a very good afternoon to all of you it’s
a great honor and privilege for me to be
here in front of you speaking about a
humble effort we have made at Gordon eco
village over a hundred acres outside of
Mumbai 100 kilometers from Mumbai the
idea of this eco village is to create a
win-win solution between the urban
population of India and the rural
population of India we find that people
in cities have prosperity but there is
immense pollution chaos in the mind
anxiety and turbulence those in the
villages they experience pristine pure
environment but they also experience
poverty is there a way by which the
strengths of both the cities and the
villages could be brought together to
create a win-win solution with that
thought in mind we created a platform in
Galt or a village in wada Toluca 100
kilometers from Mumbai because it’s
important that it remains not too far
from the city and in the past people
have always sought countryside forests
and mountains to experience peace and
tranquility with this in mind we decided
to create a comfortable environment
which would be sustainable as we are
aware some of the biggest challenges the
world is facing it with respect to
environmental pollution every year 14
billion tons of waste is dumped into the
oceans hardly 20% of the waste water is
processed before it is disposed of we
have 100 cigarettes worth of smoke which
we are inhaling in a city like Mumbai
and considering all the
if we decide to make infrastructure
intervention in a rural place we should
not land up creating a bigger problem
than the original problem keeping that
in mind we decided that we would
intervene with great responsibility and
integrity towards Mother Earth and so we
decided to create an eco village which
is based on the principle of symbiotic
recycling what does this mean in the
standard sense we have a classic
wasteful consumer to trash model instead
of that we decided to create a zero
waste contributor model so we have
mother cow in this graph cow gives done
the cow dung and urine acts as a
fertilizer for the soil it produces food
grains the food grains need to be cooked
so we have bio gas which is fueled by
cow dung and cow urine and then the food
is eaten by the human beings he needs to
stay in a dwelling so use the local
earth to create bricks out of mud and
use alternative energy based on solar so
they can stay comfortably with minimum
energy and then the waste which comes
out goes into the soil biotechnology
plant which is there in that corner and
then out comes the treated water which
comes to more than 10 million litres
every year and that again irrigates the
plants and the solid waste is utilized
for composting and creating the menu in
this way we created a cycle which is
very similar to the natural cycles of
nature which is that every waste becomes
a contributor to the next system and
therefore we call it the symbiotic
recycling model it was very important
for us to create infrastructure based on
the principle of harmony traditionally
ancient civilization
like the Egyptians they also believe in
the concept of harmony and they call it
mark which means synergy with your
surroundings Chinese in their tradition
also have the concept of harmony and
they call it ho and in that it consists
of two figures one on the left which
represents grain one on the right which
represent and it basically means harmony
which signifies we are able to nourish
the entire environment around us when
each and every person is nourished to
fulfilment then that is considered to be
harmony in our own tradition we have
what is known as was who they were
kutiman become where we consider
everyone to be part of the family and we
try to integrate it’s very interesting
that traditionally even our lifestyle
very much reflected this kind of harmony
a tourist visits and would be restaurant
and then he comes across it lead those
are being served on a banana leaf he
eats the idli those are all the items he
doesn’t know what to do with the banana
leaf starts eating the banana lipples on
the way out the manager asks him how was
the food the Torah says food was good
the salad was stiff many times we feel
that we have made lot of advancement but
probably by replacing some of the life
styles we have added to the
environmental pollution and thus the
development has come at a great cost
so having created this infrastructure we
would want people from the cities to
actually come and experience this so
therefore we created harmony with
environment by making a system which
gives solution to food water energy and
waste so we decided to grow only food
which is with organic farming we have
only utilized cow dung and Thao you
based fertilizers and insecticides all
of that food which is grown is consumed
and we have all kinds of organic farming
techniques preserving more than 56
varieties of traditional seeds and we
grow more than 45 varieties of
vegetables the idea being that during
monsoons the rainwater runoff it takes
all the chemicals and fertilizers mixed
with the soil and percolates and
pollutes the aquifers so therefore in
order to protect the water also we
decided to go for organic farming second
most important element is water we did a
hydro geological survey we did aquifer
tests and based on all that we decided
where we will do rainwater harvesting
where we will do Aquifer recharge tanks
and then our own bore wells based on
that we had an entire plan for water and
we have one of the biggest rainwater
harvesting tank of more than 10 million
liters of rainwater which is preserved
but then water is not sufficient when it
is conserved how do we deal with the
waste water so therefore that we had the
soil biotechnology plant which is
patented by IIT Mumbai and it basically
consists of a gravity based sewerage
system which brings the black and the
gray water to a collection tank from
there it is lifted 2 layers of hardened
soil and various root bacteria and geo
figgus earthworms which actually break
down all of that black and gray water
and convert it into fish with water
along with bio reactors and then more
than 10 million liters of wastewater we
regenerate and in this way we try to do
responsible waste disposal in a village
and most importantly alternative energy
with solar and whatever biogas was
available
for us and with this we created a
comfortable but sustainable
infrastructure creating the right
environment was the first step the
second step is those in the city who are
experiencing emotional turbulence who
are looking for peace or looking for
harmony they need to come here but why
will they come here they will only come
here if they get an experience of
transformation the statistics reveal
that globally there are 350 million
people who are afflicted with stress and
anxiety disorders in India alone every
day 370 people they are committing
suicides it’s a phenomenal number and I
remember when I was in college I had a
friend of mine who attempted suicide and
I asked him why did you do this and he
said I was always getting the gold medal
and this time I could not and therefore
I was so depressed I couldn’t live with
life and then I had other friends who
had failed in three to four subjects and
they’ve been moving around the campus
peacefully and I asked them you are not
under stress what’s your problem
and they said our philosophy is very
simple entering college is our problem
taking us out of the colleagues colleges
problem and I realized that success is
something beyond just having certain
achievements it is also state of the
mind and therefore Churchill says
success is the ability to go from
failure to failure without loss of
enthusiasm the modern education system
is emphasizing a lot on skills but we
think we need to also add a certain
degree of investment on education about
the will the desire the attitude and
therefore we created all kinds of
educational programs to create
transformative experience
when a person goes through individual
transformation he feels empowered he
feels enlivened
he desires to serve more he feels a
sense of peace and joy within so we have
programs centered around meditation and
cleaner and university has published
papers which has revealed that the
rhythmic repetition of certain syllables
it actually releases a certain kind of
effect called neuro-linguistic effect
and when you do that with proper meaning
then it creates psycholinguistic effect
and then we find that there have been
various researchers on yoga who have
published reports like for example we
have Elizabeth Blackburn who’s a Nobel
laureate and she has published reports
that if a group which did yoga for 12
minutes every day for eight weeks then
they showed a forty three percent
increase in their taylor ms which
actually arrests aging due to stress so
therefore at an individual level and at
the level of the family we are always
looking for help with respect to
controlling our mind and our experience
and not only at the individual level we
also find that when a person is
distressed and in anxiety it affects his
relationships and therefore we find that
as modern families are being filled with
people under stress relationships are
getting affected divorce rates are
increasing and we may be taking this
family value system for granted but if
we do not invest in something we are
going to lose it in due course of time I
was doing a program in one University
abroad a college student walked up to me
started speaking fluent Hindi I was
shocked I looked at him and said how are
you speaking Hindi are you Indian he
said no so how do you know Hindi he said
I was born in a multi-millionaire family
but I grew up in a house which was
completely empty because my father was
I asked my father I want an experience
of family life
he said well you go to this small town
in India and you’ll probably get that so
he came to India he visited this small
town and then he actually spent time
with a family and he told this family
just allow me to experience the love and
the warmth of family life for two years
and if you allow me to stay with you and
experience this I will give you one lakh
rupees per month rent and that family
said why only two years stay forever and
they said you can bring your other
friends also if they want to experience
the point I’m trying to make is we may
take certain things for granted but
individually and collectively we are
lacking peace and harmony and that lack
of harmony is affecting us at all levels
and therefore when we create programs
for wellness Ayurveda yoga meditation
music in that tranquil ambience when
people go through these kinds of
educational experiences they are
transformed and they feel inspired to
help and serve society and therefore we
create a rural development program
around more than 10 villages across
northern eco village this Rural
Development Programme is extremely
important because 69 percent of India’s
population which is 83 point 3 crores
live in 6 lakh forty thousand plus
villages and the statistics revealed
that 3/4 of India’s population earns
less than five thousand rupees a month
and more than half of them do not own
any land in our casual labor category
practically 10 percent of the suicides
which happen is amongst the farmers and
therefore it’s very important to reach
out and help and provide assistance and
many of these suicides but the farmers
because they are caught in a debt trap
because
the crops fail because the monsoons are
not predictable various reasons are
there so basically the rural development
program we developed at the Gordon eco
village was specifically to arrest the
rural to urban migration and to mitigate
the farmers conditions and therefore
poverty alleviation creating an
increasing the acid base for the farmers
rural empowerment for the women rural
education health skill development
cutting across all of these areas we
engaged actively in supporting the
community and as a result of that when
those from the city who come an
experience transformation
they are also inspired to assist and
when the powerful from the city come and
assist then the process of rural
development is accelerated and I would
like to just demo rampant illiteracy
malnutrition and lack of infrastructure
this is the story of water one of
India’s most backward tribal areas
however since 2010 eco tourism has
become a lifeline for this region go
with an eco villages sustainable
development model which is based on
harmony with the self the environment
and the divine has helped employ over
300 tribal families more than 60,000
tribals have been provided free medical
care what giving you clapping together
our family for 30 thousand free meals
are provided to score children every day
Lesotho holiday la they are but over 60
boards have been installed
more than 300 families received training
in organic farming I doubt we shared
that man in Bethabara dear ghovat an eco
village has transformed the lives of the
most deprived communities in the world
in conclusion we just want to exert that
India is filled with more than 50
thousand educational institutions and if
every educational institution just
inspires at least 10 of their graduates
to do something significant in rural
India the entire landscape of rural
India can change for the better and I
think all of us can contribute
tremendously to this cause thank you
very much
[Applause]
a great honor and privilege for me to be
here in front of you speaking about a
humble effort we have made at Gordon eco
village over a hundred acres outside of
Mumbai 100 kilometers from Mumbai the
idea of this eco village is to create a
win-win solution between the urban
population of India and the rural
population of India we find that people
in cities have prosperity but there is
immense pollution chaos in the mind
anxiety and turbulence those in the
villages they experience pristine pure
environment but they also experience
poverty is there a way by which the
strengths of both the cities and the
villages could be brought together to
create a win-win solution with that
thought in mind we created a platform in
Galt or a village in wada Toluca 100
kilometers from Mumbai because it’s
important that it remains not too far
from the city and in the past people
have always sought countryside forests
and mountains to experience peace and
tranquility with this in mind we decided
to create a comfortable environment
which would be sustainable as we are
aware some of the biggest challenges the
world is facing it with respect to
environmental pollution every year 14
billion tons of waste is dumped into the
oceans hardly 20% of the waste water is
processed before it is disposed of we
have 100 cigarettes worth of smoke which
we are inhaling in a city like Mumbai
and considering all the
if we decide to make infrastructure
intervention in a rural place we should
not land up creating a bigger problem
than the original problem keeping that
in mind we decided that we would
intervene with great responsibility and
integrity towards Mother Earth and so we
decided to create an eco village which
is based on the principle of symbiotic
recycling what does this mean in the
standard sense we have a classic
wasteful consumer to trash model instead
of that we decided to create a zero
waste contributor model so we have
mother cow in this graph cow gives done
the cow dung and urine acts as a
fertilizer for the soil it produces food
grains the food grains need to be cooked
so we have bio gas which is fueled by
cow dung and cow urine and then the food
is eaten by the human beings he needs to
stay in a dwelling so use the local
earth to create bricks out of mud and
use alternative energy based on solar so
they can stay comfortably with minimum
energy and then the waste which comes
out goes into the soil biotechnology
plant which is there in that corner and
then out comes the treated water which
comes to more than 10 million litres
every year and that again irrigates the
plants and the solid waste is utilized
for composting and creating the menu in
this way we created a cycle which is
very similar to the natural cycles of
nature which is that every waste becomes
a contributor to the next system and
therefore we call it the symbiotic
recycling model it was very important
for us to create infrastructure based on
the principle of harmony traditionally
ancient civilization
like the Egyptians they also believe in
the concept of harmony and they call it
mark which means synergy with your
surroundings Chinese in their tradition
also have the concept of harmony and
they call it ho and in that it consists
of two figures one on the left which
represents grain one on the right which
represent and it basically means harmony
which signifies we are able to nourish
the entire environment around us when
each and every person is nourished to
fulfilment then that is considered to be
harmony in our own tradition we have
what is known as was who they were
kutiman become where we consider
everyone to be part of the family and we
try to integrate it’s very interesting
that traditionally even our lifestyle
very much reflected this kind of harmony
a tourist visits and would be restaurant
and then he comes across it lead those
are being served on a banana leaf he
eats the idli those are all the items he
doesn’t know what to do with the banana
leaf starts eating the banana lipples on
the way out the manager asks him how was
the food the Torah says food was good
the salad was stiff many times we feel
that we have made lot of advancement but
probably by replacing some of the life
styles we have added to the
environmental pollution and thus the
development has come at a great cost
so having created this infrastructure we
would want people from the cities to
actually come and experience this so
therefore we created harmony with
environment by making a system which
gives solution to food water energy and
waste so we decided to grow only food
which is with organic farming we have
only utilized cow dung and Thao you
based fertilizers and insecticides all
of that food which is grown is consumed
and we have all kinds of organic farming
techniques preserving more than 56
varieties of traditional seeds and we
grow more than 45 varieties of
vegetables the idea being that during
monsoons the rainwater runoff it takes
all the chemicals and fertilizers mixed
with the soil and percolates and
pollutes the aquifers so therefore in
order to protect the water also we
decided to go for organic farming second
most important element is water we did a
hydro geological survey we did aquifer
tests and based on all that we decided
where we will do rainwater harvesting
where we will do Aquifer recharge tanks
and then our own bore wells based on
that we had an entire plan for water and
we have one of the biggest rainwater
harvesting tank of more than 10 million
liters of rainwater which is preserved
but then water is not sufficient when it
is conserved how do we deal with the
waste water so therefore that we had the
soil biotechnology plant which is
patented by IIT Mumbai and it basically
consists of a gravity based sewerage
system which brings the black and the
gray water to a collection tank from
there it is lifted 2 layers of hardened
soil and various root bacteria and geo
figgus earthworms which actually break
down all of that black and gray water
and convert it into fish with water
along with bio reactors and then more
than 10 million liters of wastewater we
regenerate and in this way we try to do
responsible waste disposal in a village
and most importantly alternative energy
with solar and whatever biogas was
available
for us and with this we created a
comfortable but sustainable
infrastructure creating the right
environment was the first step the
second step is those in the city who are
experiencing emotional turbulence who
are looking for peace or looking for
harmony they need to come here but why
will they come here they will only come
here if they get an experience of
transformation the statistics reveal
that globally there are 350 million
people who are afflicted with stress and
anxiety disorders in India alone every
day 370 people they are committing
suicides it’s a phenomenal number and I
remember when I was in college I had a
friend of mine who attempted suicide and
I asked him why did you do this and he
said I was always getting the gold medal
and this time I could not and therefore
I was so depressed I couldn’t live with
life and then I had other friends who
had failed in three to four subjects and
they’ve been moving around the campus
peacefully and I asked them you are not
under stress what’s your problem
and they said our philosophy is very
simple entering college is our problem
taking us out of the colleagues colleges
problem and I realized that success is
something beyond just having certain
achievements it is also state of the
mind and therefore Churchill says
success is the ability to go from
failure to failure without loss of
enthusiasm the modern education system
is emphasizing a lot on skills but we
think we need to also add a certain
degree of investment on education about
the will the desire the attitude and
therefore we created all kinds of
educational programs to create
transformative experience
when a person goes through individual
transformation he feels empowered he
feels enlivened
he desires to serve more he feels a
sense of peace and joy within so we have
programs centered around meditation and
cleaner and university has published
papers which has revealed that the
rhythmic repetition of certain syllables
it actually releases a certain kind of
effect called neuro-linguistic effect
and when you do that with proper meaning
then it creates psycholinguistic effect
and then we find that there have been
various researchers on yoga who have
published reports like for example we
have Elizabeth Blackburn who’s a Nobel
laureate and she has published reports
that if a group which did yoga for 12
minutes every day for eight weeks then
they showed a forty three percent
increase in their taylor ms which
actually arrests aging due to stress so
therefore at an individual level and at
the level of the family we are always
looking for help with respect to
controlling our mind and our experience
and not only at the individual level we
also find that when a person is
distressed and in anxiety it affects his
relationships and therefore we find that
as modern families are being filled with
people under stress relationships are
getting affected divorce rates are
increasing and we may be taking this
family value system for granted but if
we do not invest in something we are
going to lose it in due course of time I
was doing a program in one University
abroad a college student walked up to me
started speaking fluent Hindi I was
shocked I looked at him and said how are
you speaking Hindi are you Indian he
said no so how do you know Hindi he said
I was born in a multi-millionaire family
but I grew up in a house which was
completely empty because my father was
I asked my father I want an experience
of family life
he said well you go to this small town
in India and you’ll probably get that so
he came to India he visited this small
town and then he actually spent time
with a family and he told this family
just allow me to experience the love and
the warmth of family life for two years
and if you allow me to stay with you and
experience this I will give you one lakh
rupees per month rent and that family
said why only two years stay forever and
they said you can bring your other
friends also if they want to experience
the point I’m trying to make is we may
take certain things for granted but
individually and collectively we are
lacking peace and harmony and that lack
of harmony is affecting us at all levels
and therefore when we create programs
for wellness Ayurveda yoga meditation
music in that tranquil ambience when
people go through these kinds of
educational experiences they are
transformed and they feel inspired to
help and serve society and therefore we
create a rural development program
around more than 10 villages across
northern eco village this Rural
Development Programme is extremely
important because 69 percent of India’s
population which is 83 point 3 crores
live in 6 lakh forty thousand plus
villages and the statistics revealed
that 3/4 of India’s population earns
less than five thousand rupees a month
and more than half of them do not own
any land in our casual labor category
practically 10 percent of the suicides
which happen is amongst the farmers and
therefore it’s very important to reach
out and help and provide assistance and
many of these suicides but the farmers
because they are caught in a debt trap
because
the crops fail because the monsoons are
not predictable various reasons are
there so basically the rural development
program we developed at the Gordon eco
village was specifically to arrest the
rural to urban migration and to mitigate
the farmers conditions and therefore
poverty alleviation creating an
increasing the acid base for the farmers
rural empowerment for the women rural
education health skill development
cutting across all of these areas we
engaged actively in supporting the
community and as a result of that when
those from the city who come an
experience transformation
they are also inspired to assist and
when the powerful from the city come and
assist then the process of rural
development is accelerated and I would
like to just demo rampant illiteracy
malnutrition and lack of infrastructure
this is the story of water one of
India’s most backward tribal areas
however since 2010 eco tourism has
become a lifeline for this region go
with an eco villages sustainable
development model which is based on
harmony with the self the environment
and the divine has helped employ over
300 tribal families more than 60,000
tribals have been provided free medical
care what giving you clapping together
our family for 30 thousand free meals
are provided to score children every day
Lesotho holiday la they are but over 60
boards have been installed
more than 300 families received training
in organic farming I doubt we shared
that man in Bethabara dear ghovat an eco
village has transformed the lives of the
most deprived communities in the world
in conclusion we just want to exert that
India is filled with more than 50
thousand educational institutions and if
every educational institution just
inspires at least 10 of their graduates
to do something significant in rural
India the entire landscape of rural
India can change for the better and I
think all of us can contribute
tremendously to this cause thank you
very much
[Applause]
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