Background This blog is devoted to Pushpendra Singh Tiwari of Jeevika Bihar (Bihar Rural Livelihood Promotions Society), as I witnessed him anchor an institution building meet at a grassroot level in Vaishali district with a cohort of 50 women in the first week of April. Jeevika is India’s largest organization with a membership north of […]
Working with Groups: History at Northfield & Celebrating the work of Dr. Sigmund Foulkes
Introduction This is the fourth blog devoted to “working with groups” as a part of a six-blog series. Given my experience across nearly two and a half decades of group dynamics, group relations, and process consulting in the form of behavioral labs, t-groups, and change management teams, I have been exploring and tracing the genealogy […]
Race in a Global World: Leadership, Organizations and __________ : My recent experiences
Many moons ago, Dr. Patrick Jean Pierre invited me to join him on a journey to explore race relations and collective humanity, within a global and virtual group relations conference – he stated this opportunity to work on race in an email as a ‘divine intervention’, as he painstakingly persevered to build a staff comprising […]
Gender Dynamics & Bias — Fissures between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm and a EUM Perspective
Preamble I am not a very big fan of the macrocosm and microcosm analogy — a philosophical cum spiritual lens that posits a structural similarity and resonance between the microcosm, i.e., the small order or the small universe and the cosmos as a whole or the macrocosm, i.e., the great order or the great universe. […]
Working with Groups – Tracing the contours and genealogy of process work
Preamble This is the third blog of a series that I am writing on process work, encounter groups, T-groups, and L-groups, and in this blog, I seek to trace the genealogy or lineage of process work as it is experienced in Sumedhas offerings, methods, and ideologies today. This blog may excite only the oddball who […]
Why so serious?
An Inquiry into the Fragility of the Bhartiya Ego A few days ago, Mamta and I excitedly drive down to Mumbai to be a part of the Trevor Noah show. Trevor Noah is a part of the triumvirate or the troika that has brought many a smile to me over the past 8 years or […]
Pilgrimage to Punga
A micro narrative celebrating love and barakat Introduction With my father turning 84, my brother and I joined him in his annual pilgrimage to a ‘dargah’ or a shrine near the Punga village this year. While the glibly articulated reasons by us to make this trip along with Dad was ranged from ‘an anthropological enquiry’ […]
Kohrra – a Netflix Series
Exploring the world of men in love and in hate It was Stephen King that wrote – “the soil of a man’s heart of a man is stonier … (as opposed to the ‘richer garden’ in a woman’s heart). Kohrra as a detective series on Netflix, is an ode to the inner and stonier world […]
AI, Simulacra, and Joan is Awful
A friend of mine had recommended that i must watch Joan is so Awful – an episode in the Black Mirror series. My better half arm-twisted me into watching it recently. Such serendipity … I think this particular narrative of two women was disturbing at many levels. At the most surface level, it helped explain […]
Working with Groups – The Second Dilemma
Preamble Deng Xiaoping once said that managing the economy was like “Crossing the river by feeling the stones” — working with individuals and groups in process work settings, resonates with this metaphor — except that there can be multiple rivers and many of the stones get increasingly unfathomable as the journey extends across days in a behavioral […]