Reflections on Orientation

Above Photo: Jama Masjid, New Delhi

Greetings Greetings: Welcome to my first post (I know, I said I wouldn’t do, it but here I am). I arrived in India on September 1st, and on the morning of September 2nd a 2-week orientation period in New Delhi began. I’ll admit that the concept of Orientation did not necessarily settle well with me, as the word brought back memories of awkward firsts, silly name games, and other usually painful “icebreakers” (I’m sweating with anxiety just thinking about partaking in icebreakers). Such word-associations aside, I can comfortably say that I was blown away by the programming, and more importantly, it truly felt like the perfect and most appropriate stepping stone into these next 10 months in India.

Over the two week orientation period we were lectured by Indian historians, anthropologists, journalists, bankers, publishers/writers, government officials, NGO leaders, and artists (and a private tour of the National Gallery of Art in New Delhi to boot), each of whom had something unique and eye-opening to share with us about this extremely complex society and country; we had three dance classes from a famed (so I’m told) Bollywood choreographer, which culminated in a group performance; we visited New Delhi’s major sites; we spend two days in rural (breathtaking!) Rajasthan visiting school children and their teachers in pre-6th grade schools (classrooms) set up by a local NGO, and later met with women from Ibtada’s self-help groups; and to end the orientation period we had a meeting with the US ambassador to India. Each lecture and site visit deserves a posting of its own, but the purpose of this blog is more to share observations and reflections rather than indulge in too many details. To comment on the visit with the Ambassador, however, I can say that I left the meeting feeling as though our Ambassador is in India more to promote US Business than US Policies. I suppose I shouldn’t be too disappointed, as the two have become one and the same in many respects, but there’s something unsettling about a political appointee from the banking/finance sector serving in the Foreign Service. You can imagine how a group of young idealists took his arguments that the cure to India’s agricultural sector is a “Wal-Mart-like model”, and how Monsanto’s legal rights have not been rightfully recognized (Monsanto is a seed manufacturing multi-national corporation; in India close to 70% of the people are dependent on the agricultural sector and most seeds are farmer-produced, so when a MNC comes in to patent seeds, taking away farmer rights to save and sell their seeds… you get the picture). Yikes.

To sum it up in a sentence (or more) I would say that orientation was an intensive learning period - learning not only from the programming put together by the American India Foundation, but as well from my peers, the entire group of fellows, many of whom I can imagine I will stay friends with for the rest of my life. I’d go as far as to say that the group itself impressed me more than our speakers. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, venture capitalists, social workers, public health specialists – the list goes on and on - all with an international and social focus. During breakfast, tea breaks (of which there were many – and wow do they like their tea sweet here!), lunch, dinner, and even at day’s end when we would all be exhausted from the programming we somehow had the energy to engage and argue (the healthy kind, of course) about all that we had been exposed to on that day (and on a few occasions we had enough energy to experience New Delhi’s night life – more on those observations some other time, perhaps). It was amazing to hear people reflect on the issues at hand from their various professional and personal backgrounds, be it health, human rights, finance, education -- and be they Buddhist, Ismaili, Jain, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Atheist, Agnostic, from Texas, Wisconsin, Jersey, New York, Cali, Mass, etc etc etc! Needless to say I feel lucky and humbled to be among them. By the time I was able to crawl into bed each night I literally felt like new information was oozing from my ears. As it turned out the only thing irritating my ears during orientation were the crickets that had infested our rooms (my roommate and I had it the easiest, I must admit).

You can probably gather that I’m feeling enthusiastic about this upcoming year. While I’ve only been here three weeks the one thing I know for sure is that I cannot begin any sentence with “India is…”, because this place is so diverse and so complex that there is no one way to speak about the entire country and all it’s people/cultures/religions/languages at once. My enthusiasm and optimism in part stems from this reality: one can imagine the precedent that will be set if India’s development sector can create models to enable the millions living in abject poverty to move forward in a sustainable, healthy, and equitable manner with the rest of India’s economy – all in the face of such religious and cultural diversity and perhaps the most complex social structure (I’m referring here to the caste system, which is still a strong force). And all this at a time when the most prevalent model in our world is one of fearing thy neighbor, let alone the “other,” and isolating oneself from people of different cultures and religions (even different sects within the same religion!). I know that 10 months in a country will not do a thing to change this world, but I’m excited to be here learning about and engaging with the multitude of issues going on in this country from the ground level. And so these are my thoughts as the rest of the fellows and I break off to our separate NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations). I’m sure my enthusiasm will wax and wane as the months carry on, but you’ll have to check back in to see for yourself!