20 August 2008
10:15 p.m. IST

Dear Friends,

Life must prosper in this planet. For it to prosper earth must be rich with healthy environment. Air, water, energy, biomass and natural materials must be available to all living beings equally. There must be no waste. Such a future is possible when man decides live in a sustainable fashion. World has enough resources for man's need.

As scientific knowledge developed for mankind newer technologies and discoveries came into existence. Some of them, like petroleum, cement, steel and incandescent bulb to name a few, enabled the world citizens to advance further in their pursuit for happiness and comfort but also turned out to be not so environment friendly. This will be the case for every thing that man invents. There will be certain inhibitors. Nature alone knows how to invent products that are self diagnostic and self healing. Man continues to attempt his exploration towards creating such self sustaining ideas. There are technologies like CFL bulb that contains 20 to 25 mg mercury today that require alternate technologies in the future. The process is continuous. Innovation must persist. Our attempts to evolve will push to improve things and the results of such improvements will sometimes disrupt existing technologies.

While every country is attempting to push the scientific datum for their innovation reach India is far behind on its innovation agenda. In my humble opinion, India is the right country in the whole wide world to develop and demonstrate earth friendly technologies that maintains a healthy environment for life to prosper. We need not look outside of our country for inspiration and launching pad for ideas. Our ancestors had known how to live in a sustainable fashion. Our building science, farming practices, clothing culture and overall living patterns were firmly rooted on indigenous belief that we are a part of the unity and therefore must act responsibly. We had earth-friendly practices. Even today, most village houses are constructed using materials that come from not more than 5 to 10 kilometer radius.

We must learn our past and connect it meaningfully with our future.

Youth of the world must come forward to take up ideas from our past and connect it with technologies of the future to develop innovative products, services and processes for a sustainable future. We need Ecopreneurs. These young energetic spirits must be trained and mentored using a practical platform. We can call such a program as Tejaswin. People who sign up for this program will learn to run an environment friendly business enterprise for 1008 days. These 'Tejaswinis', after the mentoring period will graduate, will own the enterprise and run it. Their motive will be economic sustainability in environment sustainability. Profits and money will not be center of their behavior. Cause of the environment will be. In years to come, these Tejaswinis will form a club - a sort of business self help group - to support each other.

Life must prosper in this planet. Youth of this world must raise to the occasion.

May there be peace and prosperity in this world for us and for our future generations.

--
Be the change,
k.m.e.
"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. Gandhiji."