Small Is Beautiful: Book Review

This book by EF Schumacher was first published in 1973 without much fanfare. No one noticed when it was released. But if people celebrated its 25^th anniversary and is still being referred to by serious economists, then it speaks of its volume & its relevance even today. By size it is just 250 pages, but is packed with lot of punches. The beauty is, it just not lists the ills of the present day modern economics, but gives simple solutions for those ills. I am highly influenced by its simple analogies and solution oriented arguments. Most of my blogs and readings are influenced in this same direction. It is also closer to Hindu & any other religious way of life prescribed giving a lot of importance to the individual spiritual quest.

The author quotes Gandhiji in several occasions. Hence I can say it hinges on the principles Gramodyoga & Grama swarajya - of people employment, empowerment. It is principled on - If people are empowered to rule themselves; then economy will take care of itself. But if economy is primary concern, then people care takes back seat.

The Modern Economics: Something Bad

Modern economics is the primary driver of the politics today all over the world. (Except may be Bhutan.  Bhutan has taken the Pledge to remain carbon neutral & measure their success by Gross National Happiness, which makes me believe they are on the right path & can be a guiding force & light for the rest of the world).

The politics is always about people, eradicating poverty, hunger, establishing peace & permanence. So while politics is all about people, modern economics derails it from focusing on people happiness to people prosperity.

The basic tenet of modern economics is: Peace is attained by prosperity. So get rich and then get others rich. The easy reason is once they get rich why would rich go to war? They gain less and lose a lot.

The author quotes Lord Keynes a noted modern day economist – ‘Until we reach universal prosperity we pretend “foul is fair and fair is foul” for foul is useful & fair is not’.

So basically the modern economics dictates to enrich yourself ‘somehow’, ‘anyhow’ for that is the road to peace.

The problem with this theory is while enriching oneself there is no definition of ‘enough’. So it creates enormous stress on limited world resources putting them on a collision course with not the poor but with other rich. So the rich go to war. Rich & the poor suffer. Peace is disturbed.

Gandhiji quotes “Earth has enough for every man’s need but not enough for every man’s greed”. It can be extended to say earth is not enough for even one man’s greed.

Ancient Wisdom: Need to seep through into politics

So what’s the solution? Author has a chapter called Buddhist economics. But he admits at the beginning, itself, that it is the same tenets from any other religion, be it Christian, Hindu or any other.

The religion preaches at individual level. The individuals make up society, society makes up nation & it makes the world etc.,

The religion preaches: ‘Liberate oneself from the cravings for material & obtain maximum human satisfaction with minimal consumption’.

Man’s needs are infinite & inifinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm and never in the material.

With this wisdom the economic policies and politics of managing nation, people & meeting their aspirations has to be undertaken. In that endeavor, the author precinctly argues chapter by chapter: Small is Beautiful. Small land ownership. Small production, minimal destruction. Minimal consumption. Small water tanks, small district units, local produce, local consumption. Etc.,

Unemployment: Growing concern

One of the blame for unemployment is on population growth. Author argues why additional people cannot do additional work? But that requires resources. So what? Earth is bounty. But there is a clash of rich who have control over the earth resources. So it boils down to how rich control economics & politics depriving poor of their land rights.

The modern day economics argues: Agri ‘culture’ is uneconomical, unviable. It has to be made Agri ‘business’ & Agri ‘Industry’. For economists anything culture is unviable. It has to be rooted out. They always argue politics has to be away from culture, and be secular.

The author argues, that the Agriculture when rightly done as in the ancient times with a bit of modern touch, provides, peace & permanence.

Agriculture has a wider aspect: 1. It keeps man in touch with living nature. 2. It will humanize and ennoble man’s wider habitat. 3. It produces food for self and to trade. Besides it provides maximum employment. Especially it is true for our country.

So the right solution from government should be – Instead of drift away from Agi, 1. Reconstruct rural culture & 2. Reopen land for gainful occupation to large number of working people, making Agri viable and attractive.

This will yield land use towards ideal health, beauty & permanence. This will yield maximum employment too. Agriculture combined with vocational work like Khadi weaving, art, temple building, sculpture, handi-crafts can bring about long lasting peace. This has been our ancient wisdom in our country.

Intermediate Technology: Right solution of technology for Humanity

The counter argument to the Small is Beautiful is that it kills innovation and limits scientific utility to the world. But this argument only by the rich. The poor just need basic necessities to be met first.

The author puts forth the need for intermediate technology to help alleviate worker’s effort.

I would like to draw a simple analogy from the author’s this particular thought process. It is like Charaka of the Gandhiji’s Khadi Gramodyoga.

A simple comparison is: The power loom employs thousands of people at a particular place; it also consumes a lot of earthly resources from land, water, electricity. It requires a lot of capital forcing only rich to fund and run it employing others. It requires enormous transportation, distribution, marketing, inventory management process for consumption of the produce. It becomes unviable to reach the hinterlands of India. Instead it gets exported and made available at cheaper rates only in cities forcing city people to consume more than what they need.

The handloom on the other hand requires very minimal capital affordable by anyone. It can be established across all 5 lakh villages across the country. It provides employment across length and breadth of the nation and not constrained to a particular factory place. Its earthly resource needs are zilch. Consumer is right at the door step or maximum in a town nearby.

The author generalizes the Intermediate Technology as:

1.       Must be indigenous meeting the needs of the locals by the locals

2.       Very easily accessible and affordable

3.       Equipment and operational harm to the nature should be within the limits of the nature’s recuperative force.

One must understand that the colonial powers who shaped today’s modern economics was primarily interested in supplies & profits from the colonies & not in development & sustenance of the natives. Hence the modern economics is ‘Export oriented & Import dependent’.

Summary

The book has a lot more to offer and ponder. It deep dives into the ills of nuclear energy and argues that the solution lies in ‘altering our pattern of living with lesser energy needs’. The modern economic performance metrics like GNP, GDP are ripped apart based on its inhuman centric approaches. Energy, fossil fuel, our dependence on it is deeply discussed. Some solutions by way of real scenario case study are provided for new patterns of ownership of factories. Interesting analogy of how man likes predictable output & hence eliminates all ‘living’ elements in industry approach, implementing same ideology on Agri – making it business than culture is described well. The ‘living’ elements are unpredictable & hence to be eliminated is the modern way of thinking and it is dangerous for all ‘living’ including humans.

The only additional thing that I would like to add from my side is, while common man should live within limits, the country needs to defend itself against great many odds of the bad world. So the destructive technologies like nuclear energy, warships, war planes need to be developed and maintained to ensure peace for the people within the country.

One of the interesting further reads on the ills of GDP centric growth is in the below article by Devinder Sharma:

http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.in/2015/02/the-fetish-for-higher-gdp.html

All in all, entire book is an interesting eye opener for someone who ponders why with great technological advancement and scientific achievements we have not been able to address world hunger and poverty. What is wrong with the world current economics, policies and present day politics guided only by economics and not by humane centric religious tenets?  

What is Swathanthrya? What is Swarajya?

Swathanthrya for most Indians is an August fever.

We got freedom from the foreign rule on Aug 15th 1947. What we got is political freedom. But what it really means?  Is there a transfer of political freedom to individual freedom? What is beyond political freedom? What individual freedom means?

In India today we do not have Individual freedom largely. Rather it is not there to the extent that we had in ancient times. So what is that Individual freedom?   

People Freedom in India in the Past:

Every region is unique in India. And people in these regions have very rich natural resources. The indigenous people of that region had full freedom to utilize that in a sustainable non-polluting manner. The politics of that day gave full freedom to the communities living by those natural resources to utilize the natural resources to produce the best they could. The communities used that freedom to live happily, produce what is needed for their living and innovate. Raja Dharma protected Samaja Manava Dharma which was guided by Vedic Dharma of “Sarve Janah Sukhino Bhavathu”.

If you see we produced some of the best textile in the world. Besides the muslin cloth of Bengal, we had in each region unique variety of artistic textile produced. For example in Karnataka itself we have ilkal saree, molakalmooru saree, mysooru saree, just to name a few saree varieties only. It was all handloom and hand made.

Besides textiles, we had some of the best pearls, ruby, etc., extracted and exotic ornaments made of them. The Arabian Sea used to be called as Rathnakara. It is AAKARA of RATHNA means = Abode of Pearls.

The diamond extraction & gold ornaments were all innovations of India. Art and craft on Ivory, Animal Horns showed the artistic exuberance of an artisan. The animal leather produced some of the best musical drums to be played at temples and in concerts, besides the foot wear and bags.

The metallurgy in India was very advanced. The Darpana which means mirror used to be made out of many alloys of metals. There is one such famous mirror in a Kerala temple which even today stands testimony giving 99% perfect reflection better than some of our best glass mirrors of today. In front of Kutub Minar in Delhi there stands an iron based alloy still not rusted after several centuries of weather conditions. Look at the beautiful gold, silver ornaments decorating our Gods across the country. Look at the gold based Tanajavuru paintings staying impeccable even today after centuries in some of our people’s homes.

The politics of that day gave full freedom to the indigenous community to experiment with the resources they had to produce the best they could. There was no political compulsion to produce for export. The politics was not economy centric. But it was clearly people centric. It was people freedom centric. They could produce what they could to sustain their living. When people were given freedom to produce what they could, they always produced the best and more.

There was no uprising against slavery, the type we hear in the west during that contemporary time. The large temples, exquisite sculpture were produced by not chained & mimed slaves. But it was produced by the free willing artisans. The cultural freedom was explicit in India during those days. They were fed well by free India. Construction of such gracious temples indicate Prosperity. Its sustenance over milleniums indicate Peace.

There was no Land Acquisition bill. There are so many legislations available to read from various kingdoms, dynasties, but we don’t come across such acquisition of properties against people’s will. (There are educated & graduate Indians today who truly believe there was no Law, Legislation, Rule, Order, Justice, and Judicial system in Ancient India. There is a belief that British gifted all of this to us. But that is unfortunate of our secular education system). Some of the Tamilnadu temples like Tiruvannamalai, Srirangam, Madhurai etc., are so large, that one parikrama (circumference) is about couple of dozen kilometers. The entire city is inside the temple premise. Where was land acquisition problem? We do not hear of it in any sculpture nor ballads, writings, drama available from that era.

What is People Freedom in India Today?

Today India is ruled from one center place call New Delhi. For them India is measured by GDP & GNP. They also give first priority to some foreign agencies ranking India in economy based ease of doing business, mining, ecology clearance for a polluting industry etc., Economy is central to policy making. Not the people freedom.

For example, India is the largest exporter of Undies, Banians and variety of undergarments; It also exports, towels, carpets, T-shirts, shirts, trousers etc., The design for which comes from foreign companies who buy these clothes for consumption in their countries. All of this is produced from few thousand or lakh work force in Thirupur in Tamilnadu. That’s it. Compare it with ancient India producing top class exclusive textile which cannot be produced by anyone else in the world. Because it was Kaushala (artistry) of artesans. And how many of them? Millions, spread across India in very village, town, north south east and west.

Similarly ore export. Simply extract the ore and push it across the world. Do it in rapid & rampant way destroying forests, mountains, bloodying the rivers. Are we mad? We could have given freedom to people living there to extract and give it in small chunks for India’s consumption. Why export? In Vijayanagara era & going back to BC, that’s how the records say, Chitradurga, Tumkur, Kolar, Bellary were rich in Gold, Iron, Copper, several minerals; and extraction & processing used to happen in sustainable way as a cottage industry. With such people freedom our Cholas built formidable large ships sailed across the ocean to spread harmonious Hindu culture in far eastern countries which stand testimony even today in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand etc., .

If we give people freedom they will come up with technology even to develop world class Submarines & War ships. But with no people freedom, Ford, Toyota are coming in hordes to destroy our city living by excessive personal luxury cars production; Our rural environment also is destroyed. What are we achieving? GDP. With that what can we achieve? The ‘Haves’ will have luxury cars, the ‘Have Nots’ will lose their ancestral dwelling, land, water & migrate to city slums.

So Swathanthrya today for Middleclass educated is: eat what you like, live however you like, get any job you can get to work like a donkey and earn some money to party like hell.

For the not so privileged rest of India, Swathanthrya is a dream.

Is all Inclusive better life possible in India?

As I have understood India of the past and the present, if we become Agri based country, it is possible. It gives a lot of freedom to achieve all inclusive decent living & become a great economy too. That’s how ancient India was. 90% of India was Agri based. In agriculture, for a land owner it gives work for almost 150-200 days in an year. And for a landless agri dependent labour it gives about 90-100 days labour. It gives them enough grains to sustain themselves through the year and trade or export the grains also. Rest of the days they can use to freely explore what can be done from the resources they have around. And also to build bridges, canals, drainage, road, temples, tanks, lakes, desilting etc., That is what is Swarajya. Ruling and developing their locality and giving back to the nation. Not the way today it is happening like Central government is giving grains to people through PDS.

And entertainment can be localized to develop local culture. That’s how some of our classical languages, their literature survived for centuries. For example, in Kannada not only the colloquial ballads but some of the Raja Asthana’s classical literature like Ranna’s Gada Yuddha, Kumaravyasa Bharatha passed on from generation to generation from around 8^th century till 20^th century. It was a good pastime to recite & dramatize it in every village. Everybody was an artist. For 12 centuries it remained on people’s lips & actions. Now it is in records. Closed shut.

Can we become Agri based country at all in future? It is a dream. It requires change of education, mending the minds.

• ·         Firstly the rural people should exercise their rights over their land and water.
• ·         Then policy makers have to heed to them. Make policies to protect India, its people, its resources
• ·         The urban middle class have to understand righteous way of living.

All this is possible, by not our generation itself. It will take many generations. But in our generation we have to change our education. It should be India pride based. It should teach local culture, local history, local heroes, pride in protecting locality. It should teach a child what is freedom. How to excise it in righteous way of protecting others right to live, protect environment, strengthen society. 

Why People Become Poor?

My son asked me this simple question recently. I answered that uneducated are poor. But I’m not convinced about that answer myself. It triggered a bit more thought.

There is enough in this world for everyone to live happily. But when we grab others livelihood they become poor. For that governance is needed to protect independence of livelihood of everyone.

People become poor because they lose their livelihood. Why they lose their livelihood? Because of two reasons: 1. Other people exploit their livelihood. 2. They don’t fight to retain their livelihood.

I had a good friend as my roommate during my college days. I used to try ending our heated argument saying, ‘ದೇವರು ನಿನ್ನ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಇಟ್ಟಿರಲಿ’ meaning ‘Let god keep you well’. He used to quip, God always keeps me well but it is you guys who make me miserable!

So the point is people only make people poor. Not the situation or god! Thats the simple truth. 

What is Livelihood?

But do all people in the world have livelihood? Yes. Human civilization developed everywhere across the globe in all continents and places. They developed indigenous way of living. They developed societies. Social life begets diverse profession making one depend upon another. For example, farmer produces grains by tilling land. For tilling the land cow, cart and tools are required. Blacksmith produces tools from metal. Miner produces metal. Herdsman grows cows. Carpenter produces cart from wood & metal. Wood cutter cuts wood. So the cycle goes on like these making professions to develop. And for each profession, unique natural resource is required. That is what their livelihood is. When they lose their livelihood they become poor.

Gandhiji famously said the world is sufficient to meet every man’s needs; But not sufficient to meet his greed.

So as the society develops through professions depending upon each other the conflicts for natural resources also arise. So to resolve conflicts, society develops rules. For governing rules, a governor is established. That is what government is.

The government should ideally balance the needs of all people of different professions and ensure livelihood is maintained for all. That is what Raja Dharma is. 

What is Poor?

This is a more fundamental question. Is poor means, one who has no money? Yes in the urban sense. Yes in the modern way of life and civilization. Money buys the people water, food, shelter, electricity, entertainment, medicine etc., which are basic survival needs. 

But in the rural parlance the money exchange is very less. They eat what they grow. Drink fresh water off streams, ponds. Their transportation is on legs or by bullock cart which are very cheap. There are several tribes which live in deep woods, atop mountains and in Andaman Islands which are untouched by modern civilization. In most cases they are even untouched by diseases and ailments. Or even if they come across diseases they have indigenous natural therapy from rich resources surrounding them. They are living happily. They are not really poor. They are rich with natural resources.

If they lose their natural resources upon which their livelihood is dependent, then they become poor. Poor means those who are deprived of food, water, shelter & security.

Are there really poor even today? Yes there are plenty. We need to look a bit on recent history then look at modern day to assess the reason behind why people are continuously becoming poor.

Why do they lose their livelihood? History:

The people lose their livelihood when people in power over exploit their natural resources depriving the people’s livelihood. Raja Dharma fails to produce security to these people & their livelihood.

In Ancient India, Raja always had a Dharma guru for advising him for social harmony. In many cases, Dharma Guru used to be of different religion than Raja. But still they followed Sarva Dharma Samanvaya. That’s how the livelihood of every profession was maintained. The conflict that arouse from over exploitation of natural resources by one profession affected another profession. And that is where Dharma preached self-control, contentment for social harmony. The self-rule was there at the village level. The Grama Swarajya was the Rama Rajya.

India was a rich country even till the Moghul period. There was independence and freedom at the grass root level. The period of over exploitation started with the British. They started governing at grass root level. They governed what farmer produced. They sanctioned farmer to produce cotton & indigo in large scale. They needed raw material for cloth industries in Manchester.

Similarly large scale mono cropping of Poppy seeds, tea, coffee, rubber was imposed. The government would procure only those. Village henchmen became their slaves and were made corrupt. Bringing in Zamindari they imposed restrictions on village independence. 

Further weavers lost their livelihood as industry produced cheap cloth got dumped on the market. Metal tool makers lost livelihood. Artisans lost their livelihood as their benefactors the Rajahs lost their kingdoms. The cycle of losing livelihood continued.

The natural need for large scale production and distribution necessitated massive transportation. It needed further iron, steel, and aluminum. For the first time India saw intruding onto the destruction of large scale mountains and forests. The tribal life was disturbed and large scale livelihood loss was ensued.

The British along with other European imperialists were on a spree during 1800s & 1900s to exploit the whole of earth. The gun point diplomacy ensured large scale amassing of wealth in arms and ammunitions. This sparked 2 world wars on large scale destruction. All the material wealth looted from India & elsewhere was drained off thus. During this time India was made to starve. Not one but 3 great famines India had to endure under the Queen’s ruling. The Plague, Bengal famine and famine across the Deccan killed more people than the world wars directly did.

The Exploitation Continues: Present day:

The era of foreign rule and foreign exploitation is ended now. But do we have self-rule? The era of foreign rule has ended, but not the exploitation. Why? Because, someone took up central ruling at India level by negotiating with the leaving foreigners and the self-rule is not transferred to the grass root level. There is no Grama Swarajya. Large scale mono cropping is still encouraged. Procurement of produce, storage, transportation and distribution is still being done by central and state governments. So the people are the mercy of the governments for basic necessities like food, clothing.

The urban clusters have become parasites on the rural environs. The metro transportation, electricity consumption, packaged food culture, bottled water, piped water, luxury & lazy life in urban culture demands very high natural resource exploitation. Tons of plastic waste produced by cities is becoming battleground in the outskirts where it is dumping ground.

Rapid and rampant migrations from rural are joining the apartments and slums in cities. The packed population has lost the sense of space. There is existential struggle in the urban space. The hygiene, water & space are necessities which have become luxury for them, making them very poor. Food somehow they do get. There is lot of wastage which gets spilled over in cities from rich to the poor.

Where Lies The Solution?

The Solution lies in governance shifting prominence from meeting urban luxury demands to rural sustenance demands. Grama Swarajya is the only solution for sustenance and poverty elevation. Yes there will be some hit on the urban living luxuries. The basic necessities like Electricity, transportation itself will become costly once the rural demands for decent living are met. So it has to be taken slowly and gradually.It will become costly but not inaccessible. 

The first and foremost is to begin protecting rural environment. For example if a River (Ganga or Thunga) is polluted, ship out the polluting factories to china or elsewhere. Or implement stringent pollution controls. Then simple products like plastic bottle, tetra pack, bulb, wire, paper, pencil will start becoming costly. Fertilizers, pesticides production will be out of the country. Consumption will become costly and will come down. Cars, bikes will become luxury only available for rich and government officials. So the reverse migration to rural for livelihood will start. The country and earth will be able to take that easily, as earth can provide plenty to man in the nature.

But we need to protect our boarders and India. Else China & Pakistan again attack and we loose our independence again. So defense equipment, nuclear technology, road, railways need to be there. The sacrifice for that will again come from rural environment. And people need to be compensated by the government. But since the human capital will be rich & independent, the government will be rich and they’ll afford to do that. Like we say in previous blogs on how Shivaji, Rana Pratap built formidable forts from the tribals and rurals. 

Pune Travelogue – April 2015

The Pune trip was filled with history and heritage. We visited several forts, read and heard great stories of the Great Maratha Shivaji Maharaj.

It was not the best of the weather. It was summer & dry, but it wasn’t too hot to dampen our spirits. The best time to visit would be the monsoon or post monsoon.

We visited the following forts:

-          Raigad fort

-          Shivaneri fort

-          Pratapgad fort

-          Sinhagad fort

There are 100 s of forts along the Sahyadri ranges, which Shivaji Maharaj captured, constructed and ruled during his reign. His forts are mostly strategically located atop some of the most dreaded hills. He built few sea forts also in islands. He probably is the first Indian ruler to envisage the importance of building Naval force & built it. He is considered as master strategist, Yugapurush, Visionary to reinstate the Hindavi Swarajya. At a time when Vijayanagara Hindu Samrajya had a spectacular fall, Mughal Shahi ruling the north, Adil Shahi, Qutub Shahi ruling the deccan, it seems Shivaji literally rose from the ashes of the Hindu dust. The story of Shivaji is one of adrenaline rushing, roller coaster ride for someone interested. You can hold full attention of the kids telling his story of raise, fall and raise.

Raigad Fort

This was the second capital of Shivaji and this is where he died his natural death when he was around 50 years age. It is about 130Kms from Pune but takes more than 3hrs to reach by car. We have to go through some of the most scenic ghats. There is a river which makes a beautiful pearl necklace turn around a hill on the way. While returning it was full moon day and it dazzled under the moonshine in the surrounding dark hills creating a beautiful contrast. I was too wonderstruck to take a photo.

The fort is built on a flat surface of about 100 acres above the top of a hill. We have to reach the top via a rope way. The other way is by about 1500 steps. The guide tells, it was a very rich capital during those days. There is a super market street in ruins where they used to trade jewelry, exotic metals, minerals, pearls. The durbar hall is very large and they have installed a sculpture of Shivaji sitting in Veerasana on the throne. We paid respects to the great ruler there. Shivaji ruled from here in his last years for about 12 years. His throne had about 1280kg of gold. The British after winning over the Maratha kingdom looted and burnt the palace. The palace is believed to have burnt for 11 days.

Why British Looted and Burnt Down the Royal Riches of the Maratha?

Even in Sinhagad we heard the same story. That the British brought down a magnificent palace there. The loot is understandable as a barbaric loot of wealth. But why burn down the palace? Was it piercing their ego? Or was it a standing symbol of Swarajya (Self Rule) which might raise Swathanthrya (freedom) consciousness amongst the masses? Did they strategically burn it down to make them feel pitiful? Why did they not do the same in Mysuru, Bengaluru or Royal Rajasthan palaces? Was it because they were friendly & accepted their superiority & paid rich tributes?

Shivaneri Durga

Shivaji was born here. Shivai Devi temple is there atop the hill after whom he believed to be named after. Jijabai, his mother played crucial role in raising the Swathanthrya, Swarajya consciousness in the young Shivaji. He grew up under able guidance of the highly experienced aged warrior called Dadaji Kondadev here. There is a bronze statue of Young Shivaji with his mother here. We pay tribute to the great mother to have given a great son to the Swarajya. Her own story of sacrifice moves ones heart with great pride in the story of Shivaji.

We visited the Junnar Caves near by the fort. The caves are typical of the buddist style. During the later years it has become a piligrim centre for Hindus as one of the Ashta Vinayakas is installed and worshipped in one of these caves. The central hall is very large about 300ft width and 200ft depth. It is very cool inside as it is carved right in the middle of large mountain.

Pratapgad Fort

This is the fort where the real valour of Shivaji was first witnessed by the world at large by how he killed Afzalkhan. When the young Shivaji became a rebel to the Bijapur kingdom, capturing many forts and declaring Swarajya in the surrounding villages of the Sahyadris, they sent their best general to quell the rebellion. The story of killing of this ferocious general gives the glimpse of Shivaji’s tenacity, tactics, patience, ultimate bravery of taking upon directly on the barbaric general. This episode established the young Shivaji as a force to reckon with in the Deccan.

This fort is very well maintained privately by the kin of Shivaji Maharaj. This is a living fort with the guides, poojars, shop keepers living inside the fort based on tourism. The fort is in the Mahabaleshwar hills. So it is an easy visit for those visiting the exotic hill station. There are beautiful view points in the hill station. The various facets of the rugged Sahyadris is breath taking and beautiful.

The fort is built by Shivaji himself in straight 2 years in this strategic place. It is a fine example of his project management acumen. All the neo jargons of management viz., person day effort, shift based round the clock work, minimum input maximum output, sustainable product with minimal maintenance are standing examples there. You got to see it to believe it. Government has gifted one magnificent bronze mounted statue of Shivaji which is installed at the top of the fort.

Sinhagad Fort

This fort is just at the outskirts of Pune. There is NDA (National Defense Academy) out here. You get past a beautiful large lake at the base of the hill and climb one of the toughest climbs even in car. The story is that of Tanaji Malasure here. He died a martyr while winning the fort in a fiercely fought battle. The story depicts the sacrifice & great valour of the Mawal warriors of the region willing to win over the swarajya & provide unstinting support for their benefactor Shivaji Maharaj.

Lokamanya Tilak bought a house at the top inside this fort & lived here for some time. I wondered what made him take this tough decision. It is a very tough climb to reach here from Pune. It is very treacherous lonely living. The British had already made this place a hell by destroying a palace and other fortifications. Tilak is understood to have used it as his summer residence and wrote Geeta Rahasya. The trip album is here: https://plus.google.com/photos/110449838432121172507/albums/6137186002538111777 Read through the comments and captions for more information

Other places of interest we visited are:

• Lonavala – Near it we visited the Lohgad Fort & Pawna Dam
• Dhom – There is a Lakshmi Narasimha temple just behind the Dhom dam. Dhom is a small quit village off Mahabaleshwar road near Wai. The serenity of the temple with little pond with ducks, Thirtha coming from Gomukha, connects us with nature. The temple history dates back to the Pandavas period. Dhaumya maharishi’s abode is there inside temple premises.
• Siddhagiri Matha Museum or Kaneri Matha at the outskirts of Kolhapur – Exceptionally well set up Grameena Jeevana in beautiful Wax tableaux. It is very good to learn the old traditions & introduce them to the kids. It has good set of figurines of ancient Rishis and their contributions to the world of science.