Gitesh Sinha

Seems like the end of this world. The world pepped up on self-indulgent high of technological steroids, a robust global economy secure from any perceived threat, apart from pretentious climate mongers, the world in which, the humanity lived, stood unaffected for far too long. Then it all crashed. Like a make believe illusion of normal life and mythical blissfulness of existing in delicate bubble of “know all” digital age. Nothing of which really helped. All it took was a humble, benign and previously unknown mild flu to bring ceaseless enactment of macroeconomic soap opera to an abrupt halt. The world locked itself in. The whole idea of human endeavor based on collective pursuit of common goals whether business, education, sports, travel and governance, everything became irrelevant. Like proverbial Pacman it just ate into our civilized defenses of nationality, class, creed, faith, economy and medical progress. Breaking out at far off Wuhan in China...

  "That sinking feeling”- Think of a classic scenario in the life of social media manager . After numerous so-called amateurish attempts, finally you conceptualize one campaign with your max dose of creativity, that catches the fancy of your boss and instantly gets hailed as the elusive next big idea. The campaign, is declared the holy grail of outreach, branding and promotion. But the dazzling 'Big Idea' after the initial release euphoria, soon gets afflicted by identity crisis in big, bad world of social media with online traction tapering off within days .  Like the clueless captain of ill-fated Titanic, you try to revive the dashboard of the sinking media craft but to your utter horror, you find yourself floating among the wrecks of similarly glorified past digital campaigns without any sign of visible impact.Within days, from star social media manager you become the scapegoat for low ROI and illusive customer base.  ...

Last February I received an invite from a small community library in Lohit, a remote district in Arunachal Pradesh, to participate in their community book festival. I was also asked to conduct a training and help set up a sustainability knowledge centre. My initial reaction was: “Should I travel to another corner of the country for a purely outreach activity when critical sales planning and strategy presentations lay ahead of me? But when the organizer called back saying "Don't just give up on us because we are in the far North East...we are also a part of India", I changed my mind and started for Lohit. What a journey it was! I met some of the most diverse tribal  communities and experienced their warm-heartedness. Everywhere I went, children were eager to know about mainland India. I also got to travel on "Library on Wheels”, a mobile bus library run by the old but passionate and driven Uncle Musa, a local library promoter. Together we drove daily, through remot...