Breakfast
This time the breakfast, was something extraordinary for us cooprades, which i have never experienced in my life before. It felt elite. I was kind of confused how to start my breakfast. Watching from others, us cooprades slowly learned from: what to eat first, to: where to wash our hands. With diversified food to take, i do not know what to eat first, and thus has resorted to usual stuff that i am familiar with. On observing my fellow cooprades, i can say for sure that all other things which i have not tried, was delicious.
Conference
From the deligt of yesterday's recognition, we entered to the day we were actually expecting. To my surprise, i have seen a lot of people, who were actually representatives of cooperatives from every part of kerala. They filled almost half of the huge conference hall. Very refreshing to see such a collective presence of democritically chosen representatives. The cooperatives almost spanned every sector of the local economy. The inaguration started with introductory speech from ILO, ICA representatives, and continued to listen to videos of several cooperative initiatives out of India, including Enspiral's Loomio. I could feel several overalapping areas of thought and philosophy between our coop and theirs. Unfortunately i could not have such a connection between local coops. May be the context which we have grown and thought might have generous previlege as in other countries. This indicates that we have more to understand the local context and how coops work in it.
We are also happy that the conference addressed the issue of juridical status for cooperatives in the changing world of work. It is crucial for us, budding cooperatives that needs as much support as possible. After the arrival of the chief guest, Labour Minister of Kerala the discussion continued with representatives of well known Japanese and Indonesia cooperative's. We felt a vaccum in deliberation about the merger between traditional cooperative practice and the modern technology oriented business models that comes with its preyful economic tactics. I personally expected atleast somebody would raise flags on that. This lighted the discussion in our coop, to find a proper solution by collaborating with ICA folks, and other researchers around Commons Based Peer Production, Venture Commune, Transvestment, etc... to see how Sci/Tech. driven cooperatives or any cooperatives that use tech. in any way would need a license that establishes virality of transparency in knowledge and technology, while at the same time stay resilient to enclosure phenomenon - a striking characteristic of global neoliberal economy.
Friending Around
If it is anybody that have actually understood the merger characteristics along with possible outcomes of combining free software/hardware with the cooperatives to bring out open cooperatives or platform cooperatives, their implications on the budding coop startups like that - its still only the Nilenso folks who did empathized our requirements, & the network effect contributing to its dynamics. Naturally our binding with them has expanded from emailship to a more philosophical and principles based alignment. Cooprade Kamal in particular was very interested in discussing about Vipasana with Steven Deobald which led us to take several snapshots of them discussing, and selfe'ing around ourselves.
Tour de Vadakara
Since our travel plans for returning to Puducherry, got messed up we have decided to travel by 2 trains, where one team hs to start earlier and the other team decided to tour Sargalaya, ULCCS, etc.. then start late by night. Kamal, Prasanna & Manimaran have started earlier, while me, Maniraj & Ragul visited ULCCS founding office, their foundation, and Sargalaya artisan village @ Vadakara - northern part of Kerala. Without further boring, i would like to illustrate the visit with the following image tour.
Warm Ending
We returned to IIM by 10:00 PM, where we have requested for a cab to the Kozhikode railway station. Even when we have not informed about our plans apriori, they are generous to offer us a ride to railway station. After having good discussion and send off with Mr. Mohit Dave, Mr. Shree Padmanabhan & Mr. Santhosh, and packing our stuff from the hostel, we 3 started from the conference venue to railway station, where we had the chance to ride with one of the directors of ULTS. We had good conversation about Sargalaya, its objective, planning; when will be the next conference be arranged.
Verge of Tragedy
After reaching the railway station, Cooprade Ragul have found that the train ticket was booked for the earlier night, with accidental understanding resulting from the earlier day tatkal booking hickups. That is all, the whole unreserved compartment situation came before my eyes. Not ready to believe it, i had asked him to check the PNR status, where it showed that the chart was prepared, while common sense saying that it is not the fact - i became convoluted and confused about the situation mentally. With hesitance both Ragul and Maniraj had enquired about the ticket, and returned with mix of sad news & smiley faces. This further increased my depression about return plan. So i had to make myself mentally prepared to travel via the general compartment. I treated this is a learning exercise and started to convince myself. Also i tried to convince the two cooprades of how it will provide us the chance to empathize the real crowded situation. I did explained about the things that will happen in the general compartment.
While the train is scheduled to arrive by 2:10 AM, i proceeded to buy the general tickets at the counter. I assumed that both of them will agree with me, and thought that we had no other options to reach Puducherry by time. But once the train arrived, i did tried to get onboard, where as both of them were awestruck on seeing its crowded nature - didn't even tried to approach the bogie. Yes, we were bulky with luggages. I got severly pissed off about the situation, and asked them to seperate my train ticket so that i could proceed with my plans. This is how we or atleast i experienced Tragedy of Commons, indicated - unempathy, distrust, fear and uncertainty. I tried to stay sane, but with burning sleeplessness, i could not even start to think about any other alternative plan. Even the "stay and start later" plan sounded very expensive. Maniraj however kept on insisting that we stay and start by morning or evening on the next day. I was worried about Ragul's regular office timings. Atlast, we even lost the general train ticket refunding time period(within 3 hours one can claim for refund), further making me go crazy. Atlast, Ragul taking control of the situation, has adviced me to go to the KSRTC bus stand and jump buses to reach Puducherry. I am very happy about the decision and we started to reach KSRTC bus stand and waited for the Coimbatore bus to arrive. Slowly one city after the other, we reached our beloved destination with much tiredness from heat wave, echoing engine sound, sweat, smell, and sleep crying eyes.
That might sound funny, but that situation did opened up myself to other cooprades and allowed me also to see them. It gave an experience where everything might not go as planned and we must be even ready to sacrifice the sanest idea ever handled and prepared for. As long as the unity exists everyone exists. Even when the decisions are dumb, sometimes it helps keep the others sane and enthusiastic and motivated. I really did felt and feel bad about my choice of words i dropped on that day, yelling right in front of their faces. I still remember their response - that had made me further depressed. What to say !! Shit happens. But i think this is what makes me feel vulnerable and in a sense, human. I dont know and cannot say whether Ragul or Maniraj had anything to learn from the situation, but i did learned a lot more than any previous experiences, on how cooperative really i am.