The prestigious Jamnalal Bajaj Award 2009 has found a match this year in Dr Jaya Arunachalam. It’s not the first time and it’s not the last time when Dr Arunachalam has been conferred with a prestigious recognition for her efforts. The important factor to be mentioned here is nature of her efforts. Like I wrote in one of my earlier write-ups, she has achieved much of her success with help of collective efforts involving the civil society by playing a pivotal role through her initiative the Working Women’s Forum (India) in bringing together the diverse groups of people with means and people seeking means to form a steady flow of subsistence for the needy. Dr Arunachalam’s belief in being an activist and not a fighter compliments the potential of ‘we’ bound by a cause and it emphasizes the need for collective effort.
The need is to believe in power of collective effort. The task before us requires as many helping hands as possible to come together and form a chain of undying spirit. The hunt is to be for likeminded partners to come and share their thoughts and extend their help to the cause of the mankind, graduating from a man to the men. Obviously the most important asset here is the personal commitment.
We must not claim to be different; nature of the cause requires amalgamation. But, yes, we need to be different for the initiative once we decide over it. In Delhi India
It was always there – the need for the human factor to every life. It has not come just now when efforts to empower the last person and make her/him parallel to the official definitions are needed to stand out. But have we learnt? Have we been able to zero-in on the nature of efforts that we need to mobilize?
Such efforts speak for the ‘we’ factor. They too know they have proponents and not just a single one. But they need as much multitudes together as possible. This idea and just a discourse-knowledge of ‘others are there too’ is needed to be propagated. There are some out of numerous who are working to bring some change. The commitment is to be extended among all. There must be a willingness to share the vision and commitment in order to create a ‘differentiator’.
What can be the basic differentiating contributions? Contributions from organizations as well as individuals can be in terms of thought process sharing, conceptualization of themes and projects with relevance for social empowerment, volunteer association for some manpower hours of highly satisfying outcome to name a few.
The need is to look forward to catalyze a pattern change in the way development assistance works nationwide by connecting the local and the global to achieve large scale development driven at the grass roots. Human development is about expanding the capacity of all human beings to take control of their destiny and reach their full potential. Remember, ‘we’ as a ‘unit’ can do wonders to make a difference.
