The Road Ahead

From our Independence to approximately 2010, the greatest problem with developmental work was that they were discussed and formulated at the National level with inputs from the Districts and States – but without people's participation. This ‘top-down’ approach ignored core local issues and the requirements of the particular area. It also ignored awakening a sense of ownership and initiative in the people involved. As a result, these cost-intensive rural development schemes were unable to achieve their objectives. As Pt. Deendayalji had said, "The process of development begins from the bottom and moves to the top. The roots of our nation lie in rural India. So the development of our society and country must begin from the rural area." People's participation and initiative in rural projects increase their scope, stability and success rate.

The Government, both at the Centre and the States appear to have recognised the problem, and have initiated a dialogue at the grassroots to try and bridge the gap. Although there are still large gaps, and much lacunae, there is progress.

When Deendayal Research Institute (DRI), under the guidance and leadership of Bharat Ratna Rashtrarishi Nanaji Deshmukh, launched the Self-Reliance Campaign in the 512 chosen hamlets around Chitrakoot on 26^th January 2002, there was a need for an integrated and holistic model for the development of rural India. This model, The Chitrakoot Project was based on the principles outlines in Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya's Integral Humanism to create a society based on the complimentarily of the family, primary school and the local population, as the family, and not the individual, is the basic unit in the Bharatiya Sanskriti idea of society. The self-reliance campaign covered all aspects of individual, family and societal life of the villagers, and included poverty alleviation, employment, literacy, health and hygiene, as well as social consciousness, leading to litigation free villages.

Today, the Government has expanded its footprint in the villages. Its Outreach programs, direct benefit transfers and new schemes have had a positive impact on rural communities and livelihoods, though much remains to be done.

Nanaji believed that a part of the Institute’s role was to supplement Government initiatives as well as show the local administration the optimum process in utilising the schemes.

He however believed, that the major thrust of the Institute’s efforts be directed in achieving a paradigm shift in the behavioural pattern and mental outlook of rural populations.

The Government assumes an ability in the rural population to adapt and accept the innovations and interventions designed by them to engineer the change in their lives that Government schemes entitle them to.

However, how to do this? This segment is the most vulnerable and also the most resistant to change. What is lacking is the willingness.

We all talk of Empowerment. What is it? The Left Brain, Right Brain Theory, though somewhat disproved neurologically, holds true in phycological terms. How do we change ‘I cannot’ to ‘I can’. The Institute uses a variety of interventions to change the mindset of farmers, farm women and rural youth, and bring them to believe “I can’.

Deendayal Research Institute, through its innovative Samaj Shilpi Dampatis, and Sahyogi Karyakartas actively works towards changing the mindset if the rural communities they work in with a range of community activities. Most of these are focused on strengthening Community ties and building a Complementarian Society as envisioned by Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, it does not address the issues of ‘Sustainable Production and Sustainable Consumption’, that is now the focus of the Government of India as well as the United Nations with the Sustainable Development Goals.

At the heart of the efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, is the message encapsulated in SDG 12 – ‘Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns” or more succinctly, ‘Sustainable Consumption and Sustainable Production’. Without it, nothing will be achieved. It is at the core of all the 17 Goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators.

The most important point to note, is that Sustainability is in direct contradiction to modern society’s emphasis on maximizing consumption and production with more efficient technologies and the use of GDP as a measure of ‘Development’.

It is a paradox that the countries that have endorsed the Sustainable Development Goals, and in the present context, Goal 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production, look to economies of scale to measure their progress; and their citizens well-being with the most efficient production methods that create more goods and more demand and more consumption, and whose economies are dictated by the economist John Maynard Keynes, who stated in his 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, “For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.”

It is this credo that has driven world macroeconomics for the past century and brought our planet to the brink of a existential disaster.

To step back from the brink and change the current economic model and societal norms on Consumption, a paradigm shift is required in the thought process of each one of us.

Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya’s philosophy of ‘Integral Humanism’ articulated the idea more clearly. Among the numerous quotes on the subject, the clearest was, “It is essential, therefore, to use up that portion of the available natural resources which nature itself will be able to recoup easily. … The industrialist provides for a depreciation fund to replace machines when they are worn out. Then how can we neglect the depreciation fund for nature? From this point of view, it must be realised that the object of our economic system should not be to make extravagant use but a well-regulated use of available resources… It will not be wise, however, to engage in a blind rat-race of consumption and production.. Such a system alone can be called civilisation…This system will not thrive on the exploitation of nature, but will sustain nature, and will in turn itself be nourished. Milking, rather than exploitation, should be our aim. The system should be such that overflow from nature is used to sustain our lives.”

As Dr. Bajranglal Gupta, an eminent economist and founder Chairman of India Policy Foundation, has stated in his article, Beyond Binaries, “There should be a harmony between ethics, economy, ecology, energy and employment, based on the four goals of life: Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Culture and prosperity, good conduct and economic dealings should run in tandem.”

India, as part of the Global Community, and in an era where geopolitical security is tied to economic strength, has been forced to be a part of the Keynesian macroeconomic model, and with the rest of the world, is in danger of destroyed the very Bharat Mata that has sustained it for millennia.

It is now imperative that we as a Nation start to explore an alternate economic model, as ingrained in Bhartiya Sanskriti. Kautilya in the Arthashastra said, ““The happiness of the subjects is the happiness of the king; their welfare is his. His own pleasure is not his good, but the pleasure of his subjects is his good”.

Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah – Let all be Happy. But can we be happy if are not content? And can we be content if we feel deprived?

Even after we have enough to cover our needs – and for each of us, this is different - we still feel deprived when we do not receive what we feel we should have received. And this feeling of deprivation comes from a variety of external and internal factors. I have mentioned external before internal as external factors influence our feelings. These then turn into internal factors.

Education today is aspirational. The purpose of the educational system is to make our children a contributory component of an economic expansionist system, where progress in measured solely in terms of GDP, and maximizing consumption and production. Inherent within this, is a sense of deprivation, as achievements rarely match aspirations.

Interpersonal relationships within communities have turned competitive. Neighbours compete to see who has bigger and more. This competitive streak is transmitted from parents to children and now permeates even our poorest communities as WhatsApp reels have changed their definition of needs and contentment.

How do we change this sense of deprivation? We can only change it when we change what influences our feelings. When we change the measure of what makes us content.

It is our premise, that for any hope of an alternate model becoming a universally acceptable proposition, spirituality is the key to its success. It would be necessary to awaken the inherent spirituality that exists within each of us. Spirituality emphasises the oneness on man and nature, and Bhartiya Sanskriti encapsulates the conscious connection between Man and Nature. Man and Water. Man and the Forest. Man and Agriculture. Man and the Environment.

How does one convince an individual and/or community to produce less or consume less? As stated in the Chitrakoot Declaration, the Institute would look to “delve on strategies for a new narrative laying emphasis on family as the fulcrum of solutions in the spirit of ‘Gramodaya se Sarvodaya’ (From Rural Upliftment to Upliftment of All); and from ‘Sarvodaya to Abhyudaya’ (From Upliftment for All to the Rise of All).”

Rural communities, especially forest dwellers, had a connect with nature. As Nanaji said, “Villagers are the custodians of natural resources, and the nation’s wealth.” When forest dwellers used to harvest honey from the forests, they used to cut 3/4^th of the hive and leave 1/4^th for it to regrow. With the lack of knowledge, greater demand, and loss of their core values, they started to cut the branch the hive grows on. Anola was picked at the time the fruit had ripened and the pollination process complete. Today, it is picked prematurely, as the buyers, in their need to capture supply, compromise and purchase premature fruit, causing great environmental damage.

There is also a need to invoke the kind of community spirit that existed in rural communities pre the destruction of the Panchayat, where the concepts of sustainable production and sustainable consumption were part of the fabric of the community, and complementarity its hallmark. (Jeevanshaili, Rutucharya, and Dincharya.)

Lifestyles for Environment or LiFE, the initiative proposed by our Hon. Prime Minister at COP 26 in Glasgow on the 1^st of November 2021 hopes to help achieve this. LiFE puts individual and collective duty on everyone to live a life that is in tune with Planet Earth and does not harm it. Those who practice such a lifestyle are recognised as Pro Planet People under LiFE.

The effects of a spiritual lifestyle have been studied in Bhutan and are articulated in its Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index, that measures 33 indicators across 9 domains. However, the GHN Index is a measure of a nation that has maintained its spirituality and harmonious lifestyles as part of a Government mandate. His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck introduced the idea of Gross National Happiness in 1972, and it was enshrined in the Bhutan's 2008 Democratic Constitution, “The State shall strive to promote conditions that will enable the pursuit of Gross National Happiness.”

The Institute is trying to consciously moves beyond the language of “sustainability” and the SDGs, which largely seeks to repair a fundamentally broken, extractive economic model rather than replace it, and therefore remains trapped in the same growth‑centric paradigm it claims to correct.

It is looking to create a model that is measurable, sustainable and replicable where, with innovative interventions, a village community can be helped to move the needle, and shift behaviour patterns towards a sustainable lifestyle where individual and community goals would include happiness and fulfilment. It would be measured through SHINE: Sustainability and Happiness Index for a New Era.

The model would aspire to embody the principles of ‘regenerative economics’: economies designed as living systems that restore soil, water, forests, community relationships and cultural vitality, instead of merely minimising harm. This shift resonates deeply with Pt. Deendayal Upadhyaya’s Integral Humanism, which calls for a holistic, dharma‑anchored order harmonising ethics, economy, ecology, energy and employment, and insists on “milking rather than exploiting” nature through well‑regulated use of resources. By rooting village‑level planning in Integral Humanism and aligning it with regenerative economic principles, the model seeks to prototype a practical, measurable and replicable alternative to the dominant global development model, starting from Gramodaya se Sarvodaya and moving towards Abhyudaya.

The model, in partnership with Jan Abhiyan Parishad, Madhya Pradesh,, Rajya Anand Sansthan, Madhya Pradesh, NITI Aayog, and the Centre for Complexity Economics, Applied Spirituality and Public Policy, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, Sonepat is proposed to be conducted in 108 revenue villages in the Chitrakoot Project area, and would start with a baseline survey, that would measure all social, economic, and spiritual indicators, and would also gather data on consumption, waste and social harmony.

It would look at interventions taken from its Self-Reliance Campaign, the Prime Minister’s LiFE strategies, the Rajya Anand Sansthan program, the inputs from the Centre for Complexity Economics, Applied Spirituality and Public Policy, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, as well as Bhutan’s National Happiness program, to examine if certain interventions within the community can bring measurable behavioural changes in the families, and measure them through SHINE.

SHINE measurements and outcome are to be defined and documented as per the ISO management systems being formulated with DNV-GL to conform to ISO 9001:2015 standards.

The outcomes that would be looked for include:

Nature based solutions
Regenerative economics
Happiness.
Peace of mind.
Social Harmony and complementarity.
Healthy individuals.
Reduction in Individual wants and Individual waste.
Clean & Green.
Reduction in Carbon Emissions.
Reduction in Community waste.
Segregate/Recycle waste, individually and as a community.
Yoga, Ayurveda and Naturopathy as primary health option.
Community composting.
Plant trees.
Development of lands and resources for community use, including common orchards for fruits and superfoods for nutrition in keeping with ‘food as medicine’.
Incorporate Panch Mahabhoot.
Incorporate the 3 R’s. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Har Khet par Med. Har Med par Ped.