All of us exist in a web of relationships and roles, with the people around us and the planet that we inhabit. We are family members, friends, neighbours, colleagues, consumers of food, creators of waste, and so on. In this web, there is no possibility of an act in isolation – every action or inaction of ours causes reverberations in the world around us, in an intricate, pulsating dance of cause and effect. Our everyday choices have a real, though often unnoticed, consequence in the world around us.
In this scenario, what does it mean to be an active citizen – an ACTiZEN?
For me, to be an ACTiZEN is an obligation to engage with these relationships with people and our planet, consciously and meaningfully. It is to be aware of the ramifications of what we do or omit to do, and to strive to act in a way that seeks to “do more good, and do less harm”, as we collectively shape society. This sounds self-evident, but is actually far from straightforward.
There are often judgement calls and hidden trade-offs between the short term and the long term, between what makes us feel good about ourselves and what leads to true positive social change, what we’re given applause and accolades for and what contributes to the well-being of a significant percentage of society. And every so often, to be an ACTiZEN could also mean going against the lifestyle you would like to maintain and the comforts you would want to enjoy.
Fulfilling My Obligation to Engage: “Raahi: Impact Journeys”
I have been drawn to the social sector for many years now, working in different organisations in various roles, engaging with and making sense of social impact issues from agriculture and rural development to education and employment. In August 2023, after almost a decade of such experiences, I went on a career break, partly to answer for myself the question – what is social impact, really? How do we make life choices that make our life worth living and really do “less harm and more good”?
Somewhere during my travels and experiments a year ago, “Raahi: Impact Journeys” was born – a video podcast and YouTube channel – as a way to explore these questions and take others along as I do. The name “Raahi” (which means ‘traveller’ in several South Asian languages) comes from the idea that all of us are travellers in life, and each of us – whether we like it or not – is on a journey that has repercussions for people around us and for our surroundings.
In the last year, I have had the privilege and opportunity of speaking to a range of people I found interesting and whose journeys I found fascinating, which have deepened and broadened my idea of what it means to be an ACTiZEN. The first conversation was with Prof. Ankur Sarin, a tenured faculty at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, where we discussed the societal impact of businesses, the need for educational institutions to evolve their aspirations, and about his research and reflections on the education system. Two others I spoke to, who took less-trodden paths are Amit Sriam, who runs a community learning centre called ‘A Little Grove’ in Hyderabad, where the students have the agency to decide what they learn, and Kalyan Akkipeddi, who has been building ‘Protovillage’, an experiment to create a resilient village community. With the fantastic Prof. Kalpana Karunakaran of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, I engaged deeply with her decades of work on the nexus of gender and development. Through the 60-year-long career of Dr. V. K. Aatre, a Padma Vibhushan awardee and the former head of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), I reflected on what a life of passion and perseverance devoted to nation-building looks like. Engaging with Yashasvini Rajeshwar, the founder of a communications consultancy for the impact sector, I tried to form a view of the world of grassroots organisations that toil to improve their immediate communities.
Each one of them have been ACTiZENS in their own way – engaging with society as academics, scientists, professionals or educators. They have gone through the process of reflecting on their purpose, faced their moments of doubt and struggle as they navigated their way.
Reflections: Your Obligation to Engage
From all these inputs, and the further conversations it triggered with friends and channel subscribers, some common threads emerge. While all of these are evolving even in my head, sharing some of them below in the spirit of reflection:
First of all, how much do we acknowledge and comprehend how deeply unequal and unfair our society is? In our increasingly isolated and digital structures, it is easy to think that our individual experience is what the average person goes through.
Second, is an acceptance that each of us reading this article is almost surely on the side of the privileged. Given that, it is very often a choice for us whether we engage and grapple with the power structures in our society (that often benefit us), than a need or necessity to engage as someone under the thumb of its oppression. Our lived experiences and the perceptions from our vantage point naturally teach us lessons different from that which someone else, less privileged, learns.
If you put the two above together, we are all to some degree, at risk of becoming the modern-day version of the princess Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote about in his book Confessions, who was told that the peasants had no bread, and responded, “If they have no bread, let them eat cake,” showing her complete ignorance of the plight of the poor.
And thus comes the third lesson: for truly moving society forward – to do “less harm and more good”, we need to tread carefully with what we know, and confront uncomfortable and troubling questions of what role we are really playing in society. With the power and privilege of our positions, are we working to further exclude or to empower? In our actions, are we being honest about the root cause or focusing on easier-to-see symptoms? To borrow an analogy from one of Raahi’s podcast guests, in the sinking ship of society, are we bailing out water with small mugs or looking to really plug the hole?
There are often no easy answers, and sometimes these come at the cost of the self-image that we are brought up with, that we are “good people” no matter what we do or do not. My submission would be that it is a moral imperative to wrestle with these questions, if we truly want to be ACTiZENS.
And even as you keep reflecting, continue to act to the best of your knowledge. As I was reminded in the Raahi conversation with Prof. Kalpana about how social change happens, undercurrents of actions by citizens from below, are absolutely essential to trigger what may seem to be benevolent policy changes of governments from above.
Therefore, I hope you choose to engage: with people who have views different from your own, with the power and privilege you have, and with the decisions that you make every day at school, at work and otherwise
And as for me – I hope to continue making sense of the world through Raahi and keep up my obligation to engage.
I wish you a meaningful, active journey of impact.
Mr. Girish Ananthanarayanan runs Raahi: Impact, a social sector community and video podcast, and is a Senior Project Manager at a development consultancy.
He can be reached at raahi.impact@gmail.com.