When I was 18 hanging outside N.M.College in Mumbai, I bet a friend that I will own a BMW by the time I turn 35.From a very young age I focused my entire life on making money, I aspired to be rich. During my MBA all I could think was when will I finish the degree and start working so I could make money.
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| Pawan Singh, Cape Town, South Africa 2011 |
12 years later it dawns upon me that I was chasing the wrong dream all my life. Money didn’t make me happy, money didn’t give me passion, it was the means to an end and not the end itself.
For the last 10 months I have opened myself for introspection and I have realized that money doesn’t give happiness but happiness can give you money. I wanted to do something that would make me happy, something where I feel I could use me abilities to create a meaningful contribution in this one life that I have, I didn’t want to live someone else’s life and do things I didn’t want to do.
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| Pawan Singh, Maudha outside Varanasi in Utter Pradesh, India 2011 |
I was born in Uttar Pradesh, 50 Kms off Varanasi and moved to Mumbai when I turned 2. But I always felt a piece of me stayed back in my village and every summer holiday I went there I had the most amazing time of my life. I felt a very strong attachment to my village-Maudha, it was real, it was raw and it was beautiful. I always wanted to spend more time there but I had to be back in school, then back in college and then back in a job. I finally decided that I want to be involved in projects that benefit villages or rural areas. I put in my termination and my last day of work is 22nd December, which definitely will be a big party.
Before I get straight into rural development I first need to understand rural India. So I have decided to spend the next 2.5 months traveling through villages across India. I plan to travel to
- Ralegan Siddhi and Hidwe Bazaar to understand how the villages functions as such sustainable model village
- Take a trip through a village in Maharashtra through an organization that puts together rural tours www.grassroutes.co.in
- Hyderabad to meet a friend who is creating a project for co-operative farming in India
- Bangalore to meet with Selco India’s team that have provided solar LED lighting to 100,000 households in South India www.selco-india.com
- In Bangalore I will also spend time with a friend who is starting construction of a school
- In Chennai to meet with R.G.Chandramogan one of the largest suppliers of dairy products in India www.hatsun.com/DI/shows/company
- Soda, Rajasthan to meet with Chhavi Rajawat and understand how she has used technology to make her village prosperous www.soda-india.in/sarpanch
- Vaishali, Bihar to meet the founders of www.farmandfarmes.org who have changed farming patterns for over 25 villages and 1,000 farmers who are now making 4 times more return by growing Rajma (kidney beans) than they would by growing Gehu (wheat)
- Rampura, to meet Ghanshyam Yadav to see how he helped implement an off grid solar implementation to power the entire village www.devalt.org/newsletter/jul09/of_5.htm
- Haryana and Punjab to meet the farmers and figure how do these farmers get so rich by farming.
- Varanasi to go back to the ganga aarti at Dasaswamedh ghat in the morning and the evening, the city has an energy which is very physical, you can feel the presence of Gods around you, its very surreal
- Delhi to meet with a friend and visit the schools that he controls and manages and hopefully meet Rahul Gandhi to present him with this blog, which will help give side of the rural story and how we can bring these villages to a level where money will be a means to an end and not the end itself.
I don’t know how my journey will pan out but I am looking forward to the next few months and sharing my experiences.
Jai Bajrang Bali
