28 Jun The Flow Research Network (FRN)
Rajendra Singh goes to a community in a desert state of India. He wants to help alleviate their poverty by providing medicine but is told the real problem is lack of water. All that the promises of modern technology can provide is the emptiness of water pipes. Rajendra then talks to an elder of the village who tells him of the age old wisdom of how water is harvested. He starts digging and soon has the whole village digging along with him. Following the elder’s advice, the community places strategic interventions or water storage devices called johads along the dry river course. Over several years the water collects in the small dams and the river regenerates. Communities prosper. Migrants, animals and agriculture return to prosperity.
Nothing has changed. No multi-million project has taken place. No new technology has been invented. Simply the flow of water, of community, of life has taken the place of aridness.
The flow that one can witness on the pages of this website has a source other than money or technology. Flow is something we recognise as happening before we have fragmented the world into parts we understand. When we feel ourselves to be in the flow of life, it is feeling that we and our actions are right, and this becomes the source of our doing in connection with others. When, on the contrary we feel out of the flow of life, we feel disconnected, alienated and alone; we shout our actions to draw attention to ourselves, most often at odds with other people’s strivings.
Flow is elementary. When flow is there, the community is connected. Or as in the story of Rajendra, when the community is connected, flow re-appears.
I recently spoke with a potential collaborator of approaching a community with a project around water issues. After several weeks, they came back with a whole plan of what should be done, who was to be involved in the project, the timeline of various educational activities etc. At this point I asked what about flow? ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘there is no time or place for that yet’! In our modern high-speed sophisticated way of life, is there room to connect with what we all recognise at its source – flow?
Flow touches all our lives. It works at the small scale and the large scale. It touches all of life’s journeys – human and otherwise. Above all, it originates in the core of the spiritual principles that order life in the universe.
The Flow Research Network (FRN) is being started with the main objective of reviving the flow between Health, Economy and Nature. How can we bridge the current contradiction between man- made economy and natural economy?
Universally: The flow of life on the earth emerged from the overall evolutionary flow of the Universe. The damage caused by humanity to this dynamic balance of the cycles of nature, is a damage caused to the integrated flow of life on our planet.
In the current world situation our environment is increasingly threatened by short-sighted human initiatives which have damaged these cycles of nature. At some point, we have all felt a need to individually and collectively action revival measures.
Regionally: Today, in response, a huge number of eco-revival initiatives have emerged. Each such initiative seeks to research, to understand and to comprehensively restore the original health and harmony of that which constitutes the flow of our life. Rajendra’s work in Rajasthan with TBS is one such example where to date 7 rivers have been restored and are flowing perennially.
Whatever the field you work in, the Flow Research Network wants to hear from you. FRN is facilitating a mutually-empowering exchange of knowledge, talent, experience, technology, innovation, project-effectiveness, social engineering strategies and networking. It is a platform – a place to meet and exchange knowledge and information and strategies – how to being the flow back to all our lives.
It also seeks to facilitate a successful field-application of the TBS Rajasthan model in more and more river basins in India and the world.
If you have any questions, or would like to send us your research papers, project ideas, project reports or express an interest in working together, please contact:
MINNI JAIN
Trustee, Earthlinks UK
International Outreach Director –Tarun Bharat Sangh, India
Mobile: 0044-7910201155
Email: minni@earthlinksall.com
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