Ushering in an Indian Renaissance by University Reform: Restoring the Bond Between Knowledge, Culture, and Society

 

1.0 Introduction

Indian universities today stand at a critical crossroads. Once celebrated as centers of civilizational learning that nurtured both intellectual and moral growth, they have become increasingly detached from the society they are meant to serve. The prevailing educational model—largely inherited from the colonial era and reinforced by Western academic paradigms—has distanced higher education from India’s cultural roots, community life, and indigenous systems of knowledge.

This detachment has had far-reaching consequences: knowledge has become abstracted from lived experience, and education has become a pathway to employment rather than enlightenment or social transformation. To reclaim their rightful purpose, Indian universities must reorient themselves toward the people and the land that sustain them. They must study and reflect the society around them—its culture, ethos, and history—while also engaging with its contemporary challenges through innovation, research, and locally rooted entrepreneurship.

This article calls for a comprehensive reform of Indian higher education guided by two intertwined imperatives: the renewal of knowledge dissemination through the integration of Indian Knowledge Systems, and the revitalization of employment preparation through partnerships with local industries, MSMEs, and family-run enterprises. By restoring the organic link between knowledge, livelihood, and culture, Indian universities can once again become living institutions that both reflect and reshape the society they serve.

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2.0 Historical Roots of the Disconnect

2.1 Destruction of the Gurukul System

The roots of this disconnection can be traced back to the colonial period, which systematically dismantled India’s indigenous systems of learning, most notably the Gurukul and community-based educational models. These institutions were deeply embedded in the social fabric of local communities and offered holistic instruction across a wide range of disciplines—philosophy, mathematics, medicine, grammar, logic, astronomy, and governance—while nurturing moral and spiritual development.

Unlike modern universities, these traditional centers of learning were sustained by community participation and local patronage. Education was not seen as a means to individual advancement alone but as a social duty, a process of cultivating wisdom for the collective well-being of society. Teachers (gurus) and students (shishyas) lived and learned together in an atmosphere of discipline, inquiry, and mutual respect, forming an enduring bond between education and everyday life.

This system began to unravel under British colonial rule. The colonial administration introduced a new educational framework designed to serve imperial needs rather than local aspirations. Schools and universities established under British policy prioritized English language instruction and administrative skills over creativity, reasoning, or philosophical depth. Historical research, notably by thinkers such as Dharampal, has shown that pre-colonial India enjoyed widespread literacy and a decentralized, community-based educational network that was both accessible and effective. British policies disrupted these networks, redirecting resources and altering curricula to produce a workforce suitable for clerical and bureaucratic roles within the colonial apparatus.

(https://hinduperspective.com/2015/05/04/education-system-in-pre-british-india-by-ram-swarup/)

The result was the erosion of a knowledge system that had once been both rooted in culture and responsive to society. Education became detached from India’s intellectual traditions, practical life, and moral imagination—setting in motion a legacy of alienation that continues to shape Indian universities today.

2.2 The British Education System and Its Impact

The British colonial administration’s reconfiguration of education in India was not merely an institutional change but a civilizational intervention. The aim was to replace an organically evolved system of learning with one that served the administrative and ideological needs of the Empire. This transformation was guided by utilitarian logic: to produce a class of functionaries who could efficiently manage the colonial machinery at minimal cost.

This intent was made explicit in the famous Minute on Indian Education (1835) by Thomas Babington Macaulay, which called for the creation of “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” The resulting education system emphasized literacy in English, mastery of clerical procedures, and obedience to authority rather than the cultivation of inquiry, imagination, or moral reflection. Schools and colleges became training grounds for government service rather than spaces for intellectual exploration or social engagement.

The consequences were far-reaching. A once plural and dialogic intellectual culture—where Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and regional languages coexisted—was replaced by a rigid, hierarchical model that privileged English and Western thought. The sciences, arts, and humanities were filtered through a Eurocentric lens, relegating indigenous knowledge to the margins. As a result, education ceased to be an instrument of self-understanding and became a means of social mobility within a colonial order.

This system also severed the connection between universities and the economic life of the nation. Traditional industries, crafts, and agrarian innovations—once supported by locally relevant learning—found little recognition in the new curriculum. The universities trained clerks and administrators, not inventors or entrepreneurs. The emphasis on rote learning, memorization, and examination replaced the experiential, problem-solving ethos that had characterized pre-colonial learning.

Even after independence, the underlying structure of this colonial model persisted. The symbols changed, but the spirit remained: English continued as the language of prestige, Western theories dominated academic discourse, and universities remained oriented toward bureaucratic or corporate employment. The result has been a continuing alienation—between academia and industry, knowledge and livelihood, and, ultimately, between education and the lived realities of Indian society.

To this day, the shadow of this colonial framework lingers in the mindset of institutions and policymakers, shaping curricula, pedagogy, and aspirations. Recognizing this historical continuity is essential to understanding why Indian universities often struggle to address local challenges or nurture original thought. Any meaningful reform must therefore begin with dismantling the intellectual hierarchies inherited from colonial rule and restoring education’s purpose as a medium of social transformation and cultural self-renewal.

 

2.3 Timeliness of Reform: Geopolitical Shifts

The call for educational reform in India does not arise in isolation; it is inseparable from the profound geopolitical and intellectual transformations unfolding across the world today. For more than two centuries, Western nations have shaped the global order—not only politically and economically but also epistemically—defining what counts as legitimate knowledge, progress, and development. Yet this dominance is now visibly waning.

The Western model of industrial capitalism, with its extractive economic logic and instrumental view of knowledge, is confronting crises on multiple fronts: ecological exhaustion, social fragmentation, and moral disillusionment. Economies that once drove global innovation now struggle with stagnation, inequality, and declining public trust in institutions. Simultaneously, emerging economies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are asserting new forms of cultural and intellectual self-confidence, challenging the notion that modernization must follow Western templates.

In this shifting landscape, India occupies a uniquely strategic position. As one of the world’s largest knowledge societies—home to a civilizational tradition that has produced enduring philosophies of education, ecology, ethics, and governance—India has both the moral depth and demographic energy to redefine the terms of global knowledge production. The world’s growing interest in mindfulness, Ayurveda, yoga, sustainable living, and holistic thinking reflects an increasing openness to Indian epistemologies and ways of life that emphasize harmony, balance, and interdependence.

This moment therefore offers India not only an opportunity but also a responsibility: to articulate an alternative model of education that integrates the wisdom of its own civilizational heritage with the tools and methods of contemporary science. By doing so, Indian universities can become laboratories of synthesis—places where tradition and modernity meet to generate sustainable, human-centered innovation.

Reform is thus not merely a domestic necessity but a geopolitical imperative. If India can successfully reform its universities to reconnect with its social, cultural, and intellectual roots, it could lead a global movement toward a more plural and humane knowledge order—one that values diversity of thought and local wisdom as essential components of global progress.

In short, the world is ready for new paradigms, and India is ready to offer them. But to do so, its universities must first rediscover their own foundations and reimagine education not as imitation but as creation—grounded in the soil of Indian experience and open to the horizons of the world.

 

 

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3.0 A Roadmap to Reform

At its most fundamental level, the purpose of a university is not merely to disseminate information or produce employable graduates. A university must constantly strive to improve the quality of life in the society that sustains it. It is a living institution—rooted in its cultural soil and responsive to its people’s aspirations. To fulfill this purpose, a university must study the society around it: its culture, ethos, and history; its worldview and values; its scientific and artistic traditions.

From this understanding flows the university’s second great responsibility: to identify the problems that afflict its society and to generate the knowledge, innovation, and human capacity required to address them. A university must therefore be a bridge between knowledge and life—where teaching, research, and engagement are guided by a sense of responsibility toward the community and the nation.

It is from this moral and intellectual standpoint that the following reforms are proposed to realign Indian universities with the society they serve.

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3.1 Integrating Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS)

The first and most foundational step toward re-establishing the bond between universities and society is to integrate Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) into higher education in both spirit and structure. This is not merely a matter of curricular enrichment but of intellectual reorientation — a recognition that India possesses vast reservoirs of indigenous knowledge, cultivated over millennia, which continue to offer profound insights into the nature of learning, governance, ecology, and human flourishing.

Indian Knowledge Systems encompass a remarkably diverse range of disciplines and methodologies: the logical rigor of Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika philosophies, the linguistic precision of Vyākaraṇa, the mathematical and astronomical innovations of Aryabhata and Bhaskara, the medical sophistication of Āyurveda and Sushruta Samhita, and the ethical and ecological sensibilities embedded in texts such as the Arthashastra and Upanishads. These traditions represent a continuum of intellectual exploration in which knowledge was inseparable from values — where understanding was always directed toward harmony between the individual, society, and nature.

 

(image credits: https://iksindia.org/)

In contrast, the modern university system inherited from the West often isolates disciplines from their moral and ecological contexts. Knowledge is fragmented into specializations and pursued largely for economic utility. By bringing IKS into conversation with modern scientific and technological education, universities can recover an integrative vision of learning — one that seeks wisdom rather than information, and purpose rather than mere productivity.

The integration of IKS must therefore proceed on three levels:

1. Epistemological integration, by recognizing Indian systems of knowledge as valid frameworks for inquiry rather than as cultural curiosities. This involves studying their methodologies, logic, and theories as living intellectual traditions capable of dialogue with contemporary science and humanities.
2. Curricular integration, by embedding modules on Indian epistemologies, art, ethics, and ecology across disciplines — not as add-ons but as perspectives that shape how knowledge itself is understood.
3. Institutional integration, by creating dedicated research centers, archives, and translation programs that recover, reinterpret, and apply indigenous knowledge to modern challenges in areas like sustainable agriculture, architecture, medicine, and social organization.

Such integration will encourage students and scholars to view knowledge not as an imported commodity but as a living heritage — something to be renewed, tested, and expanded in dialogue with the modern world. It will cultivate a generation of thinkers who understand that modernity and tradition are not opposites but partners in creation, and that progress need not mean abandoning one’s roots.

Ultimately, the inclusion of Indian Knowledge Systems is not a nostalgic return to the past but a forward-looking act of intellectual self-reliance. By drawing on its civilizational wisdom while embracing the best of global science, India can evolve a new paradigm of higher education — one that is contextually grounded, globally relevant, and spiritually enriching.

 

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3.2 Revitalizing Employment Preparation

For universities to truly serve society, education must go beyond abstract knowledge and equip students with the tools, skills, and vision to contribute meaningfully to the nation’s diverse economic and cultural life. Today, higher education in India remains disproportionately oriented toward Western-style corporate employment, channeling talent into metropolitan offices, multinational companies, and a narrow spectrum of technical professions. While these opportunities have value, they often neglect the vast ecosystem of local industries, traditional enterprises, and emerging economic sectors that sustain India’s society and cultural identity.

Revitalizing employment preparation requires a fundamental rethinking of the purpose of vocational and professional education. Universities must cultivate graduates who are not only intellectually competent but also socially attuned, entrepreneurial, and capable of creating value in local contexts. This involves three interlinked strategies:

1. Practical skill development: Curricula should incorporate hands-on training, workshops, and applied research projects that equip students with competencies directly relevant to India’s economy. This includes proficiency in modern technologies adapted to agriculture, small-scale manufacturing, handicrafts, sustainable energy, and other grassroots industries. Skills alone are not enough; students must learn to innovate within the constraints and opportunities of their local environment.
2. Entrepreneurial thinking and social innovation: Universities should cultivate a mindset of problem-solving and enterprise creation. Students should be encouraged to identify societal challenges—such as rural unemployment, sustainable production, or local value chains—and develop scalable solutions. By embedding entrepreneurship and innovation within education, universities can produce leaders who strengthen India’s economic resilience while honoring traditional methods and local knowledge.
3. Community engagement and collaboration: Strong partnerships between universities and local economic actors—family enterprises, cooperatives, small and medium-sized businesses, and craft guilds—can ensure students gain experiential learning opportunities. Internships, co-creation projects, and innovation labs allow students to work alongside practitioners, translating theoretical learning into tangible societal impact. Such exposure also fosters a sense of purpose: graduates recognize that their knowledge and skills have a direct role in advancing India’s developmental priorities.

By reorienting employment preparation toward India’s diverse industries, universities can achieve multiple outcomes simultaneously: sustaining traditional economic systems, promoting innovation in emerging sectors, and grounding education in local realities rather than global corporate expectations. Graduates trained under this vision will be not only employable but socially responsible, culturally informed, and capable of driving inclusive economic growth—effectively bridging the divide between education and society.

In essence, revitalizing employment preparation is about reclaiming education as a tool for social transformation, ensuring that universities produce citizens who can think critically, act responsibly, and contribute meaningfully to the country’s cultural, economic, and ecological well-being.

 

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3.3 Building Bridges with MSMEs

Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) constitute the backbone of India’s economy, reflecting both the country’s entrepreneurial spirit and its capacity for grassroots innovation. They provide employment to millions, preserve traditional crafts, and drive regional economic activity. Yet despite their centrality, MSMEs remain largely disconnected from formal education, research institutions, and the wider knowledge ecosystem. This disconnect limits their potential to innovate, adopt new technologies, and scale sustainably, while simultaneously depriving students of opportunities to engage with real-world economic challenges.

Universities can play a transformative role by actively bridging this gap. Through dedicated innovation hubs, incubation centers, and collaborative research initiatives, academic institutions can link their intellectual and technical resources with the practical needs of MSMEs. Such collaboration is not merely transactional; it fosters a dynamic ecosystem where ideas, skills, and innovation flow bidirectionally. Students and researchers gain hands-on experience in problem-solving, design thinking, and applied technology, while MSMEs access expertise in areas such as process optimization, product innovation, digital adoption, and market strategy.

The impact of these partnerships extends beyond immediate economic gains. Over time, they can generate community-centered models of innovation—solutions tailored to local contexts, environmental sustainability, and social needs. For instance, collaborations can help traditional artisans adopt modern production techniques without sacrificing cultural authenticity, or enable small-scale farmers to leverage precision agriculture tools for higher yields and resilience. By linking universities with MSMEs, education becomes a vehicle for inclusive growth, strengthening local economies and empowering communities to achieve self-reliance.

Furthermore, fostering such engagement reinforces a broader cultural and entrepreneurial ethos. Students who work closely with MSMEs develop a grounded understanding of India’s economic landscape, appreciating the value of resilience, adaptability, and social responsibility. MSMEs, in turn, benefit from a continuous infusion of fresh ideas, research insights, and youthful energy. The result is a mutually reinforcing relationship where academia and industry co-evolve, ensuring that education produces not just employable graduates but socially conscious innovators who can sustain India’s economic and cultural heritage.

In essence, building bridges with MSMEs transforms universities from isolated centers of learning into active agents of local and national development, demonstrating how knowledge can be harnessed to nurture economic self-sufficiency, cultural continuity, and socially impactful innovation.

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3.4 Reviving Multigenerational Family Businesses and Cultural Continuity

A meaningful university reform cannot be confined to classrooms and curricula alone; it must engage with the deeper cultural and economic foundations of society. One of the most profound ways to reconnect education with life is by revitalizing India’s traditional systems of enterprise—the multigenerational family businesses that once formed the backbone of the Indian economy.

Historically, these family-run enterprises were not merely economic units; they were social institutions rooted in ethical principles, community trust, and intergenerational learning. Knowledge was transmitted from one generation to the next, blending practical skill with cultural values and a sense of responsibility toward employees and local communities. This model fostered both economic stability and social cohesion, creating networks of self-sustaining, community-centered innovation.

Colonial and postcolonial economic policies disrupted this ecosystem, replacing self-reliant enterprise with dependence on externally driven, corporate-oriented models. Modern education has largely prepared students to be employees rather than innovators—participants in global corporate structures rather than custodians of local enterprise.

Reform must therefore include a cultural reorientation of education toward entrepreneurship rooted in community values. Universities can play a pivotal role by:

• Incorporating the study of traditional business ethics, local trade practices, and family enterprise management into business and economics programs.
• Encouraging intergenerational mentorship models, where students engage directly with family-run or community-based enterprises.
• Establishing innovation cells that modernize traditional industries through digital tools, sustainable technologies, and new markets.

Such initiatives would not only revive the dignity of family entrepreneurship but also strengthen the moral and cultural foundations of India’s economic life. Education thus becomes a medium of cultural continuity—connecting the aspirations of the young with the lived wisdom of earlier generations.

By bringing universities, MSMEs, and family enterprises into a shared ecosystem of learning and innovation, India can restore the organic link between knowledge, livelihood, and culture. This reformation will help create a generation of graduates who see the university not as an escape from society, - an inevitable escape to the West, - but as a vital instrument for its advancement of the Indian society.

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4.0 Conclusion

India’s educational reform cannot be viewed as an isolated policy initiative; it must be understood as an integral part of a broader cultural, economic, and societal transformation, an Indian Renaissance. The reforms outlined in this article—ranging from the reintegration of Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) into curricula, to the revitalization of employment preparation, to the establishment of meaningful partnerships with MSMEs and family-run enterprises—are all aimed at realigning universities with the society they are meant to serve.

By consciously drawing on IKS, higher education can cultivate graduates who are intellectually versatile, ethically grounded, and culturally aware. By redesigning employment preparation and fostering collaborations with local industries, universities can produce citizens who innovate responsibly, generate value for their communities, and contribute to both traditional and emerging sectors of India’s economy. Meanwhile, by supporting MSMEs and family businesses, universities can ensure that students’ learning is directly linked to the economic and cultural vitality of India, sustaining multigenerational knowledge, skills, and entrepreneurial practices that are often overlooked in modern education.

The ultimate goal of these reforms is to create a holistic, integrated educational ecosystem—one in which knowledge is not abstracted from society but is generated, tested, and applied in real-world contexts of India. Students who emerge from such a system will not only possess academic and professional competence but will also understand their role as active participants in India’s social, economic, and cultural life. They will be equipped to build careers that honor their roots while embracing innovation, contributing to an India that is economically self-reliant, socially cohesive, and environmentally sustainable.

In doing so, India can move beyond the mimicry of Western educational paradigms and instead pioneer a model of higher education that harmonizes modern scientific and technological knowledge with our civilisational wisdom. Such a transformation positions India to lead globally, not merely in economic terms but as a thought leader in redefining the purpose and practice of education itself—an education that empowers individuals, strengthens communities, and advances society as a whole.

Ultimately, the envisioned reforms offer more than better employability or academic excellence; they represent a renewal of India’s intellectual and cultural agency, ensuring that higher education becomes a true engine of national development, social cohesion, and global leadership.

 

Traditional Community-Driven Businesses in India: Reviving a Legacy

 Posting after a long gap...

Recently i wrote an article that was published in the Telugu daily Eenadu. Attaching the original article. A brief translation of the same is given below.

Traditional Community-Driven Businesses in India: Reviving a Legacy

As a professor, I once asked graduating students about their dream careers. Names like Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook rolled out instantly — not one Indian company was mentioned. It struck me how little today’s youth know of India’s rich legacy of community-driven businesses that shaped our economy for millennia.

Long before modern corporations, Indians were global traders. They sailed to Rome, Greece, and China, backed by powerful trade guilds — some with private armies. As Sanjeev Sanyal notes, “India was a vast economic network long before colonialism, and its people were global traders with an eye on the future.” This spirit of enterprise is the foundation of India’s business culture.

Under British India, despite colonial constraints, resilient Indian entrepreneurs rose. Jamsetji Tata and the Tata Group became symbols of industrial vision, while the Parsee community powered many pioneering firms. The famed shipbuilding industry of South India, for instance, created vital trade routes and industrial know-how.

After independence, family-run businesses like the Birla Group and Reliance Industries redefined India’s corporate landscape. Rooted in trust, intergenerational wealth, and community ties, they helped build a self-reliant economy. Even today, traditional sectors — Coorg coffee plantations, Rajasthan carpets, Surat diamonds — thrive as symbols of craftsmanship, continuity, and collaboration.

India now has over 6 crore MSMEs, many profitable and innovative, yet seldom seen in campus placements. These enterprises are the backbone of our economy, generating jobs and nurturing local talent. Universities must bridge this gap — invite these businesses to campuses, showcase their success stories, and offer students exposure beyond multinational giants.

Reviving pride in these business traditions is crucial. Today’s startup-driven youth often overlook the power of trust-based, community-rooted models that sustained India for centuries. Innovation isn’t always about starting from scratch — it can mean reimagining time-tested models that built lasting wealth and resilience.

If academia can teach students about these legacies, it can spark informed pride and inspire them to build on our heritage. By looking inward and learning from India’s own business traditions, young entrepreneurs can blend modern innovation with the timeless values that once made India a global trading powerhouse.

Adding fresh paint to the freshman year –

 

 Adding fresh paint to the freshman year –

Some random thoughts on reforming first year engineering curriculum

 

Recently there has been some discussion in my institute on reforms in undergrad curriculum.

I don’t know about the later years, but there are a few things I was thinking that can be inserted in the first-year curriculum.

 

During my days at IIT Madras (in the late 80’s), in the first year, we had something called “workshop”, an elaborate mind-numbing, body-breaking form of drudgery.

For example, we had classes on carpentry where we were taught how to make a cuboid out of a piece of wood! Why cant get out of these dress rehearsals and thrust the young student into the full-blown, magical world of woodworking? They can be taught, for example, how to build treehouses. We can take advantage of the forest around us (*) and build lovely tree houses on our large and accommodating banyans! The kids can easily turn this skill into startups later.

https://nelsontreehouse.com/blog/a-slice-of-pnw-paradise-nelson-treehouse/

 

*IIT Madras campus is built literally inside a forest.

 

Ive read somewhere that German artist Albrecht Durer of high renaissance era had mastered the art of woodcuts, while his contemporaries busied themselves with painting. The advantage of woodcuts is that you can use them to make prints, which Durer exploited and a made a handsome sum for himself! If only some of our inspired undergrads can learn the art of making fine wood carvings, and combine that art with the technology of 3D printing and AI-based design… investors will make a beeline.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albrecht-Durer-German-artist

 

Our workshop had a few other things like welding and filing (phew!). I can think only a few other memories that are more traumatic. But our workshop didn’t have cooking. Wish they had! Let me recount an incident.

Once my wife and I were visiting this snazzy hotel on the outskirts of Chennai. Although the menu was long and fancy, we wanted to order something plain and simple. We asked for some saambaar saadam (sambar rice) and tair saadam (curd rice). What was served to us then were the most delectable bowls of the two dishes, dishes that were otherwise considered the most commonplace and  rather dull in south Indian cuisine. We wanted to meet the chef who could transform such routine dishes into something so adorable. The chef turned out to be young girl in her early 20s. She spoke of her struggles to convince her parents to let her take up this career that is so close to her heart.

That day I realised one thing. Someone who can turn out such incredible dishes doesn’t have just a skill for livelihood. They have a dangerous and enviable power over the minds of men!

 

One can go on and on. The list is rather long. Dancing, acting, film-making, reading and writing fiction, turning trash into artwork, origami, gardening, floral arrangements… just think about someone who knows how to make perfect floral arrangements. A boy who can do it will have girls standing in queue, and a girl who can do it will unleash an untold confusion in the society of boys – because they will be hard pressed to choose between the lotus of her face and the bouquet in her hand!

 

So why cant we add some color to the freshman curriculum?

Talking of color… brings to my mind another anecdote. My wife and I waited for hours in the rain before we could gain entry into Muse’e D’Orsay in Paris. I liked this one better than the more famous Louvre. There are galleries and galleries of paintings… but this particular one really got me. It’s titled “The Woman with a Parasol” by impressionist artist Monet. It portrays a lady in a long white dress holding an umbrella. A pale blue sky was looming over her. She stood there calm and royal,  as  if held in a passionate embrace by the light. And I stood there with my mouth wide open and eyes unblinking. I even forgot that my wife who was around somewhere wouldn’t appreciate such unbridled gaping! How do these people hold you still in your tracks, make you completely oblivious of your surroundings, with a display of a few sloshes of color?

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.61379.html

 

Life is all about having enriching and fulfilling experiences. Why cant we give to our freshmen not just information, dull and dead, but inspiration that will propel them for life? Why should engineering curricula be all about serious and solemn “problem solving”? How about replacing, just for a brief year, the “problem solving” with a “riot of creativity” or a “flood of inspiration” or “thoughts that can run on a thousand tracks all at once”?

It will give the freshies certainly a career, but more importantly a life filled with magic, beauty and undying delight.

 

Regards

Srini

 

 

 

Garden cities of India (?)

Ebenezer Howard, an urban planner from late 19^th century UK was quite unhappy with the filthy cities and towns of the newly industrializing Britain.  

Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928)

Howard saw a deep dichotomy between the cities and the countryside. Cities offer opportunities for work, but are filthy and unliveable. The countryside is obviously beautiful and nice to live in but offers no jobs.  Ebenezer Howard conceived of a city that combines the merits of the two, which led to the Garden City movement.

He described the above three aspects urban attraction as “three magnets.” The first is the “town magnet” that attracts with its job opportunity. The second is the “country magnet” that attracts with its greenery and opportunity for a comfortable and healthy living. The third is new “town-country magnet” that represents a combination of the other two magnets.

The Three Magnets

The Garden Cities are “ self-contained communities [that] are surrounded by "greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture.” (Wiki)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement

In the original plan laid out by Ebenezer Howard, there is a central city of about 58,000 population spread out over an area of 12,000 acres. Around this there are 6 satellite cities connected to the central city by rail and road. The open space between the central city and the satellites is  a green belt.

The entire network of cities (1 central + 6 satellites) will have a population of 2,50,000 over an area of 66,000 acres.

Once the limit of the population is reached, Howard suggests that is time to build a new city.

66,000 acres = 267.09 sq km.

Therefore, if you do a simple calculation, the above city will have a population density of

Population density = 250,000/267.09 = 936 /sq km

which is more than twice the population density of India.

The current population density of India is 460/sqkm

That is, even we pack the entire population of India in garden cities, we will still be occupying only half the land of the country.

But perhaps such a calculation is too naïve. If the half the area of a country is inhabited where do you have farmlands that produce food? How do you accommodate mountains, rivers and other geographical features where habitation is either impossible or impractical?

Furthermore, there is one recurrent complaint against the garden city approach to urban planning. 

The influence of garden city approach can be seen in the planning of a lot of world cities. It led to the division of the city into a crowded and busy business center (the downtown) and   a suburban area with a lot of greenery. People live in the suburbs in spacious homes and commute to the city center for work every day. This created the infamous “urban sprawl” and an unsustainable model of city building.

But the point that is exactly what Howard was arguing against in his garden city model. To me it looks like the “suburb” approach to city building is not a realization of the spirit of urban planning promoted by Howard. It simply tried to bring the village closer to the city and renamed it the “suburb.”

Howard’s vision of a garden city is more organic, cellular and therefore closer to the Nature. In the biological world, every organism is made of fundamental building blocks called the cells. An individual cell does not grow in size indefinitely. As a cell grows and ages to a point of maturity, it divides into nearly identical cells.

A dividing Cell


 A single cell does not grow into a giant central cell surrounded by a bunch of peripheral cells.

But that’s exactly how a lot of modern cities seem to grow.

See this article about how the city of Chennai is planned and developed:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/the-tough-business-of-building-a-city/article31071614.ece

“Chennai’s planners have always imagined and conventionally planned the city: a stable city core that is expanding outward. Their plans are based on separating the city as core and periphery, where the core is the all-important epicentre, and the peripheries are thought of as spillover spaces.”

But where exactly is that “all-important epicentre” of Chennai, one wonders.  The downtowns of great world cities are filled with skyscrapers that amplify the land area by efficient use of 3D space, creating an enormous carrying capacity, with modern the infrastructure to support a high population density. Unfortunately, Chennai (26,500 /sqkm) has nearly the same higher population density as Manhattan (25,800 /sqkm), while the infrastructures of the two cities are hardly comparable.

Why are our cities allowed to reach such abominably high population densities without a commensurate growth in the infrastructure? The problem seems to arise from the special brand of urban planning – or the lack thereof – that is practiced in India. (See the extremely well-researched chapter on Urban Planning in India in Ankur Bisen’s recent book “Wasted”).

https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/the-tough-business-of-building-a-city/article31071614.ece

The same  article on Chennai further goes on to say that instead of core-periphery model one must identify the “multi-centers” in the so-called periphery and develop them as independent entities. Apparently Dutch city planners use such a philosophy of urban planning – not “inside-out” but “outside-in” planning.

If you think about it, that’s exactly the spirit of the garden city. Let each city be developed as a self-contained unit with different zones for business, manufacturing, education, residence etc. The zones will be swaddled in a rich greenbelt giving the city the look and feel of the country. Once the city grows to a certain size in population, further development will be prevented, and a new city will burgeon at a certain distance from the original city, always ensuring the existence of a green buffer zone between two adjacent cities.

But one problem is, if we take the garden city approach for Indian cities, we will have to turn half the land into an inhabited area, which may not be acceptable, because as per the original conception garden cities have less than 1000 people per sqkm.  What then is an acceptable population density for a city?  If we take the example of Amsterdam, and London, both well-planned cities, with population densities of about 4,500 /sqkm, much higher than 936/sqkm.

 
Therefore, if can build garden cities with densities of about 4,500/sqkm, which is 10 times the current population density of India, we will still be inhabiting  only a tenth of the land area, leaving the rest of the land to the Nature.

The population of India is thought to reach its maximum of about 1.6 billion by  about 2060. By that time our imaginary green cities will only have a population densities of about 5,600/sqkm.

Can’t help fantasizing a future India where there are no more filthy, crowded cities and towns. The entire peninsula is filled with green and glorious garden cities as shown in the figure below.



Garden Cities of a Future India

Writing is like producing movement

Writing is like producing movement. There is the simplest kind of movement that is produced by the brain… it is produced as a fast reflex to a shock received from the world. It involves no thought. It is a simple conversion of one form of information into another, one form of energy into another. The movement that is released is informed by the stimulus. In the world of writing, certain kinds of translation work are similar to this movement.

Then there are movements that are still dependent on and are specified by the sensory information from the world. But these involve thought, a certain permission from the will of the performer.  But here too it is the world that does most of the work.

The more serious kinds of writing, something that can be said to be original, are like voluntary movements.  

Here too there are types of voluntary movements. In the classification of William James, the 19^th century American psychologist, firstly, there are the ideomotor movements in which there is a pre-existing idea that guides the movement, like for example a well-practiced dance movement. This is like writing about the visit to a monument, or at a slightly grander scale about the history of a nation.

There is a second type of voluntary movement, - it is as voluntary as voluntary can get – in which movement emerges purely from within. Like a strong gush of fuming water from the depths of a geyser, it issues out of the depths of consciousness. It flies unaided, propelled by nothing but the strength of its wings, and soars free like a giant eagle. Writing always needs a subject. One necessarily writes about something. But there is a world of difference between writing that rolls out on a prefixed idea, and writing, in its purest and most original forms, that leaps out of the writer’s mind, charts out its own course, brings with it its own idea-companions, chooses the vehicle that can carry and stabilize its movement, with the writer remaining through the whole time a pure and transparent instrument and nothing else.

The best and the truest kinds of writing simply writes itself. The less the writer gets involved in the business the better. From somewhere inside... ideas and words and lines emerge, like dainty objects from a magician’s hat, from the depths of the writers being. Water molecules find their own clever pairings and form the enchanting geometries of the snow flakes, just when the weather is right. Likewise, in the purest forms of writing, torrents of words self-organize into lines that are lyrical, apt, shimmering with a supernal meaning. All that the writer has to do is supply that inner atmosphere and remain calm.

Sometimes the first few lines might be triggered and impelled by a few superficial objectives the writer may have on his mind. The first few words that emerge might be a clothing on those first thoughts. The Consciousness simply uses those thoughts as calling cards, an invitation for the writer to tune into Itself. Once the connection begins, and the channels of expression  open, the river of meaning that flows out is often vastly greater than what the writer originally intended to write about. He is pleasantly surprised by page after page, tome after tome, that seems to be welling up from within. Where is all this coming from? What exactly is in him? He will find his own depths bewildering. Because these depths are  actually not “his” depths, just as when you dig deeper than the foundations of your personal dwelling, very soon you will find yourself in the bowels of the Earth far from anything that is “yours.”

In this sense, writing is a form of exploration of the Self. Very soon the writer will come to realize that there is a whole universe of things inside, a universe that was there all along but he never knew. It would be too vain to say that that universe is inside him. A more apt language would be to say that the writer is only a channel, a willing or a fortunate portal onto the infinite world of Consciousness.

Image credits: https://www.livescience.com/49244-imagination-reality-brain-flow-direction.html

Why did the world pause?

Why did the world pause?

Musings on the significance of the Covid Crisis for the future humanity

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With the covid lockdown we, the people of the world, are facing an unprecedented situation. As a good fraction of the humanity is under confinement, in a forced state of global inaction, the engines of the world are grinding to halt. The modern life and world is all about action -  ceaseless, indefatigable and dizzying action. Introverted tendencies are discouraged, quietist traditions are becoming obsolete. The world is in the grips of a scientific-economic view of life. Man is a biochemical engine. Money is the sole token of  value and meaning in  life. There is  hardly any space left for alternative views. Seen through the lens of that view, things seemed to be going well with the world in the recent times.  The internet brought in the knowledge explosion. The wealth of the nations is growing steadily. The world was racing along like a giant train with a gas pedal and no brakes. That’s when Covid struck.   This is an odd time to press the reset button of the world. Why did it happen?

In life, there are times when we lose ourselves in immense action, in pursuit of some named or nameless goal our mind conceives. Then there are times, when the energies flag, when the vision is clouded. Then we retire for a little while into solitude to take stock of things  and figure if we need a course correction. But in the present global context, just when everything going so perfectly what course correction can we contemplate?

Perhaps all is really not well with the world. Perhaps the perfection is only imagined or misplaced or, to use a clichéd modern term “overrated”. Perhaps the scientific-economic paradise after which we are trying to fashion our world – a paradise that verily defines the modern world, a paradise that we celebrate every day in every part of the world, in the West as much in the East, is probably a paradise that may turn out ultimately a living hell since it is a paradise that will progressively drag us deeper into a state of confinement – like our current covid-induced state of petrifaction – and not grant to us some ultimate promised salvation on Earth.

There was a time, not too long ago, when different nations and cultures of the world thought about life differently. They felt differently, emoted differently, believed differently. The original diversity of world cultures was a confirmation that there can be many approaches to life, many directions and dimensions to life. But with all the intensive commingling and communication among cultures for over a century now, differences are being erased. The scientific-economic view of life, predominantly driven from the West, is being accepted worldwide as the one singular way of living. There are no two thoughts about it. In a world that had a cultural diversity, some could be right and some wrong, or some could be more right and some could be more wrong. Then only the errant groups would need a course correction – like the Nazis of WWII. But in a perfectly homogeneous world, either everyone is right, as it will be in a perfect situation, or, worse,  everybody is wrong. That’s when there will be a worldwide course correction. The great Reset Button will have to be pressed.

Let us consider what those Goals were that different word cultures pursued through history, and where things probably went amiss. Let us adopt a simple binary view and speak of the West and the East.

After languishing for more than a millennium in the dark ages, the West emerged about half a millennium ago.  Europe began a massive effort to restructure its life around the Light of Reason. It invented Science and began to enjoy the new powers bequeathed by Science. It set out initially on an exploration of a strange and unmapped world, which culminated in a successful and nearly complete world conquest.  Armed with Science, the West explored every nook and cranny of the physical world. From the bowels of an atom to the edge of the visible cosmos, Science seemed to understand everything.  The same rigorous understanding of Matter was directed to life and people. The billions of little I’s that populate the Earth – that’s “us” – too are atoms and cells of this huge biological machine. What about “me”, my feelings and fears, dreams and dreadful desires? one may ask. “All that is an emergent effect,” Science answered, “of electric shocks storming your grey matter.” Consciousness and all things akin were scooped out of the Matter and discarded, like the seed-filled goo inside a pumpkin. People were cheered on as they learnt to enjoy the scientific-economic paradise from which the Self was permanently exorcised.

“A purely rational society could not come into being, if it could be born, either could not live or would sterilize and petrify human existence.” - Sri Aurobindo (in The Human Cycle).

The Orient, particularly India, - if we are permitted to take India as a key representative of the Orient – has approached life from the other end of things. For nearly one and a half millennia we obsessed over Mayavada and Sannyasa. The world is an illusion, a mirage, we were told. The real thing – Atman, Brahman, whatever, - is behind, beyond, elsewhere. It is not this, definitely not this, neti, neti. Give up this false world and run away to the real one. A terrible tradition of abandoning the world and life to its fate began to lace all activities of Indian life. At some point people found it impossible to live with a philosophy of life that is so anti-life. So they discovered an antidote – God. A God that is, - thankfully, - loving, lovable and lovely. But after a few centuries, the new solution also turned out to be not in any sense a cure, but only a palliative, a heady anesthetic that taught us how to live with the pain and ignore the fester.  Our disparaging outlook on the world of Matter and an attitude of deep disconnection and escape from life continued to extract from us a heavy price. Because we rejected it, life took its revenge. Our life energies were drained out; our material circumstances were a rubble. Aliens trampled upon a fallen race.

                                                          Ruins of Somnath Temple

So here we are. The West pursued Matter single-mindedly and lost all sense of the Spirit. It hit a blank wall, a dead end, or is in the process of fast getting there. The East, particularly India, walked away from Matter, trying to find its final liberation in the Spirit. But disappointed, wounded and spurned she began to search for alternative salvations. (The West seemed to now provide them, - easy and enticing. In her early enthusiasm, eager to make up for lost time, she began to take rapid steps on the path of the West … only perhaps to hit the same wall at a later epoch?)

At the end of a long, traumatic human journey we traversed two paths and arrived at two dead ends.

Is there a different path that the world can tread, a path that is discovered and laid out based on the wisdom gathered by the previous half successes, a path that has no dead ends and is blessed by a constant widening and interminable progression?

What happens when all the instruments and opportunities for outward action are removed and one is locked up in a cell – a situation experienced by a big part of the world at this moment? His mind slowly emptied of thoughts, overcome by depression, a person might slowly descend into insanity. But there are stories of individuals who responded to the incarceration in a miraculous fashion and actually grew from the experience.

James Nesbeth was a major in American army when he was captured in the Vietnam war. His enemies held him captive for more than five years in a tiny dingy cell. When he saw that all the outward paths are blocked, he decided to walk along a new inward path. An avid golfer, he began to get back to his favorite sport -  in the fertile, verdant fields of his mind! Every day he would mentally kiss his wife goodbye, relish the breakfast she prepared, drive to a luxuriant and expansive and imaginary golf court, and play a full 18-hole game. There were singing birds, there was dew on the blades of grass, there were tiny ponds with mirrors of water, there were cool zephyrs blowing on his face, there was an other-worldly fragrance in the air. After living as a denizen in his exotic inner world for over five years he was released. One of the first things he did to get back his strength was to get back to his golf. To his surprise and that of those around him, he demonstrated that he has not lost touch with the game. Because the practice never stopped!

The technological advances of the modern world amplify human power a million times. By pressing a mere button it is now possible to destroy the whole world over and over again. But without the technological crutches man is as impotent as ever – a miserable ape that can swing no more from the branches, but now acquired language and some cunning. The crutches dehumanize us. The crutches as growing in power and scope every passing day. Writers painted dystopian futures when the robots rebel and enslave their masters. The way forward therefore is to deemphasize the crutches, and increase our natural and innate capacity, and reconfirm our stature as masters.

Increasing the native capacity of people seems to be the essence of the self-help revolution that began in the West more than a century ago. In the recent decades it began to spread like forest fire in India – one more examples of India’s hunger to learn what she can from the West right now. Follow your heart, find your calling, pursue your life’s mission and discover your life’s meaning, increase your will power, increase your memory, overcome your fears, expand your capacity for empathy and love, learn and learn all the time, turn your life into honey and do the same for those around you, and at long last leave the world a little more divine. Such is the essence of the self-help spirit. Society after society had responded to that spirit and tried to contextualize it in accordance to its own culture and history. The gospel of realizing the man’s inner potential is a great counter to the rise of the machine. It may not be adequate, but it is a robust first step.

India too had its own brand of “self-help” culture. But since our “self-help” tradition did not adequately readjust to the modern world, and seemed to be ineffectual, we chose to quietly drop it. In ancient Indian traditions of education, contrary to that of the West, knowledge is not something you gather through the senses, organize by reason, and apply for practical use. Knowledge is always there latent in the depths of your consciousness. By purifying the human instrument, you awaken that knowledge which flashes forth in your consciousness when your being is ripe. The Gurukul presented just the setting for that multifaceted purification. Unquestioned obedience and devoted service to the Guru dissolved the ego. A life of abstinence and self-control – known as Brahmacharya – allowed the individual to rein in his/her own unregenerate elements. Learning large volumes of text by rote expanded memory.  This trajectory of growth, however, is quite alien to the manner of growth in a world that is carved by Science. But is it still possible to incorporate some elements of our ancient educational tradition and integrate it with its modern counterpart, and extend it far beyond anything that was conceived in the antiquity?

There is one aspect of human consciousness that fascinated thinkers for a long time. You may use words like creativity, genius or intuition. These terms refer to the edge of human capacity that apparently does not depend on technological wizardry. It flies on its wings and strangely chooses to manifest in some people. It brings into the world beauty where there was ugliness, harmony where there was chaos, sparkling clarity where there was dullness and unknowing. It magically brings forward answers where there was unyielding and longstanding ignorance. Is it possible to reorient traditional Indian spiritual methods of preparation of consciousness, turn it away from its native domain of religion for the moment, and use to rebuild life and world?

It is obvious how development of such a capacity can revolutionize many domains of life. A doctor can arrive at diagnosis with minimal measurement without resorting to brute force and expensive testing. A mathematician can witness in his/her mental landscape a torrential outpouring of theorems and corollaries and laws, the proofs of which can be worked out by lesser minds, applying standard tardy analytical methods over the centuries. Legendary Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan is a prime example of such a capacity. In domains of modern science, like biology for example, where a theoretician has to sift through mountains of data to formulate an effective theory, strong intuitive capabilities can be a boon. By the power of intuition, the slow, trudging progression of science can be accelerated. The rare and epoch-making Kuhnian paradigm shifts can be induced to occur more frequently. Medicine will undergo profound changes since there will be paradigmatic shifts in our understanding of health, of human body, of human psyche. There will a more targeted search for the roots of our ailments in our consciousness rather than in our body. The above trends, which will perhaps evolve over a century or two from now, will be a demonstration of a deliberate application of the powers of consciousness in terms of life and world.

The above trends, seemingly revolutionary since they signify a departure from the strong materialist position that hardened over the last half a millennium, is still not half as radical as what would happen when we bring about a further change in our relationship with consciousness. In all the aforementioned potential developments, we will be regarding consciousness either as a product of our brain, an inexplicable “emergent effect,” or in the best case as a power channeled by the human brain. We may not be willing to give to consciousness a greater independent existence.

This is where ancient Indian tradition departs radically from modern approaches to consciousness. In ancient India, consciousness is taught to be the substratum of all reality. In its more condensed forms it appears as Matter, and in rarer, ethereal forms as Spirit. Matter and Mind and Spirit are all different modes of the continuum of Consciousness, just as violet and green and red are different colors of the spectrum of the visible light. It must follow then that just as there is the physical universe, - or universes as per the recent notions of the multiverse, - there must then be entire worlds of consciousness. These universes of consciousness are possibly greater and vaster than our physical universe. There is perhaps a hierarchy of such universes, each subsumed by and embedded within the one immediately higher. The realization that there are entire universes of consciousness immeasurably vaster than the known physical universe marks the most momentous epoch in the history of humanity.

Five hundred years ago, the belief in the existence of a vast unknown world out there spurred European adventurers to set out on daring voyages. Thus began the Age of Exploration, the first one. This age lead to discovery of new continents on our home planet – Earth. The second Age of Exploration, that of space exploration, began more recently when we journeyed beyond the von Karman line or when we set foot on the Moon.  The sense of existence of vast realms consciousness may trigger a Third Age of Exploration, incredibly more profound, more radical and riskier than the previous two exploratory ages.

Our earliest voyages into the fields of consciousness might be brief, tentative and cautious. Our earliest efforts will be like those of the voyagers of medieval Europe who travelled close to the coast, fearing a dreadful fall in the abyss at the edge of the world, should they strayed too far. However, emboldened by the initial familiarity and a minimal understanding of the new realms, a daring band of pioneers will set out on most unimaginable inward adventures that humanity had ever known. Like Sri Aurobindo, they might discover “illumined continents of violet peace.”

“Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from the sight,

The figures of the perfect kingdom pass

And behind them leave a shining memory’s trail.

Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,

Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;

Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,

Happier than happiness, truer than things true,

If dreams these were or captured images,

Dream’s truth made false earth’s vain realities.

In a swift eternal moment fixed there live

Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes

Calm heavens of imperishable Light,

Illumined continents of violet peace,

Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God

And griefless countries under PURPLE SUNS.”

-          Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. (pg 120)

The pioneers will leave behind them difficult yet robust trails that others can follow. There will be martyrs, however; there will be sacrifices. Wave after wave of individuals will follow these paths to hitherto unknown, unimagined destinations. They will be the first settlers of the New World or rather an innumerable array of the New Worlds. The vision of our future generations leaving the cradle of humanity – the Earth – to proceed to populate the entire Milky Way, pales in contrast to a future diaspora into the innumerable, unbounded, inexhaustible Realms of Consciousness.

“If mankind could but see though in a glimpse of  fleeting experience what infinite enjoyments, what perfect forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all & never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are hard to force, and fear, distrust & scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature, to forbid the turning away of our feet from her ordinary pastures.” – Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms).

In moments of captivity our thoughts always turn to dreams of great journeys, our minds are filled with a longing to break out into something vaster. Perhaps this covid-related domestic incarceration is only intended by the Intelligence that governs life to point out to us the greatest of journeys that awaits us sometime this millennium, a journey, -  or journeys, - that might mark a great turning point in human evolution.

http://theiphonewalls.com/rising-sun/