7 February 2013 - QA 5

Gurudev, India today has two parts, one is Rural India and the other is Urban India. How to bring a balance between these two?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Rural India has its unique qualities that needs to be preserved, and the self-esteem of the people needs to be kept intact. Usually the self-esteem of the rural people go down and they want to emulate what the urban youth do, which is not necessary at all.
You have to give them their dignity, and tell them that the way they dress, and the food they eat is all okay. They can adopt whatever healthy practices they want to.

I have been to some of the tribal areas in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, and surprisingly you will see that they keep their village absolutely clean. There is no garbage dump anywhere.
In these tribal regions, they don't have electricity, but they have kept their little villages so clean. Every home is kept so clean. You will not find gutters here and there, none of that.
It is like the forest. If you see, the forest is so clean. You will not find dead bodies in the forest, even though so many animals die. Somehow nature keeps a balance.
In the same way, the tribal people and tribal areas, where literacy is almost zero, they have that sense of protecting the environment and cleanliness, which urban people need to learn.

Of course we have many schools in these tribal areas, where more than 30,000 kids are studying. These schools are in such remote areas where you can only go by walk; there are no roads there. And these rural people have such a vibrancy in them, a certain joy which is really worth noticing.