Category: Change Your Mind

  • What A Small Village In Arunachal Taught Me

    By DEBABRATA SAHA —- MY journey started as a manager of a cellular firm. Precisely, my primary job was to sell smartphones. I sold phones, promising better communication among people. Once on a field visit to Lava, a tribal village in West Bengal, I realised that the phones I sold could connect humans but not…

  • Economic Growth vs Climate Security: We Can Have It All

    By BRITT GOOSMAN & RICHIE AHUJA —- IF as a country you want to provide a healthy economy for your people, to ensure issues such as food and job security, and to encourage sustainable agriculture–for instance, by building better soil or allowing the doubling of farmer incomes–you need to provide energy for all of it.…

  • Poverty And The Apathetic Indian

    By SANJANA PEGU | NEWSLAUNDRY —- THE Indian state currently recognises me as an NRI which, as any non mainland Indian will tell you, is slightly bemusing since our relations with India has always been one of estrangement. Personally, my feelings towards the Indian nation state is moody and tenuous, somewhere between like and dislike,…

  • ‘Our Only Assets Are These Hands And Legs’

    By PURUSOTTAM THAKUR | PARI —- BHAGAULI Sahu walks from Shankardah village to Dhamtari town nearly every day, carrying two bundles of straw or grass, depending on the season. He ties the straw or grass to a stick called kanwar, which he places on his shoulders. In Dhamtari, around 70 kilometres from Chhattisgarh’s capital city Raipur,…

  • Animal Rights: Legislation is Not Enough

    THE world today recognises that animals are conscious living beings and feel much like we do. Globally, we see more people speaking out against cruelty to animals, which translates into both a change in how we see animals, and policy changes that regulate how we treat them. There have also been breakthroughs in the fields…

  • How To Make Employee Volunteering Work

    MOST companies, and especially those with significant CSR budgets, have dedicated time and resources to running employee volunteering programmes. Yet, we’ve all heard of the school that got painted multiple times over, or the clean-up drive that resulted in a pristine beach for 48 hours, only to attract another group of well-meaning corporate volunteers to…

  • What Standard Tests Don’t Tell Us About Learning

    By NILESH NIMKAR  —- THE brick kilns of Sonale were bustling with activity: children running around, indigenous technology being used, and lots of mathematics being done. I recently went there after a teacher from the nearby primary school approached our nonprofit, Quest, because the children living there were simply not learning. The concern was, if they…

  • Women On The Move: Fearless And Free

    By ANCHITA GHATAK —- THE Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, recently announced that women could use state run public transport for free. He also said that women who wished to pay were welcome to pay and explained that this measure would make it safe for women to travel by public transport. Rarely do political…

  • Of Limited Means But Unlimited Generosity

    By Kushal Biswas —- WHEN it comes to giving and generosity, the first name that springs to my mind is that of Timothy babu, even though I haven’t seen him in decades and I don’t even know what his full name is. When I think of him now, he reminds me of a Quentin Blake…

  • Youth Employability…Beyond Job Placements

    By PRIYA AGRAWAL —- LATA’s expression that day was a mix of delight, surprise, disbelief and pride. She had made it through the Marriott interview. She could not wait for Monday and her first day of work. Among 423million young adults in India, Lata used to be one of the 13.2% of youth her age…

  • Museums Can Teach Our Children Well

    By TEJSHVI JAIN —- IN 2012, I was at the V&A London (the world’s largest museum for decorative arts and design) for a training programme. This trip was a real eye opener for me, despite my experience as assistant curator at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru. For the first time I saw how a…

  • Social Sector’s Failure To Talk About Failure

    By ROHINI NILEKANI —- A LOT of ink is spilled, and awards are bestowed celebrating the success of the social sector, and there is much to celebrate. But the truth is, if innovation is essential to the ultimate achievements of the sector, we should spend less time on success, and more time on failure. We…

  • Sex, Death And Charity

    By SARA ADHIKARI —- STRUNG together, these three words seem like an odd combination or, at best, click bait. But in my experience, all of them are linked by the squirm factor that private conversations on the subjects inevitably evoke. Take my dearly departed dad, for instance, or Baba as I called him. As a…

  • Taking Greenwash Route to Fix Plastic Crisis

    By NIVEN REDDY —- THE issue with plastic is evident for everyone to see: it fills our streets and waterways and now we know that plastic particles have entered our food systems too. So how do we address this issue? How can we prevent our families from ingesting toxic plastic during every meal? Certainly not…

  • Football: Game Changer On And Off The Pitch

    AISHWARYA and Yuvraj are among the first team members of Shining Stars Football Club, a not for profit programme of PASS Collective who work with girls and boys from marginalised urban communities of Bengaluru, Karnataka. With our focus on children and youth this month, here the teenagers tell us how football has helped them face challenges,…

  • How To Build Our Own Silicon Valley

    By ABHIJIT BHADURI —- FROM 2010 to this year, venture capitalists invested $168billion in firms in the Bay Area which accounts for almost a third of the total investments in America. Three of the world’s five most valuable companies are in the Silicon Valley: Apple, Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Facebook. They are valued at $2.5trillion.…

  • Fundraising Is Selfless – Just Do It!

    By MICAH BRANAMAN SHARMA —- THE festive season is here once again! As families come together to celebrate a variety of festivals from Navaratri, and Durga Puja to Dussehra and Diwali, consumer spending traditionally skyrockets. To harness the excesses of consumerism for good, #DaanUtsav, literally the donation festival, kicks off in tandem with this celebratory…

  • A Clean Wardrobe, a Cleaner Conscience

    By KARUNA EZARA PARIKH —- THE first images of the Kerala floods I saw were not on the evening news or in the papers the next morning, no. They were on social media. There were awful images of damage done alongside pleas to donate, pleas to reach out, pleas to help. At first, I watched…

  • Prometheus Unbound: Fire And Optimism In India

    By CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA —- EVEN in the United States, a country that’s no stranger to monumental acts of philanthropy, Azim Premji’s generous gift for primary education in India created a ripple, generating headlines such as “India’s Bill Gates donates $2 billion” and “India’s Warren Buffett…” Although the money went into a trust to fund education…

  • Ordinary people, extraordinary power

    By ANSHU GUPTA —- THERE’S a recent image that will remain etched in our collective memory for a long time: 40,000 farmers from Nashik marching towards Mumbai in scorching heat to demand their rights. The reason it makes for a compelling image is because the farmers joined hands across caste, religion and class lines to…

  • Privilege And Bias Affect Our Empathy

    By ALEX GABBAY —- IN 2001, I moved to Kathmandu to produce three films for UNICEF. Whilst making them I realised that films were able to connect two communities: people in need and people with privilege. And that through storytelling we could create awareness and ultimately empathy. To give you an example, I made a…

  • When Fundraisers Become Fun Raisers

    By MICAH BRANAMAN SHARMA —- AS a professional fundraiser in a previous life, we all strive for that ONE idea that will set our campaign up for success. You know you’ve hit gold when it’s all over the place, from celebrities to the news to Facebook, but what does it really mean to have a…

  • Are We Oblivious To Caste Discrimination?

    By NITISHA PANDEY —- IF you think that caste bias is a thing of the past and India has moved into the 21st century with modern belief systems, you are mistaken, my friend. If you thought that maybe this inequality exists only in rural areas, you are wrong again. If you are consoling yourself by…

  • Addressing Masculinity In India

    By RENUKA MOTIHAR —- IN the early years of my career, I worked at CEDPA (now Centre for Catalyzing Change), a pioneer in working with adolescent girls in India. As we interacted and engaged with young women, there were demands from them: “You have changed my life. Now please change the thinking of my future…

  • More celebs need to be real-life heroes

    By CHIRAG MALKANI —- BONO, the rockstar and activist, acknowledges the power of celebrity, saying: “It’s silly, but it’s a kind of currency, and you have to spend it wisely.” That is, if you spend it at all. Yes, there are famous personalities who, like Bono, have aligned themselves to social causes – but are there enough of them,…