As a practising oncologist, both in US and India, Dr. B. S. Ajaikumar has long pondered over the umpteen ills, evils, pretences, and prejudices that plague our society at large. Even after four decades of earnest observation and deep introspection, he is the first to confess he knows so little about them, given their multifarious mutations across the globe, more so in India. He sensed the need for a stellar movement aimed at nurturing and nourishing the cocoon of our priceless individuality without getting bogged down by the societal pressures that numb our intellect and intuition. We all know casteism and social discrimination is the worst evil thrust upon us from time immemorial. Yet, we knowingly or unknowingly uphold the status quo; worse, even our silence becomes a wilful endorsement of these absurd social and political diktats.
In the search for lasting solutions, he strongly felt, it was high time activism became magnanimously philanthropic, not merely charitable. Thus was born Antardhwani, the proverbial and powerful inner voice of people, a call for conscious change, a potent and purposeful platform to probe beneath the venerated fabric of our culture and conventions, as also orchestrate a solution-centric collaboration of like-minded activists from different walks of life to work towards institutionalizing social equality and economic prosperity in India. The goal may have been overwhelming, but he set about the mission with inimitable grit and gumption, with the robust support of two selfless activists of a notably eventful journalistic background.
The Antardhwani story is incomplete without an elaboration of its genesis, which can be best appreciated in the freewheeling words of the two co-founders Seethalakshmi S and Rahul Nandan.
Seethalakshmi S
“As he walked to his car, he turned, raised his thumb, and exclaimed, ‘Think Tank!’ I responded, ‘Yes, on board with you.”
The year was 2017. I was in the midst of yet another busy newsroom day when I got a call from Dr Ajai. “Seethalakshmi, can we catch up for coffee tomorrow? ', he asked in his inimitably polite voice. He was attending a press meet on MG Road, close to my The Times of India office. The reporter in me jumped at the invitation of meeting one of the best oncologists in India, having set up a chain of cancer hospitals in India and abroad. “Yes Dr Ajai,” I said instantly, praying no major news breaks would happen the next day, which would have made it difficult for me to step out. Fortunately, the next day was peaceful. After wrapping my morning news meet, and readying the day’s news list, I headed for the Cafe Coffee Day on MG Road. I had earlier interviewed Dr Ajai for the phenomenal CyberKnife treatment he brought to India as also following any breakthrough surgeries at his hospital. However, those were pure business meetings for both of us. This coffee rendezvous was different. Well known for his punctuality, he was at the coffee shop ahead of the slated time. I greeted him and as we settled with a cappuccino, he leaned back and said: “You know Seethalakshmi, I am bored… I want to do something more. As an oncologist, I have seen the ills in society, and I feel helpless that we as citizens do nothing about it. I want to set up a think tank.''
My first reaction was that of shock and bewilderment. An accomplished doctor owning a chain of hospitals is bored and wants to do more… after doing yeomen service in cancer care for over four decades. But what changed the entire conversation was a strong inclination lurking inside me since a few years. That I must change my career path. And Dr Ajai was the first person I confided in. I blurted: “I am bored too doctor. Often, I feel that a media job is powerful, yet it is at times mindless. Day after day, we chase deadlines and bring out a newspaper. But barely anything changes on the ground. As a city editor, I feel helpless too. Even I want to be an integral part of some change. Can I join you?”
There was epic silence for a few moments which seemed like ages to me. Finally, Dr Ajai burst into his emblematic laughter. “Are you sure you are bored? I cannot believe this. You are in a good position in India's number one newspaper. Why would you leave all of that and join a cancer hospital? I insisted that I will build something for him which will at least attempt to realise his vision. The next 30 minutes, Dr Ajai and I talked about the sheer helplessness amongst citizens, the need to start demanding accountability, how a tiny percentage of people in India pay taxes and the big sharks get away. As he walked to his car, he turned, raised his thumb and exclaimed, “Think Tank!” I responded, “Yes, on board with you.”
Dr Ajai then left for the US but regularly kept in touch. At this point, I told him it is not just me, a colleague from The Times of India Delhi, Rahul Nandan, is also keen to embark on this journey. That CCD meet with Dr Ajai was followed by one more, and it was sealed. The time had come to give up what I had done all my life with absolute passion. I loved my job and was happy every single day for sixteen years. I joined TOI as a trainee journalist and rose to become a city editor, won awards and fellowships for excellence in journalism, and wrote over 4,000 news articles. I told myself: Now I must start work in a different sector where I have no experience. The inner voice in me (we named the think tank Antardhwani later) told me I must take the plunge. I signed the offer letter. And that was the boldest thing I had done in many years. With no regrets of course!
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Rahul Nandan
“I found Dr Ajai extremely passionate about his thoughts and crystal clear about how he wanted to pursue them.”
My thoughts on different aspects of life and work were largely shaped by my formal initiation in journalism in the coveted Indian Institute of Mass Communication, as also in different editorial capacities in national newspapers in Delhi and Bengaluru including The Statesman, The Indian Express and The Times of India. They gradually prepared me for what I am doing now.
I feel the daily stream of news in the newsroom and the way they are handled with considerable degree of detachment was making me numb to the things happening around. Making sense of something that has happened far from where you are is what an editor does day in day out, with little room to actually relate to the people or the epicentre of action. It often left me with an urge to find a way that will aid establish a closer connection with my subjects.
After a decade of a flourishing stint in Delhi, mostly in The Times of India where I was an editor with the paper’s special projects team, I moved to Bangalore in 2016 albeit in the same organization, in a similar role. Seetha was among my earliest acquaintances. We shared a deep desire to do something more meaningful and relevant at the grassroots level, using our years of learnings as journalists. When Dr Ajai expressed his wish to do something similar, as Seetha has already enumerated, things started to fall in place in quick succession.
In my first meeting itself I found Dr Ajai extremely passionate about his thoughts and crystal clear about how he wanted to pursue them. His ideas seamlessly amalgamated with ours. Six months later, Antardhwani – The Inner Voice was born on June 8, 2018 as a think tank focused on prevailing issues in healthcare, education, livelihood, and governance.
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Antardhwani: Key Milestones
Helping Tobacco Farmers Grow Alternative Crops
· Dr Ajai’s single-minded focus on curbing tobacco use in India led Antardhwani to study, explore and set a model for reducing tobacco cultivation by helping farmers grow financially and ethically viable alternative crops. As its flagship intervention, Antardhwani launched the country’s first-of-its-kind alternative farming project in Karnataka’s Mysuru district, the state’s tobacco growing hub. The project involves 50 tobacco farmers who grow sandalwood besides other seasonal fruits in 1 acre of their respective agricultural land, putting the project size to a total of 50 acres in the first phase. More than 15,000 high grade saplings of sandalwood and over 8,000 saplings of lucrative seasonal fruits have been supplied to the farmers free of cost under the project.
· Antardhwani is working with agronomists, ecologists, medical practitioners, and other relevant experts to guide decision-making at every step of the process. Willing to switch, tobacco growers in Karnataka have been unable to do so in the absence of an economically viable alternative plan. There has long been the need to identify crops which can be grown instead of tobacco in regions of different climatic and soil conditions, assure market guarantee of the produce, at the same time sensitize the farmers about the ill effects of growing tobacco on health and environment (deforestation) - a fact they are largely unaware of.
· Antardhwani is also documenting the entire stages of the transformation of our tobacco farmers from planting, harvesting, and selling the produce. “Butting Out Tobacco” a documentary film that will showcase the entire lifecycle of a cigarette – from grower to consumer – is also under production. The initiative has since garnered support from other tobacco farmers in the region and is considered as a unique success model in preventing tobacco growing and use.
Education Cess Accountability
Antardhwani has urged the government to take corrective action regarding the non-utilization of Secondary & Higher Education Cess worth thousands of crores for a decade after being introduced. Through a public interest litigation, it seeks fixing of accountability and liability for non-allocation of the cess money collected from every citizen of this country when it could have been used for improving the learning levels and quality teaching in classrooms, recruiting more teachers to improve the pupil-teacher ratio, and paying more to teachers, and largely improving and putting in place the right infrastructure, especially in rural areas.
Antardhwani Conversations
Antardhwani Conversations is a unique platform that aims to bring together experts from diverse backgrounds to share their thoughts and opinions on contemporary issues and create effective discourse around them. The purpose is to have a meaningful conversation to figure out how each one having distinct understanding and opinion perceives a particular issue or a situation, most importantly learn from each other’s experiences. The inaugural edition of Antardhwani Conversations in March 2020 had meaningful deliberation on global poverty and its possible solutions. Antardhwani Conversations has since become an extremely admired and successful model of conversations on diverse topical issues. The next three editions have touched issues including Evolution of Democracy in India and the World; Voice of the Vote; and Making Tax Less Taxing and More Paying.
Voice of the Vote Campaign
Changing the way people vote is a colossal and formidable challenge in India, a country where the majority of voters hail from rural and remote areas and hence are largely uneducated and ignorant. Initiating and fostering a purposeful discourse with them about Voting the right way calls for a painstakingly focused and sustained approach. Antardhwani has initiated focused rural campaigns to sensitize rural voters on why caste, creed, religion, momentary gains, and freebies should not be the basis of their invaluable votes. Persuasive and persistent effort is required to help them internalize the fact that citizen votes must be necessarily cast based on key issues towards electing genuine candidates with clean records and clear conscience, rather than placing faith in people with shady pasts and suspect motives for five long years, only to lament in hindsight.
It is time to shift focus on the women of rural India to make them the vehicles of community-wide change. It is important to identify competent and conscientious women leaders from among rural households and make them aware about political accountability, as also their voting rights and responsibilities. An informed and transformed woman can change the perception of the entire family, as also the community. A growing talent pool of rural women leaders will also pave the way for more women candidates contesting polls going forward.
India has around 6.5 lakh villages and about 2,50,000 gram panchayats, so it becomes imperative to focus on them to bring any political and democratic reform in real sense. A serious effort to document the voting pattern, issues and candidates in panchayat elections will go a long way in bringing positive behavioural changes in rural voters, which will eventually influence the voting pattern of the districts, states, and the entire country. We need to follow the 'rural to urban' model for a widespread impact.
Antardhwani Papers
The first paper of its research-based paper series called Antardhwani Papers – The Roadmap to Universal Healthcare in India – has six chapters that deals with various facets of the state of healthcare in India, the need for universal healthcare coverage, imminent reforms in medical education, public-private partnership in healthcare, leadership protocol of Covid times and Covid-19 in perspective. The chapters written by experts from diverse fields examine the issues in India’s healthcare logically and suggest practical reforms.
The paper also carried heartfelt experiences and learnings of Covid survivors including a doctor, a journalist and acclaimed woman business leader Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon Chairperson).
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Antardhwani - The Way Forward
Antardhwani is committed to government accountability and transparency. Whether it is involving taxpayers in decision making, empowering citizens to proactively demand what they deserve, strengthening India’s tax administration, creating a single credible source of all tax-related law and data or enhancing disclosure standards of the government, Antardhwani will focus in the coming years on these fronts and work to ensure citizen centric results.
Endgame Tobacco: Vision of Complete Eradication of Tobacco in India by 2050. Taking the fight against tobacco from control and prevention to absolute eradication, Antardhwani will investigate all aspects of tobacco, from cultivation, production to consumption and prepare a Vision Document for Eradication of Tobacco from India in the next 25 years. An authoritative research-based document will be a guiding light for the government and the courts for tobacco-related decision making.
Antardhwani will bring doctors and healthcare practitioners across India as a single collective voice against tobacco, for the first time ever.
Antardhwani is also working at different levels to make a panchayat in Periyapatna (Mysore) tobacco free by next year.
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When the celebrated Santoor maestro Pandit Shivkumar Sharma was asked about his profound creation – a deeply contemplative raga he christened Antardhwani – he gave a very intuitive elaboration. He said, “During a practice session at home, I was changing the jodi from one raga to other raga when I found that a few notes when repeated took me inward. So, I decided to call it Antardhwani. Dr. Ajaikumar and his two comrades have done something similar, shifting from one thought to another, and innately tuning into a reverberating call for conscious change, which they named Antardhwani. They couldn’t have found a more apt Sanskrit name: a Visarg sandhi that makes the prefix अन्तर् meet the noun ध्वनि at a transformative junction. It implies ‘inner voice’ in English, but it represents something more profound than what the English connotations can convey.
Visit Antardhwani at https://antardhwani-theinnervoice.org/
