Karma Yoga Exam

-Kishan Prasad

FT204047

Ans1: Sustainable development goals are measures adopted by member nations of the United Nations
to attain peace and and prosperity for the people of the planet now as well as in the future. Essentially,
there are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which are an urgent call for action by all countries in a
global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand
with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all
while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

Out of these 17, the ones that were prominent in the village were:

 Poverty: Poverty wasn’t as wide spread in the village as the members of the village were able to
sustain their daily utilitarian activities without any issues. They don’t have a surplus of money
but they don’t have a money deficit as well.
 Zero hunger: Hunger wasn’t an issue as the people in the village were able to feed themselves
thrice a day.
 Good health and well-being: Health is something that is of a major concern in the villages we
visited as they were unaware of the issues that they had and had no knowledge about such
issues.
 Quality education: The members of the village were smart, there is no doubt about that, but the
conditions of the school could be better.
 Gender equality: There is a lot of scope for this in villages in India in general. There are self help
groups established but they too don’t run efficiently. A good point to note is that we came
across girls who attend school/college.

Ans2: Karma Yoga helps us grow through experiential learning by helping us think critically and
analytically to solve a problem with the limited resources present in our surroundings. This experience
produces demonstrable mindset changes that keeps us grounded and doesn’t let us forget our roots no
matter what heights we reach in life. We will always remember that there are places such as these
villages present as well. Experiential learning enables personalized learning. It allows us to explore a side
of ourselves that we didn’t know existed. This program threw light on how we can become contributing
members of society and that differences don’t need to be made on a large scale for self-satisfaction.
What we may think is a minute change in someone’s life, may in reality, be a massive change in theirs.

Transformational leadership is acquired by motivating, encouraging and and inspiring people around
you. This is something that the Karma Yoga program is highly dependent on. We visited villages that
weren’t that well equipped with knowledge about the outside world. We as leaders tried our best to
make a difference in their lives and motivate them to do better in social and physical aspects of life. We
needed to conduct ourselves carefully.
Ans3: The three takeaways are:

 Language is no longer a barrier: While interacting with the members of the village, at first, this
seemed like a huge task because of the language barrier. But gradually that went away and
there was a different connection that was formed between the villagers and us.
 Persuasion and persistence: At first when the villagers didn’t trust us, it was a bit demoralizing
but we were headstrong and wanted to mingle with them so that they understood that we were
there to make their lives better. Sometimes when we hit a dead end on what else could be done
to help them out, we didn’t give up but rose up and tried to come up with solutions.
 Strength lies in team work: If your team is willing and positive, like mine was, we help each
other grow and motivate each other. Its not possible for everyone to be at their 100% at all the
time but if there are a few that are, they motivate everyone else to not quit and work to
complete the task at hand.