Celebration...!

 

Lately, on this blog I am sharing selected TedTalks about the ideas that I like, honour, and adore and have converted this blog virtually into a Vlog, it seems! As the tagline of TED goes – Ideas Worth Spreading – I am just helping take their mission ahead which TED won’t mind, I believe!

However today it’s a different idea that I am sharing, and it is needless to mention that it is very very close to my heart for all possible reasons! This is a dance performance of Maitrayee with her friend Harita and what makes it even more ‘Special’ is the occasion (Women’s Day), the subject and the message the performance conveys.

This celebration took place at Department for Empowerment of persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice - Government of India, where Maitrayee is a Consultant at Project Monitoring and Data Strategic Unit at Delhi.

Although the anchor has narrated the script of the performance, it may not be audible, clear, or understandable and as I do not want the readers to miss the context which is not just interesting but overwhelming (I broke into tears, thanks to the song they have chosen that makes it even more poignant!) and must be understood thoroughly to enjoy the act.

Here is the ‘Transcript’ of the ‘Performance!’ Read it carefully and Repsect… HER!

"Having a child with disability can make a woman’s life different from what other women experience. On a day like Women’s Day, while their friends receive wishes, cards and gifts from their children, your heart yearns for the day you hear your child say the words ‘I Love You’.

This woman, despite everyone advising her to go for abortion after knowing that the child has intellectual disability, decides to give birth to the child. Standing up to the doctor, relatives and the entire world, shaking inside and holding back her tears, she raises her precious daughter and tries her best to make her independent in life.

She gives her everything. She feels so deeply and she loves so abundantly.

Today, we want you to know that you are not alone and that we celebrate the wonderful woman that you are.

This performance is a tribute to all those strong women who are mothers, sisters and caregivers for persons with disabilities. 

Happy Women’s Day... This is for you!"

I have shared Maitrayee's Hindi poem on my Marathi Blog, read it here - गुफ्तगू

CIP...!

 

"I named our nonprofit the Collective Intelligence Project, as a nod to the ever-evolving project of building collective intelligence for collective flourishing. Since then we've done just that, building new collective intelligence models to direct artificial intelligence, to run democratic processes. And we've incorporated the voices of thousands of people into AI governance..."

 

"Here are a few of the things we've learned. First, people are willing and able to have difficult, complex conversations on nuanced topics. When we asked people about the risks of AI they were most concerned about, they didn't reach for easy answers.  Out of more than 100 risks put forward, the top-cited one: overreliance on systems we don't understand..." 

 

"It is impossible to have any one of these things progress, safety or democratic participation without the others. If we resign ourselves to only two of the three, we will end up with either centralized control or chaos. Either a few people get to decide or no one does. These are both terrible outcomes, and our work shows that there is another way. Each of our projects advanced progress, safety and democratic participation by building cutting-edge democratic AI models, by using public expertise as a way to understand diffuse risks and by imagining co-ownership models for the digital commons..."

 

"As the Indian author Arundhati Roy once said, 

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. 

On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." 

I can hear our new world breathing. 

One in which we shift the systems we have towards using the solution of democracy to build the worlds we want to see. 

The future is up to us. 

We have a world to win..."

Indeed, you said it, Divya! 

Way to go...

Bingo...!

 

"I think the first point to make is that we need to recognize natural capital.

Basically the stuff of life is natural capital, and we need to recognize and build that into our systems.

When we measure GDP as a measure of economic performance at the national level, we don't include our biggest asset at the country level.

When we measure corporate performances, we don't include our impacts on nature

and what our business costs society. That has to stop.

In fact, this was what really inspired my interest in this phase."

I can see the reflection of my thought process expressed in my article 'Why CSR won't work?' written exactly six years ago...!

Way to go...!