potential for traditional knowledge and modern architecture to work together for climate-resilient and sustainable building design which is more ‘active’ than ‘reactive’ in principle and practice, both. 

Architects for Heat Action

It is inevitable that heat stress is inextricably linked with climate justice and that architecture is a vital tool to address this issue given that 30 per cent of global GHG emissions are contributed by the construction industry. 

A study conducted by CSE on the sustainability and thermal comfort of buildings designed under the government’s affordable housing scheme revealed that buildings that have a facade facing east-west gain up to 20 per cent more than north-south facing buildings in Dommara Pochampally district in Telangana state. The heat gain dropped by 40 per cent, just with the replacement of concrete blocks to fly ash bricks through simulation models. 

A few other design fundamentals that can be incorporated for similar architecture-supported heat adaption and mitigation include appropriate building orientation, micro-climate aspects i.e. the distance between buildings, the open space quality between surrounding buildings, the direction of openings, shading over ventilation, insulation and creating radiant barriers through thermal mass, presence of trees and greens and the right walling material. It is evident that while solutions exist there is a lack of action to ensure that heat stress is addressed substantially by the mindful incorporation of building design fundamentals in collaboration with inhabitants as part of constructing new structures and even retrofitting old ones. There is therefore a need and potential for HAPs to espouse these perspectives

While the NDMA has taken an initial step towards adopting climate-sensitive built space features by updating its Heat Guidelines in the year 2019 and introducing cool roofs in the plans, there is a need to strengthen and also diversify this heat stress battling approach and there is a long way to go. HAPs must work towards this by ensuring that architects are looped in as key stakeholders under inter-agency collaboration and capacity-building efforts. 

There is therefore a pressing need for future and present built space professionals to spearhead the movement for climate-responsive architecture, given the climate emergency we are battling with.  

There are global networks of built space professional networks such as the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) that are working towards addressing the issue of climate and ecological breakdown through mindful built space design, through developing small networks addressing and advocating on a diversity of built space issues. Our team is in the process of mobilising an ACAN chapter in India – a hopeful pathway to address the cooling needs of the built environment and addressing the injustice of marginalised populations bearing the brunt of affluent populations bombarding the environment with emissions from energy-guzzling air conditioners, in addition, other built space-related issues. 

It is vital now more than ever for architects of the present and future and like-minded individuals to collaborate and advocate for the inclusion of built space professionals in heat stress interventions. The temperature is rising, injustice is escalating and we must act now! If not us, who? If not now, when?

Written by cBalance team; Edited by Yoshita Rao

References:

Magotra, R. Tygi, A. Shaw, M. and Raj, V (2021). “Review of Heat Action Plan’

State of India’s Environment in figures: India recorded 280 heat wave days across 16 states in 2022 — most in decade by Kiran Pandey; published on 2 June 2022

architectsca.org

cseindia.org

Singh, M. Grover, S. Sareen, R. and Roychowdhury, A. (2022). Democratise Thermal Comfort. 

Expanding Heat Resilience Across India: Heat Action Plan Highlights 2022

When I left home for college, there was a certain clarity with which I had my life planned out — my career, lifestyle, personal ambitions. 

But by the time I graduated, I had far more questions than I had answers. Prompted by an insistent inner voice, I couldn’t help but wonder —  is this really what life is all about? I started to question what I truly valued, what success meant to me, and how I could live a more meaningful life.

It was then that I chanced upon a flyer of a school of practical philosophy called New Acropolis. 

Its Mumbai centre was located just down the road from where I had grown up, but for years, I’d been unaware of its existence. Perhaps life reveals its gifts when we are ready to receive them. 

Since then, the ten-year philosophical journey I embarked on has completely changed the way I looked at life. 

The inherent wisdom in life 

New Acropolis is present in over 60 countries across the globe. 

New Acropolis India alone hosts over 2,000 hours of classes, activities, workshops and discussions every year, dedicated to investigating ancient wisdom across civilisations from the East and West. Here, the purpose is not to learn about philosophers and their philosophies, but to apply universal principles from our shared human heritage in order to live better today and build a better future. 

To me, philosophy had always seemed like a theoretical and impractical field of study. But little did I know that the ancient Greek schools of Plato and Pythagoras were always meant to be ‘schools of life’. Far from intellectually debating ideas and concepts, they were centred around living them.  

The name ‘Acropolis’ itself refers to the “higher city within us”, an idea not so different from ‘Hastinapura’, which translates to city of elephants and can symbolically be understood as the city of wisdom in the Indian tradition. 

This, I learnt, is what the philosophical journey is essentially about — discovering the wisdom inherent in life and in ourselves, through our own experiences. 

It is not without reason that UNESCO, in 2002, created World Philosophy Day, an occasion dedicated to reviving the value and importance of philosophy in improving our world today, by enabling us as individuals to improve ourselves. 

Philosophy in action

We often look for external solutions to mitigate the challenges of our times, be it our current climate crisis or the rise in divisiveness and war. 

Yet philosophers from many traditions constantly remind us that we cannot change society or our systems without changing the heart of the systems first, which can only start with ourselves. 

Can we expect to solve environmental issues without changing the way we interact with nature? Can we expect to live in a just and compassionate society if we don’t know how to recognise the forces of separation and prejudice that exist within us? 

Here lies the power of philosophy — it enables us to realise that each one of us is part of the challenges we see in our world, and that we all have the potential to be part of the solution.

However, as I learned early in New Acropolis, good intentions alone are not enough. In fact, philosophy without action is not philosophy at all. 

This is why volunteering forms a core pillar of all activities, with all centres managed and run completely by volunteers. 

New Acropolis India engages in over 600 hours of ecological, social and humanitarian activities, focusing on fostering individual responsibility towards oneself, society, and nature. Activities include mangrove clean ups, tree plantation drives, wall-painting and beautification activities, blood donation drives, and other community-driven initiatives. 

Yet, I discovered that truly volunteering is more than giving back to society for a few hours in a week. Its power lies in aspiring to bring this spirit of service and generosity into all our daily choices and actions. 

Volunteering is, therefore, philosophy in action. 

It is a practice that continues to teach me to overcome my own selfishness and put the needs of others over my own comfort and preferences. To volunteer is to simply play our rightful role in the world that we inhabit, and it can remind us that we are part of something much larger than our individual selves.  

‘Who am I?’

In an ever-changing world, philosophy can allow us to discover a deeper, stabler, and truer reality of ourselves and our world. 

Questions such as “Who am I?” and “Is there a purpose to life?” have been explored by wise men and women across traditions and can offer some light on how we can live with more authenticity and independence, taking charge and directing our lives in the light of what we choose to value. 

Therefore, philosophy gives me hope. It shows me that if we are able to give more emphasis to the common humanity in each of us, to what unites us over what separates us, it can change the way we live, interact, and view ourselves and each other. 

The pursuit of philosophy has given me the gift to see my life as a continuous learning process, to search for the lesson in every circumstance, whether positive or painful.

I am truly grateful to be part of a community of aspiring philosophers who come together from different walks of life — with different strengths and challenges — all in the common pursuit of bringing the best of ourselves to each day and humbly leaving our world a little better than we found it. 

For more information, visit www.acropolis.org.in

To learn more about World Philosophy Day 2022, head to: https://acropolis.org.in/world-philosophy-day-2022/

To learn more about Living Philosophy, visit: https://acropolis.org.in/living-philosophy-discover-awaken-transform-mumbai-center/

All photo credits: New Acropolis India

Written by Trishya Screwvala (member and volunteer at New Acropolis India); Edited by Divya Sethu

#MakingSportWork: We celebrate the potential of sport to build a #BetterIndia with opinion pieces, stories and profiles of how sport can improve the lives of every Indian. Read more from this exclusive series by The Better India and Sports and Society Accelerator here.

When Seema Kumari received the news that she had been accepted into Harvard University last year, she knew it was nothing short of revolutionary. 

Growing up in a farming family in the village of Dahu, Jharkhand, she was aware that life could have turned out very differently. The state has the highest school dropout rate in the country, and most girls from homes like hers are unable to finish their education in order to contribute to their family’s income. 

When her Harvard acceptance came, among the first people that Seema called to give the good news were Franz and Rose Gastler, the founders of Yuwa — the school she attended and the biggest reason why she had been given this chance. 

For the 19-year-old, the duo are her “second parents”. “If I need anything, I go to them. My parents can’t understand what I am dealing with. They know where I come from, and they know who I am,” she says. 

With a vision for a brighter future 

Franz Gastler founded Yuwa, an organisation that uses sports to fuel social development, in Jharkhand in 2009. He had moved from the US to India the year before to work for an NGO, but decided he wanted to work directly with the local community in Rukka village, Ormanjhi.

Yuwa began by funding academic scholarships to a private school and provided tuitions in English and Maths. Classes in the morning started at 5 am and were often taught by candlelight since electricity was in short supply.

The idea to use sports to initiate change, however, came during a conversation with a group of girls he was working with. 

When a 12-year-old named Suman casually said she would like to play football, Franz realised he had never seen any of the girls playing any sport. He decided a football programme was worth trying, even though he had never played it himself. 

“Sports is a really good way to increase school attendance,” explains the 41-year-old. “Before football, girls were individuals. Now they are a team. If one girl drops out of school, her teammates work together to bring her back.”

That’s why a key condition for his football programme was that the girls had to stay in school.

Franz wanted to create a safe and encouraging space for the girls, so he focused on positive coaching and having fun. But over the years, the girls told him they wanted harder practices. “I wasn’t surprised that they wanted to play football, but I was surprised that they took it so seriously,” he recalls. 

The football programme quickly took off and became far more popular than Franz had ever expected. He even took a few teams to compete in Spain and the United States. In 2019, Yuwa received the Laureus Sport for Good award for its football programme. The award honours those who have demonstrated “tremendous contribution to sport or to society through sport”. 

Today, Yuwa has 29 teams with around 600 players, who play six days a week. All the girls come from about 15 to 20 villages in Ormanjhi block. The BookASmile Yuwa football programme also has about 50 female coaches, all of whom have come through the football programme. The organisation recently added an Ultimate Frisbee programme and in September 2022, nine girls from the organisation participated in an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament in New Delhi. 

Challenging archaic notions 

Seema had joined the football programme in 2012 at the age of nine. Unlike a lot of other girls, her parents had not objected. 

“Neither my parents nor my [elder] brother ever stopped me from doing something. It was my decision and they respected that,” she says.

One of the more exciting aspects of the programme for Seema was getting to meet and talk to volunteers from different countries, which opened her eyes to the wider world. “I thought if they can come here, why can’t I go there and see what it looks like?”

The year that Seema joined Yuwa was the same year Franz met Rose (then Rose Thompson), in Mumbai. Rose was in India on a fellowship focused on the impact of sports on girls’ development. Franz invited her to Jharkhand and Rose spent a couple of months there. She returned to Jharkhand in 2013 and joined Yuwa full-time in September. The two would later get married. 

Rose led the before-and-after school education programme, but over time, it became evident that they needed to do more. “After doing this for a year and a half, I started to feel like we were not meeting our goal of putting the girls’ futures in their own hands,” she explains. “Instead of being 16-year-old brides, they were just becoming 18-year-old brides.” 

Franz agrees and notes, “The parents were happy their girls were enrolled, but they saw it as a route to a better marriage prospect for their daughters, not as something that could help them build their own lives.” 

The pair realised the only way they could guarantee the quality of education they aspired to was to start their own school. 

However, Franz wasn’t convinced it was the right move. “I felt like there were too many roadblocks and we would get stuck,” he says. 

But they found an able ally in IAS officer Manish Ranjan — the then director of secondary education, Government of Jharkhand — who helped them through the process. “He deserves a lot of credit,” Franz says. 

Meanwhile, Rose diligently recruited teachers, sifting through hundreds of applications to pick the ones she felt best fit their mission. In April 2015, Yuwa opened the school with 45 students from classes 3 to 8. 

From its inception, the Yuwa school wanted to create an environment that would foster critical thinking and enable the girls to feel empowered as members of their communities. 

“A lot of people here still think women should not be educated …We want [the children] to be prepared to challenge those notions and to have the confidence to do that in a way that is empathetic and unwavering,” Rose says. 

There’s no admission test for the school. Admission is granted on the basis of financial need and a commitment to the football programme. 

In an area where family support for girls is mostly lacking, the football teams double as a social support network. “It is really important to have a larger community that supports and defends their choices and connects them with older girls who have taken this path,” Rose says. “When you see other examples, it is very powerful. They know it can be done.” 

Where girls find the right to dream  

Since 2015, the football programme has been running in collaboration with BookASmile, the charity initiative of BookMyShow. 

The programme also helps develop the girls’ personalities. Seema says it gave her more confidence and made her a better leader and communicator. “Now that I have seen it, I feel like I am one of those people who believes in [the power of] sports,” she says. 

During the initial phase of the pandemic, Franz and Rose ran the school remotely, which was challenging because only a few girls had access to the internet. But the school thrived despite these hurdles. “The key was how good our staff is and how dedicated the kids are to keeping it going,” Franz says.

The pandemic also hit their fundraising hard, but Yuwa was rescued by Alka Tiwari, a C-suite executive in Mumbai. “She and her IIM women’s alumni group kept our organisation afloat for a year and a half,” Franz says. 

The first class of nine students graduated in 2020, with eight of the nine getting full scholarships to universities in Spain, India, and Bangladesh. Yuwa also offers the opportunity of a high school year abroad in the US on a programme sponsored by the US Government. This year, three students from Yuwa were selected.

In 2022, Rose handed over the reins as principal to Sheena Chacko, who had previously worked at the International Labour Organisation in New Delhi. When Chacko’s husband was posted to Ranchi, she, too, had to look for a job, and came across the opening for principal on LinkedIn. “Frankly speaking, I was moved, and wanted to be part of Yuwa,” says Chacko, who took over in July this year. 

Though she has only been in the position a few months, Chacko has been impressed by the effort and determination shown by the students. 

She says a typical day for the girls involves waking up around 4 am, going for practice, then going back home to do household chores. School hours are 9.00 am to 3.00 pm, after which some girls have football practice again. Then there are more household chores or work to be done in fields. 

The girls somehow also find time to study and take part in various programmes run by the school such as Kick-off Solutions and Goals for Girls. 

“Students of Yuwa are very inspiring and when you look at their day-to-day schedule, it motivates you to work harder in life,” Chacko says. “It’s a totally different and satisfying feeling working here after having a career of 14-plus years across the corporate world, diplomatic community, UN…It’s adding meaning to what I am doing.”

Among the challenges she faces is the continuing opposition to what Yuwa is doing from some within the community, who believe that girls do not need an education. 

This notion undoubtedly affects the girls who are part of Yuwa’s programmes as well. Seema, who is now in her second year of Harvard, says she has felt afraid at times, like when she went to visit her parents during her summer vacation earlier this year. “There are people who believe that what I am doing is wrong,” she says. “Jealousy is another issue you have to go through.”

Seema plans to major in Economics, and despite her fears, hopes to one day return to Jharkhand to help improve the lives of others in the area. 

According to Chacko, the girls also have to deal with alcoholism and drug abuse within their families. That’s why Yuwa also has a team of counsellors to support them. Seema mentions Laura, one of the counsellors, as someone who gave her good advice.

‘The programme taught me that girls can think for themselves.’ 

Yuwa will graduate its fourth batch of students next year. Among them will be Riya Kumari, a Class 12 student who comes from a village called Singiri. 

Riya joined Yuwa when she was 10. She had noticed some girls in her village playing football and thought it would be a good way to make friends. But when she asked her father, who sells clothes at the local market, if she could join, he said no because “football is meant for boys, not girls”.

Riya decided to go without telling her family, but her neighbours would see her leaving the house wearing shorts and eventually told her parents. “They didn’t like that and they provoked my parents to stop me from playing,” Riya says. “Starting was really hard … it took one or two months for [my parents] to accept it.” 

Today, Riya coaches the younger girls and has set up two 16-member teams in her village. “Through football, I am giving them awareness,” she says. “Some of them are not even aware of what periods are and they are asking me questions.” She also gets paid to coach and uses this money for her school fees and to support her family.

She’s currently in the process of applying to colleges in the US, the UK and India. Like Seema, she plans to study economics in college, but she is also interested in astrobiology.

“My thinking has changed. Before joining Yuwa, I had no clear idea about my future. In my community, it is very common for a girl to get married after Class 10 or after she starts menstruating. I also thought the same would happen to me. I got to know after joining [Yuwa] that girls can think for themselves.”

Edited by Divya Sethu

When we were growing up in the 90s, things were relatively simpler. In those days, choosing a career path after Class 12 was among the few significant life events. But as we transition to today’s technology-driven and hyper-competitive world, decision-making begins as early as the child is born, or to be specific, conceived. 

Which hospital should one go to? Which book should parents read? Which yoga class must one join? And then comes a debate of recent origin — which is the best school and board for our child? 

In the interconnected world of WhatsApp, I encounter conversations almost every day about selecting the ‘right’ school. 

In the last few weeks, my team and I surveyed different stakeholders including parents, administrators and teachers about different boards in Jaipur, as well as a few from NCR. This article presents the findings of our survey. 

It may be helpful to parents, students and everyone interested in exploring the contemporary Indian school education system. We begin with highlights of the recent Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) report by the Department of School Education and Literacy, presenting data on schools.

MoE’s UDISE+ Report 2021-22: Key highlights

India has one of the world’s largest school education systems. 

As per the recent UDISE+ report, over 26.5 crore students are enrolled in pre-primary to higher secondary levels in 14.89 lakh schools, employing more than 95 lakh teachers. The Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for primary to higher secondary levels increased in 2020-21 compared to the previous year, as did the numbers of SC, ST, OBC and students with disabilities. All major infrastructural facilities improved. However, the number of schools and teachers declined by 1.34 and 1.99 per cent respectively, due to the shutting down of some schools. 

The report presents disaggregated data for the first time for government, semi-government and private schools, as well as data on indicators like integrated science labs, co-curricular activity rooms, initiatives for sustainable development etc, in line with the NEP 2020.

Out of 14.89 lakh schools, affiliation is not applicable up to the elementary level for almost 11.96 lakh schools. Nearly 2.5 lakh are affiliated with CBSE, 1.5 lakh with the State board, 22,000 with both State and ICSE, 351 with ICSE, and 2,200 with others. 

According to an IBEF report, almost 85 per cent of schools in India are in rural areas. Thus, the spectrum of schools is vast. On one end, some in rural areas struggle with basic infrastructural needs. On the other hand, posh urban ones compete for state-of-the-art facilities. Among the latter, there are various education boards, as discussed ahead.

A comparison between the boards

Apart from CBSE, ICSE, and State board, there are international boards like IB (International Baccalaureate) and Cambridge Assessment International Education, different systems like Waldorf, and ‘radical’ options like homeschooling, unschooling, and road schooling. 

We surveyed stakeholders to understand the boards based on parameters like (a) minimum age for admission, (b) curriculum, (c) assessment, (d) recognition, (e) cost, (f) learning pace, (g) relationship with parents, (h) diversity and inclusion, etc. Key inferences follow.

I) Age for Admission

According to the Right to Education Act of 2009, elementary education must be free and compulsory for all students starting at six years. The minimum age for admission in India to Class 1 is usually between five and six years for all boards. 

Structurally, CBSE, ICSE and the state boards follow the Class I-XII pattern. At the same time, IB has introduced the primary-years, middle-years, and diploma programmes comparable to class I-V, VI-X, and XI-XII, respectively.

II) Curriculum

On average, at the primary level, the boards offer six to eight subjects, including English, Mathematics, Science, Computers, Physical Education, Arts and a Second Language. IB and Cambridge provide additional courses like yoga and stretching, life experiences, global perspectives, digital literacy, music and students’ engagement in creativity, activity, and service. Waldorf, along with basic subjects, provides exposure to theatre, movements, recorder (musical instrument) and handwork, including knitting and crocheting.  

These subjects appeared to be very interesting to us. But the expert opinion was divided. 

Anita Sharma, who teaches in a primary school in Jaipur, said, “It is amazing how our children have opportunities to explore so much these days. They are exposed to diverse skills, and finding their calling very young will benefit their mental and physical well-being in the long run.”

Anshita Gupta, founder of Sun-India pre-school in Jaipur, said, “Advertisements must not sway parents and disregarding options without any analysis is not useful. Each board has its advantages and disadvantages. IB boards provide more room for experimentation and nurture an aptitude for research. Similarly, CBSE enables the child to handle pressure and become hard-working.” 

She emphasised the need for a “balanced approach” in all the schools. For instance, some schools focus mainly on typing or oral communication. While students must know how to work with computers, they must also write. A skill like writing is inextricably linked to a child’s future development.

III) Assessment

For assessment, CBSE, ICSE and State boards employ a combination of written tests, projects and viva. The evaluation also includes fieldwork, artistic performances, essay writing and case studies in IB. Cambridge supports written, oral, coursework and practical evaluation. In comparison, Waldorf follows child-centric learning, and there is scope to modify the pace to suit each child. They provide detailed individual feedback. Unschooling and homeschooling parents may opt for open-board examinations.

While traditional assessment focuses on lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy — like remembering and understanding — the international boards emphasise higher levels, like evaluation and creation. 

Monika Gupta, who returned from the US a few years ago and chose IB for her children, said, “I am delighted with the assessments in IB because rote learning is not encouraged. IB aims to create lifelong learners who are responsible, caring and open-minded citizens worldwide. It takes more of a holistic approach to education. I did not have many opportunities in my school to experiment, and sports were almost negligible. The only challenge is that we are engaged throughout the year because the assessment is continuous.”

IV) Cost

In our survey, the cost of education emerged as an essential factor affecting school choice. 

The international boards are relatively expensive. To put things in perspective, on average, a centrally-located CBSE school in Jaipur charges nearly INR 75,000 per annum for Class I, Waldorf around INR 1.25 lakh, and an IB school almost INR 2.5 lakh. 

The fees may change based on location, brand, and type of facilities. Nisha Gupta, an HR professional, consciously chose a CBSE school for her child over an IB school. In her opinion, school is only a part of a child’s life, and learning happens everywhere — at home, in a park, and at social gatherings.

“What happens beyond school is equally important. I chose the CBSE board because I wanted my child to remain grounded and study amongst students from all socio-economic backgrounds. Such an environment is missing in an IB school because it is affordable only by upper-middle class families,” she said.

V) Diversity and inclusion

Apart from socio-economic diversity, the boards express varying degrees of concern towards students with different abilities and needs. In a 2019 circular, CBSE provided details of exemptions for special-needs students. In some cases, as explained by experts, for instance in the case of students with Attention Deficit Hypersensitivity Disorder (ADHD), IB shall be more appropriate at initial levels. But when there is little scope for modifying the pace of learning in a system, the school unintentionally admits students with similar abilities or needs.

Waldorf is suitable for students with varying needs as the system adopts a child-led learning approach. 

Gurpreet Kaur, the founder of Uday Waldorf Inspired School in Jaipur, shared, “My search for a school for my daughter led me to start Uday Waldorf in Jaipur. The journey has been challenging but fulfilling. Inspired by Waldorf’s philosophy, the school aims to develop a child’s uniqueness and love for learning. The curriculum places an equal emphasis on the head, heart and hands, unlike the traditional approach focusing mostly on the head. Music and theatre are integrated into the curriculum. Our design is backed by scientific research into stages of human development.”

VI) Pace of learning

In a school, the learning pace is similar because everyone moves together, unlike homeschooling or unschooling. In simple terms, unschooling is a conscious decision to not enrol a child in a regular school. 

Pooja Somani, a freelance writer, chose to unschool her daughter. “The pace at which she is learning is faster. She is an avid reader and grasps logic easily. We spend an hour on studies daily, and the rest of learning is naturally built into our routines.” 

According to her, unschooling seems unconventional, but it has been the best experience. We asked if she ever felt worried about her daughter’s social wellness. She did not and shared that her daughter has many friends; from the neighbourhood, common circles, community gatherings and extra classes she chooses to attend. Pooja is a part of many unschooling communities and online groups where parents lend each other support and advice. Some prefer unschooling because of moving careers and frequent changes in cities.

VII) Recognition

Homeschooling or unschooling is illegal in countries like Germany, Greece, Greenland, Turkey and Iran. Apart from that, all the boards are internationally recognised, with a presence in several countries. For instance, CBSE has more than 250 schools in 26 countries worldwide. 

Biju MP, vice principal at a well-renowned CBSE school in the city with an experience of more than 28 years, said, “The schools have come a long way. Even CBSE schools have gone international. We now offer electives that are creative and unique. However, implementation is a challenge. In the higher secondary, students hardly show any interest — they are engaged in preparing for competitive exams.”

VIII) Relationship with parents

Another factor not discussed often but emerged in our survey is the school’s relationship with parents. 

Some parents prefer a school open to feedback, which is not encouraged in older, established schools. Vaibhav Aggarwal, founder of an NGO promoting sustainable development in Jaipur, shared, “We chose Waldorf because we felt connected when we visited the school. They were very open to listening to us, unlike an older school where we were not allowed to go beyond the gate. Even today, the most important aspect is that our child is happy and does not feel scared or anxious going to school.”

Making the final choice

In our survey, we came across diverse opinions. Each had a story. In some cases, the story originated in the parents’ childhood. In others, it was rooted in the family’s culture. We encountered that the choices made by parents were neither good nor bad — they were diverse and real.

Harshita Aggarwal, a freelance corporate trainer based in Bangalore and Jaipur, researched for many months before finalising a school for her daughter. She said, “To me, the boards can be compared to different feeding types. While some follow spoon-feeding, others are similar to baby-led weaning. Both options exist.” 

Thus, each board has its advantages and disadvantages. To begin with, affordability is a fundamental factor. Then comes curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. The overall philosophy, culture and relationships are also significant. 

But a lesser-known aspect that stood out in our survey is the quality of teachers. Harshita expressed, “During my visits to various schools, I felt teachers had a key role in driving the curriculum. The best teachers never encouraged rote learning, even if the curriculum or examinations were designed to measure the capability to remember the solution rather than analyse the problem.” 

On a final note, the choice of school must rest with the child — parents may facilitate accessibility. 

Anil Sharma, a child psychologist, said, “Until the children become old enough to understand if they have made the right choice, the parents may gauge if the school is their child’s happy place. It can create a negative impact to be part of a system where one is unhappy or uncomfortable. There are no rules to explain; the parents would just know.” 

Written by Ritika Mahajan, assistant professor at the Department of Management Studies (DMS), Malaviya National Institute of Technology; Survey conducted in collaboration with Manish Joshi and Sebin S John, second year MBA students at DMS, MNIT Jaipur.

Edited by Divya Sethu