If you have ever wondered why India - the chaotic, the ancient, the multi-lingual, the multi-ethnic and the multi-religious instead of performing like an old, tired and depressed land, behaves both like a young effervescent woman and a wise old lady who has charmed the world and fascinated her children, well, then read, Good News India.  The answer is in this book, with a deceptively simple title, that narrates stories of ordinary Indians with extraordinary will and determination.

The questions that drove the author to search for and collate the stories were simply these: If India was as terrible as the media made it out to be, how has it endured these thousands of years? Who are the people who infuse this ancient land with new life generation after generation?  Who are they and what good work are they doing? What or who made them dedicate themselves to their work?
To answer the questions DV Sridharan started on a journey beyond the India that is paved with ‘pukka’ roads, into roads with no names to meet the people who worked against all odds, both for inner and outer development.  The endeavor brought Sridharan in contact with people who do not equate knowledge with diplomas and degrees, but carry on the baton of generational knowledge systems even as they experiment and innovate.

A decade or so later, these good news stories appear to have been the inspiration behind the motivational program on Doordarshan which sports the title GoodNewsIndia without so much as an acknowledgment to Sridharan pioneering that genre of news. 

Sridharan has shared in his interviews that the book’s title was a reaction to the slogan used by missionaries about ‘Good News’ being in the Bible.  So, what is ‘Good News India’s claim? That it is India that is good news for the world. That India’s spirit is well and alive in the remotest corners of its heartland.  Unseen by the world this India is sustained by spirituality, dedication and devotion.  But above all, a sense of purpose.

Good News India is a selection of stories of human aspirations and triumphs, from the website of the same name¹. Between 2000-2006 when internet was an infant, this site gathered stories of Indians who despite living in remote parts, towns that we had never heard of, were doing ground breaking work, for only one reason, ‘that they felt connected to Ma Bharti through their svadharma. 

Reading the book ² I wondered if this book could be used to give a new definition to the concept of development? Neither as a top-down approach, nor reliant on advanced technology, but as a lived experience in ways that are both ancient and contemporary, in the manner of juggad (adhoc solutions) and long-standing, time-tested methodologies.  In one of this interviews the author mentions being inspired by Ivan Illich’s concept of convivial tools, which unlike industrial tools, facilitate relatedness among people and with their environment.  That kind of a development would neither fear new ideas nor reject the old ones, but instead search for the optimum ways to maximise the resources in the present.

Sridharan focused on the means and end-goal of the people he was writing about; it can be summed up as self-reliance.  He decided that the website goodnewsindia.com stories would be published only after verification of facts (an evaporating journalistic ethic in the age of Social Media with instant and floating news), publish contact information wherever relevant, including driving directions to places he was writing about (to mobilize and empower readers), accept no sponsorships (self-reliance), fund the entire site and related research from his own purse, which meant he worked alone.

The book reads like a memoir that it is, but with a deep insight into a people that otherwise would only rarely appear in mainstream magazines. Sridharan  infuses the people that you and I know as the Bhils and the Rabaris, the unnamed tea sellers, and the unsolicited tour-guides, with humanity that is the life of India herself. Written in a lyrical prose that fuses old-time English with a desire to see the Indian in India, the book takes us to less seen rural India through images that each is a painting of active life of nameless Indians.

“The women were very far from home.  One never realizes how lives and livelihoods are inventively put together in India.  It is never obvious from the cities and is no clearer when seen at close quarters.  Nomads, migrants, adventurers, hopers and micro-entrepreneurs are forever crisscrossing this vast land, fueling the economy.  India is a huge engine stoked by little known people.”

Did someone say that the author, an engineer and a former seaman, is a first-time author? Don’t believe it.  Sridharan, who has an active presence both on twitter (@strawInTheWind) and Facebook has written for online portals such IndiaFacts.com³.  In his own words, he did his formative schooling in vernacular and came to English only as a teenager.  The book, so beautifully written, is well-needed proof that a deep connection to the mother-land is forged through mother-tongue which combines both language and culture.  The reader can sense that the author ‘feels in Indian’ even though he expresses in impeccable English.

The best outcome of collating Good News India was that it led the author to embark on the same journey that the people he was writing about.  He found his svadharma, connected with land of his childhood and backed by his life as an engineer and a desire to make his own good news, he bought a parcel of derelict land and began work to turn it into a habitat for all life forms⁴.

Good News India works as a motivation manual, as one story after another urges us to look for our own svadharma.  Other than buying the book, and sharing with others, the real way you and I can continue with the work of Good News India to simply ask ourselves, “How can be we be another story in DV Sridharan’s book?’

The book is available on amazon.com and will make an excellent gift both for dreamy young adults and cynical oldies who are sure to find a few stories to move them out of their despondency and look at India, as the Good News that it is!! 

1.     http://goodnewsindia.com/

2.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhCBjrCWoEQ

3.     https://www.indiafacts.org.in/author/sridharan-dv/

4.     https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/a-sailor-turned-environmentalist-who-dispels-gloom-and-spurs-action-9f1ea68648fb

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