Living Lightly on the Earth

One Life Touching Another

Dec 2006

Something remarkable is happening in Tamil Nadu. With a population of over 62 million, it suffers from disease and a struggling economy. Clare Dakin and Martha Hammond find out how this southern Indian state is being supported to strengthen and redevelop itself from the roots up.

Sadhguru's plan is to help rejuvenate India. He sees rural communities as core components of the Indian economy and of its national identity. Health, he believes, is an integral key to the country's spiritual wellbeing. Economic growth is widening the gap between wealthy and poor, allowing the majority to flounder in relative increased poverty and disillusionment. In response, Sadghuru is mobilising a massive volunteer force, aiming to reverse the trend and anchor the tools for recovery, inspiring collective responsibility. Ultimately the project is working towards a sustainable future for villages throughout Tamil Nadu.

How then, do you transform such struggling rural villages into motivated and thriving centres of creativity and personal responsibility? According to Sadhguru, you start by bringing joy and a sense of community back into the heart of the people. This is achieved through games, especially volleyball, which has brought housewives out of their homes and broken down the cultural barriers of caste. Inter-village tournaments have been held, linking together neighbouring communities and strengthening each villages' collective identity and esteem, re-introducing confidence, laughter and local pride.

Once a village's spirit is ignited, it brings a renewed sense of hope. This supports the use of transformative tools, including yogic science, as well as lessons in preventative health care and sanitation. Within ARR health is viewed holistically. Many elements of the project work together in the creation of healthier environments and healthful ways of living which target the mind, body and spirit.

Practical steps being taken include establishing mobile health clinics and distributing medicines free of charge. The Isha volunteers couple orthodox medicinal approaches with yoga for wellbeing sessions which, like most of the project's activities, are simple to implement, do not require any particular kind of expertise and can be improvised easily to suit local conditions. ARR yoga programmes are non-religious, non-sectarian and straightforward. They work easily in many social and spiritual situations.

Another strategy is to encourage the planting of community gardens. These provide food, as well as herbs for many cost-effective homeopathic remedies. The Isha foundation gives classes on reintroducing the use of home cures to help villages get the most from their gardens. The pleasant environments created by these green spaces, reinforce the work of Project Green Hands a newly launched environmental awareness scheme, through which Isha aims to plant 114 million trees during the next 10 years, thereby reducing the growing desertification in Tamil Nadu.

By enhancing existing development schemes, which support traditional models of health, illness prevention and community governance, and by modernising traditional skills, Action for Rural Rejuvenation is raising the spirits of India's rural people. The modules of learning used by Isha have been designed to minimalise dependency; they encourage people to utilise what they have effectively and lead people to self-care without direct economic handouts.

The project was launched in 2003 under the aegis of Isha Foundation. It aims to benefit 70 million rural people in 54,000 villages in Tamil Nadu and is set to be implemented in two phases over the course of 15 years. Thereafter, it is planned that local communities will sustain the activities independently, using teams of local volunteers.

It is envisioned that the project will set up local village committees to manage rural development centres. These centres will include a health clinic, pharmacy, yogashala, herb shop, computer room and a library among other facilities, and will drive other community welfare activities. In addition the project will set up craft training schemes and production units helping to make these centres financially self sustaining.

By Martha Hammond
First published in Living Lightly Issue 38

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