S5 #6 | Relearning Home & Hospitality w/ Manish Jain (Ecoversities)

On this episode, my guest is Manish Jain, a man deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems, cultural imaginations and inter-cultural dialogue. Inspired by MK Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore,  Ivan Illich, his illiterate village grandmother, his unschooled daughter, indigenous communities and Jain spiritual philosophy, he is one of the leading planetary voices for deschooling our lives and reimagining education. 

He has served for the past 25 years as Chief Beaver (ecosystems builder) of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India and is co-founder of some of the most innovative educational experiments in the world - the Swaraj University, the Jail University, Complexity University, Tribal Farmversity, the Creativity Adda, the Learning Societies Unconference, the Walkouts-Walk-on network, Udaipur as a Learning City, the Families Learning Together network, Berkana Exchange.  He co-launched the global Ecoversities Alliance with 500+ members in 50 countries.

Show Notes:

Kidnapped by the American Dream

Grandma’s University

Reclaiming our Cultural Imagination

Cultural Imagination for the Culturally Homeless

The Radical and Exponential Power of Trust

Unlearning Cultural Appropriation in the Oral Tradition

Jugard, or “playful improvisation”

Being Reclaimed by Ancestors

Swaraj University - Money, Love, and Death

Alivelihoods and Deadlihoods

Traditions of Hospitality in Rajasthan

Ecoversities

Homework:

Swaraj University Website

Ecoversities Website

Jugaad (Wikipedia)

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome, Manish, to the End of Tourism podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

Thank you, Chris. Great to be here. Great to be with you.

Speaking of here, I was wondering if you could share with our listeners where you find yourself today and maybe what the world looks like for you where you are.

Yes, I live in a very magical place called Udaipur.

It's in Rajasthan, India. I have been here for the last 25 years. Before that I was moving cities every year. I was living in the U. S. and Europe. And my village is about two hours from where I live, from the city. And I have lots of relatives here, lots of ancestors around. And this happens to be one of the major tourist destinations of India.

So it's an interesting combination of very [00:01:00] cosmopolitan kind of global jet set coming in, but also lots of traditional culture, local knowledge, still alive. We were lucky to be called backwards and underdeveloped. And so many things have remained but again under, under continuous threat by kind of urbanization and global economy.

But yeah, it's a very beautiful place, lots of palaces, lakes all kinds of animals on the street. On a good day you'll see an elephant walking down the street or a camel just in our neighborhoods and yeah, I love it here. So it's, I mean, it's found a place in my heart for sure.

Hmm. What a gift. What a gift to, to live in a place that you love and, you know, it seems to be that question at the heart of the themes of the podcast and in that regard, I wanted to begin by asking you a little bit about your journey, Manish. So[00:02:00] from what I've read, from what I've heard, a lot of your work centers around de schooling and unlearning, specifically with Swaraj University and other educational endeavors, Ecoversities being one of them.

And I'd like to return to those themes and projects in a little bit and start by asking you, among other things, about your earlier accolades as a Harvard graduate and someone with a degree from Brown Univer