CHAPTER SEVEN

Care for Those in Need

“My friends, come help….A woman froze to death tonight at 3:00 A.M., on the pavement of Sebastopol Boulevard, clutching the eviction notice which the day before had made her homeless….Each night, more than two thousand endure the cold, without food, without bread, more than one almost naked.

“Hear me; in the last three hours, two aid centers have been created….They are already overflowing, we must open them everywhere. Tonight, in every town in France, in every quarter of Paris, we must hang out placards under a light in the dark, at the door of places where there are blankets, bunks, soup, where one may read, under the title ‘Fraternal Aid Center,’ these simple words: ‘If you suffer, whoever you are, enter, eat, sleep, recover hope, here you are loved.’ ”

This heartfelt appeal came during the harsh French winter of 1954, airing on Radio Luxembourg, a radio station heard throughout much of France.

The voice on the radio—and author of the same statement reprinted in the country’s largest newspaper—was Abbé Pierre, a priest and activist for the homeless in France, once prominent as a Resistance fighter during World War II.

The response was overwhelming nationwide, with hundreds of millions of francs being donated as well as mountains of blankets and supplies. Abbé Pierre immediately founded the Emmaus houses for the homeless.

They were supported in part by a vineyard the project had been given, which the Dalai Lama was to visit years later. The abbé particularly impressed the Dalai Lama: “He was wonderful, a great friend of mine.”

Likewise, when it comes to putting love and compassion into practice, it’s no surprise that Mother Teresa immediately comes to the Dalai Lama’s mind. He met her briefly, and after she passed away he visited her successor, Sister Nirmala, at the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. There he was moved by the dedication of the sisters in aiding the sick and poor, with no thought for themselves; they were vibrant examples of the Christian ideal.

He admires such faith-based groups that, for instance, go to live in remote rural areas in places like India and Africa, sacrificing comfort to improve the health and well-being of people in dire need, by setting up schools and clinics. Such missions are “wonderful,” he told me, “a community serving God’s creation.”

But, he added, it’s all the better when the groups’ goals are simply to relieve suffering rather than to serve an agenda of conversion. Fewer such hidden agendas, if any, go with the service to the world’s poor of countless NGOs (“non-governmental organizations”), which pursue a wide range of goals for social betterment. They serve at the front lines in a worldwide force for good.

There’s a Tibetan phrase for such compassion in action: men la lhakpar tsewa. It translates as “being specially concerned for the underprivileged,” defending the defenseless, helping those who are in poverty, disabled, diseased, or otherwise need care.

“Mentally,” the Dalai Lama told me, “sometimes rich people just look down at people in need and maybe give them something. But there’s no genuine respect in that. These are the same human beings, with the same abilities. We all have the same potential but not the same opportunities,” he added, noting that progress here depends on how society changes.

That brought to my mind a set of worldwide data on IQ analyzed by psychologist James Flynn. He found that in nations with a privileged and underprivileged group, the better-off children had a large IQ advantage.

But when the poor children got better nutrition and education free from discrimination against their group—for instance, if their family immigrated to another country—that IQ disparity vanished in a single generation.

Both the advantaged and disadvantaged groups in society have a responsibility to work toward change, the Dalai Lama says. Those better off should, first, become attuned to what’s needed to help the downtrodden and then offer resources to help with education, job training, and the like. The aim is “to help them stand on their own feet.”

Those in need, for their part, can take responsibility by helping themselves. “No matter your difficulties,” he advises, “don’t feel you are hopeless or helpless. You have the same right as anyone to a happier life.”

With these efforts, he says, “Circumstances can change for the better.”

If we adopt the attitude of the oneness of all people, we naturally see that “we all have an equal right to become a happy person.” We can’t just dismiss the plight of the needy with pity, saying, “Oh, you are unfortunate,” and doing nothing to help.

“When you translate compassion into action,” the Dalai Lama told a group of college students involved in service projects, “you need sincere motivation—and also some insight into the dynamics that created the problem. Look at the root causes,” for instance of the rich-poor income gap. And, he added, you need both clear vision and compassion.

For those who believe in God, he says, “In the eyes of God, all seven billion human beings are equal: the same nature, same right to happiness, same desires. So serving humanity, particularly poor people, is the best way to serve God.”

For those with no religious belief, he takes another approach: “We are social animals, and even animals sometimes practice generosity—share their food and care for each other—even simply licking. If you are happy and have plenty of food but your neighbor is having difficulties, it’s completely natural to be generous.

“So in whatever way, we must help and serve needy people; we should develop generosity.”

Helping People Help Themselves

Walk the dusty streets of India long enough and eventually you are likely to come across a leper huddled by the side of the road, a tin bowl for coins on the ground nearby. The leper’s body may be missing fingers, toes, even limbs—a sad consequence of the disease’s progression as it numbs nerves.

The Dalai Lama has often donated to facilities for people with leprosy. One that has particularly inspired him is the Anandwan community, founded by his friend Baba Amte, who in his younger days had devoted himself to Gandhi. Baba Amte believed that what lepers needed was not charity but dignified work.

Baba Amte himself suffered from a debilitating progressive spinal degeneration, which left him bedridden most of the time, yet he actively led despite his suffering. Baba Amte made a vivid impression on the Dalai Lama, who visited an Anandwan community in western India—a village of homes, workshops, schools, and a hospital, with verdant gardens on what had been barren earth, built entirely by people with leprosy or other handicaps.

As the Dalai Lama recalls, he sat on Baba Amte’s bed, holding his hand. “I told him that whereas my compassion is just so much talk, his shone through in everything he did. Here was someone who was a living example of compassion in action, an inspiration to us all.”

Anandwan today cares for more than two thousand leprosy victims and more than a hundred of their children, another several hundred blind or deaf-mute children, plus orphans and those born to unwed mothers.

Prevailing social norms would have treated these denizens of Anandwan as outcastes or pariahs, relegating them to begging on the mean streets. But not Baba Amte, who lived among them in the community he built.

“When I visited there,” the Dalai Lama says, “everyone was full of self-respect and dignity, everyone equal. They all had jobs, a livelihood. When they became old and retired, they were still looked after. They were handicapped but full of spirit. I was really very much impressed.”

Baba Amte put it bluntly: “Charity destroys, work builds.”

The residents of Anandwan support themselves by making products ranging from carpets, school notebooks, and greeting cards from recycled paper, to metal bed frames, crutches, and special protective footwear for those with leprosy.

Though Baba Amte passed away in 2008, his two sons, both physicians, carry on his work. At last report, Anandwan—and two sister communities—employed over five thousand residents.

“Their mental attitude makes a big difference,” the Dalai Lama recalls from his visit to Anandwan. “Their work gives them self-confidence and self-respect, so they are full of enthusiasm.”

When it comes to helping those in need, the Dalai Lama—like Baba Amte—emphasizes people helping themselves. Here, attitude is crucial. “Sometimes poor people feel they cannot do much to help themselves.”

But, he adds, it’s the root causes of their difficulties that need to change. They have the same potential as anyone else. But they need to believe in their own ability and to make an effort. Then, given the same opportunities, they can be equal.

He told me how some hard-liner Chinese Communist officials had spread propaganda saying that the Tibetan brain was “inferior,” and he said that some Tibetans had adopted that self-defeating view of themselves. But when given the same schooling and chances in life, Tibetans did as well as anyone else—and that convinced many Tibetans that they were not inferior after all.

He had used this example with a post-apartheid resident of a shantytown in Soweto, whose home he was visiting. The man told him that African brains were inferior and so Africans could not be as intelligent as whites.

The Dalai Lama was shocked and saddened by this. “I argued that this is totally wrong. If you ask scientists if there are any brain differences due to color, they would definitely say no. The real point is equality. Now that you have the opportunity, you must work hard. You can be equal in every way.”

The Dalai Lama argued energetically to convince the man that Africa had great potential and that long colonial rule had created a lack of self-confidence in Africans, which could be overcome—as with the Tibetans—with social equality, opportunity, and education.

After a lot of argument, the man sighed and in a low voice said, “Now I’m convinced: We’re the same. I believe we are equal.”

“I felt a tremendous relief,” the Dalai Lama recalls. “At least one person’s way of thinking had changed.”

Self-Mastery

Of course those who have wealth—like those in developed countries seeking to help impoverished areas like rural India or Africa—should help with “education, training, and equipment,” the Dalai Lama says. But, he adds, that’s just half the answer: The downtrodden also must help themselves. Any group that finds itself economically disadvantaged or discriminated against needs to fight against defeatist attitudes, he contends, and find the grit to attain a better life.

“The only way to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor,” whether in Africa, America, or anywhere else, he says, is not through complaining and anger, frustration and violence, but rather through “developing self-confidence, hard work, and education.”

Take Mellody Hobson, the youngest of six children (the oldest is more than twenty years her senior) born to a single black mother in Chicago. Hobson met her father only twice. And money was always an issue in their household.

Recalling what it was like to grow up without a stable and consistent income, Hobson says, “There was this overwhelming sense of financial insecurity. There were times when we were evicted from our apartment and we would move all of our furniture and belongings into an older sibling’s studio apartment. And for a time, we would live there with four or five people.

“This kind of financial insecurity meant we were not surprised when our car was repossessed. It meant that sometimes when we would buy food at the grocery store, our insufficient-funds checks would be posted at the checkout counter, as a warning to the cashier not to accept checks from us. It meant many occasions when my mother would borrow five dollars’ worth of gas from the station owner to get me to school.”

Though they never lived in a homeless shelter or slept in their car, the lack of real security was haunting.

Still, her mother was both ambitious and industrious, buying dilapidated buildings cheaply and then fixing them. Hobson credits her mother with instilling a “can-do” spirit, telling her she could achieve whatever she desired if she worked hard.

“She always told me, ‘You can be anything,’ ” Hobson remembers.

The uncertainty and chaotic living drove Hobson, who by age five was telling her mother that she was never going to be poor.

“I would just look at my circumstances and say, this is never going to happen to me. I hated it.” She was, as she tells it, “obsessed,” fanatically studying for hours, locking herself in the bathroom and sitting on the floor while running water to drown out the household noise so she could focus on her schoolwork. She was always among the top students in her class.

Hobson attended the Ogden Elementary School, one of the top public schools in Chicago, located in an upscale neighborhood. But since her mother couldn’t really afford the rents in that neighborhood, she recalls, “I experienced a lot of moving—we got evicted a lot, a lot. It wore on me—especially since I worked so hard to hide it from my friends and others.”

The Ogden School, one of the first in the United States to offer the high academic standards of the International Baccalaureate program, was one stable element in a chaotic life. “School was everything to me at that point—everything. It provided all the order and structure that I craved, and it was dependable. I always went to the same school, even if I didn’t always go to the same home,” Hobson told me.

Industrious like her mother, Hobson from early on had a concentration and drive that let her study for hours and even today rules her routine: up at 4:00 A.M. for an intense physical workout—running, swimming, or spinning—and ready to start the day’s work at 6:00 A.M.

“I’ve always been very disciplined,” says Hobson, “but that discipline comes out of a bit of paranoia, I think. I always had the sense that I needed to be so in order to get ahead.”

That resolve made Hobson highly independent in getting what other children at the Ogden School took for granted. If she wanted to go to a birthday party, she would have to figure out how to buy a present and get there and back on her own, because her mother was often working.

Because most kids at Ogden were very well-to-do, Hobson “knew what the other side looked like and I wanted it.”

From Ogden, a public school, Hobson went on to a Catholic college-prep school, on a partial scholarship. She remembers being called out of class one day and told not to come back until her mom could pay the tuition. “I was apoplectic,” Hobson recalls. “I had to miss school for a few days until my mother could raise the few hundred dollars.”

Hobson went to Princeton University with a combination of loans and scholarships. There her senior thesis at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs was on South African children living under apartheid. Their struggles deeply moved her and put her own life and challenges in perspective. Their parents worked far away, in the cities or in coal mines, and these children were really on their own. Many became highly politicized, creating part of the political will that eventually brought down the system of apartheid.

From Princeton, Hobson went to work at Ariel Investments, where she has worked ever since—likely making her a rarity among the 1,100 other graduates in her Princeton class. “That would make sense to you if you understood my craving for stability,” she notes. “I lived in my first apartment for four years and my second for fourteen, though both were really, really tiny. Financially, I could have moved long before I did, but I wouldn’t, because I hate moving.”

Starting at Ariel in client service and marketing, she rose rapidly through the ranks. When she was just thirty-one she became president, the job she still holds. In addition, she serves on several corporate boards, including Starbucks and Estée Lauder, and is chair of DreamWorks Animation SKG.

“Oh, wonderful!” the Dalai Lama said on hearing Mellody Hobson’s story.

He liked it even more when I added that she had worked with or helped to establish programs for public-school kids in Chicago, designed to help children lacking in financial resources get the education and confidence that would put their lives on a positive arc.

After School Matters offers twenty-two thousand inner-city teens a rich range of choices, from lessons with members of the Lyric Opera of Chicago or the Joffrey Ballet to classes in rebuilding computers, making robots, animation, fine arts, hip-hop—about one thousand such programs. In the summer, After School Matters provides jobs to eight thousand teenagers and is the largest employer of teens in Chicago.

More than 95 percent of the high schoolers are minority, and most live below the poverty line. “We provide teens with opportunities that will enrich their lives and give them the foundation for a successful life,” says Hobson, who chairs the organization.

The Ariel Community Academy, a public school sponsored by Hobson’s company, sits in what was once one of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods, one that is only now gentrifying; 98 percent of students are African American, and 85 percent are poor enough that they get free or subsidized lunches. Yet from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, academy students are held to the highest academic standards in a curriculum that emphasizes financial literacy.

In a novel experiment, Hobson’s firm gives each class $20,000 to invest over the course of their grade-school years. Upon graduation, the students give $20,000 back to the incoming first-grade class so that the program can be self-perpetuating.

Half of whatever profits exist are split among the whole class. For all children who choose to put their share of earnings in an investment plan for college, Ariel Investments adds another thousand dollars.

Says Hobson, “We want to socialize them” to invest in retirement plans and let them know the value of any matching funds from their company, “which is free money.” In this way, they are thinking about retirement savings as children—well before the start of their careers.

Any remaining funds go to a charity the students choose. In a sentiment the Dalai Lama would surely applaud, Hobson told me, “We don’t want poor kids to always think of themselves as recipients of philanthropy. We want to teach them philanthropy as well.”

Something in this mix pays off. Year after year, the students’ scores on statewide math tests place them among the top in the entire state, and the school has consistently won an award for closing the gap in academic achievement between children in poverty and those better off.

Those results strongly suggest the academy students are, among other benefits, getting a boost in a mental faculty crucial for success in life: cognitive control, the power to stay focused and ignore distractions, to delay gratification now in pursuit of a future goal, and to put a damper on destructive emotions.

This capacity has been measured in children as young as four years old by one of the most famous experiments in the annals of psychology, the “marshmallow test.” Conducted at Stanford University, the test gives four-year-olds the choice of eating a marshmallow immediately or waiting several minutes and then getting two. Surprisingly, when the kids who were able to wait were tracked down at the end of high school, they had a huge advantage over those who gobbled it down on the spot in their scores on the college entrance exam.

Another thirty-year study of cognitive control found that this singular ability predicted children’s future financial success and wealth better than did their IQ and the wealth of the family they grew up in. Citing economic research that shows learning such skills in childhood boosts lifelong earnings, the scientists who did the study strongly urged that cognitive control—a learnable ability—be taught to every child, particularly those who are disadvantaged.

“This is very important,” the Dalai Lama said when I told him about these studies, “to help children get better at this—teach them how.”

This key skill comes down to a single teachable attitude, though psychologists have described it in many different terms. Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist, calls it “mindset”—the simple belief that you can succeed. If you face a problem a bit too difficult for you, the question is whether you have the attitude “I can’t do this” or you simply feel you have not solved it yet. With the latter attitude, you keep trying—and so are far more likely to succeed. The belief that they could get better at math, for example, predicted well which students would stay with and do well in a tough course.

At the University of Pennsylvania, psychologist Angela Duckworth studies this can-do attitude as “grit”—persevering toward long-term goals despite setbacks and obstacles. Combined with cognitive control, she finds, these personal skills predict success. For instance, grit predicted both grade-point average at an Ivy League school and level attained by contestants in the national spelling bee, over and above the person’s IQ.

Both these concepts are updates of an older construct in psychology: the distinction between feeling yourself to be a “pawn” or an “origin.” With the outlook of a pawn, a person feels helpless in the face of larger forces in their life. But feeling yourself to be an origin means you believe you can make efforts to change circumstances for the better.

Gandhi advocated something quite similar, using the Hindi concept of swaraj: self-mastery or self-rule. Regarding how we help someone in need, he urged people to ask: “Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?”

Women as Leaders

On a bus heading for school in Pakistan’s remote Swat Valley one day, a man boarded and called for Malala Yousafzai—and shot her in the head.

Malala was targeted because she had become the spokesperson for educating girls, a movement opposed by violent Taliban extremists. But Malala was not deterred, using the shooting and attendant publicity to further her crusade. Her book, I Am Malala, became a global bestseller, and she became the youngest person to win a Nobel Prize for Peace.

The Nobel was shared between Malala and Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian activist who combats forced child labor—all too often, children are sold into bondage by their dirt-poor families to weave rugs, labor in textile factories, or risk their lives burrowing through tiny tunnels in coal mines. Both Malala and Kailash are passionate about the rights of all children to an education, a right denied not only to both the poorest but also, disproportionately, to girls.

In a letter to Malala after the Nobel announcement, the Dalai Lama wrote how moved he was by the “tremendous strength” she showed while recovering from the shooting. “That you have continued, unbowed, to promote the basic right to education earns only admiration.”

Malala embodies female leadership, which the Dalai Lama urges for the future. It’s a topic he mentions frequently, and when I asked him about it, he told me a story that at first seemed a digression.

A Swiss doctor who had treated the Dalai Lama for an eye problem became friendly enough to invite him to his small mountain chalet, a hunting lodge.

There the doctor showed the Dalai Lama his guns and a collection of hunting trophies—the stuffed heads of animals he had shot, hanging from the walls.

The Dalai Lama told me with a laugh that what he thought to say was along the lines of “Butcher!” But, in keeping with decorum, he said nothing.

After that tale, the Dalai Lama came back to my query, pointing out that hunting is, typically, a male sport—a holdover from earlier times, when men needed to hunt for food to help their families survive. That coincided with a period in the sweep of human history, he conjectured, when there was apparently no concept of leadership.

Some historians (particularly those with a Marxist lens, he noted) argue that originally humans had no class distinctions, lived in small groups, and shared whatever they had. When the human population increased with the discovery of farming, he went on, then came the concepts of “my land, my possessions.”

And with that emerged thievery and an increase in robberies and such—and so people felt the need for strong rulers who could prevent crimes and impose justice. Leadership in those days required physical strength, which favored men; it was an era when “hero” meant mercilessly killing, he said.

“Times change, reality changes,” the Dalai Lama said. While social norms and cultural heritage have held women back, now is “the time to change these things. Gender, color, no difference. In modern times, equality.”

But the numbers of women in leadership ranks are nowhere near what fairness would dictate. So, he says, now that “education has brought more equality, we need women to take up more positions of responsibility and leadership.”

He argues that our times require leaders who are more sensitive to human needs and who have concern for others, with an emphasis on warmheartedness, and women tend to be more biologically attuned than men to the suffering of others.

Here science provides a key finding. Scans reveal that the neural response of the brain’s pain centers to seeing someone in pain is to mirror that of the person suffering.

And this sensitivity to another’s suffering—the essence of compassion—occurs more strongly in women than in men. Science also finds that women have greater accuracy in reading emotions than men do.

The Dalai Lama sees in such data an indication that women are naturally more prepared for compassion, “because they are more sensitive to others’ pain—more empathetic. So biologically, women have more potential for compassion.

“These days, nurses or others who care for people are, for the most part, female,” the Dalai Lama said, adding, a bit impishly, “The majority of butchers are males.”

By the same token, macho political leaders seem more likely to create crises as a show of strength. Judging from history, he conjectured, there should be less danger of violence if in the future more leaders are women. And more women leaders, he said, would take a more active role in promoting human values like compassion.

This more concerned and caring style of leadership can, of course, be found in many men too—the Dalai Lama himself embodies these traits. But in general he, like many of us, sees such compassion as coming more naturally to women.

But in order for more women to emerge as leaders, the Dalai Lama urges, the unequal treatment of women in societies throughout the world, from the outright oppression suffered by Malala to more-subtle forms, must be abolished.

Barefoot College

Consider Kamala Devi, who comes from a poor family in a rural village in the Indian state of Rajasthan but now heads a program to teach impoverished women how to build, install, and maintain solar-powered lights.

Devi first learned there was such a thing as solar power when the night school she attended replaced its kerosene lamps with solar ones. How, she wondered, could a lantern give light without a flame?

It was years before Kamala Devi learned the answer. Married off early, as was the local custom, she was able to go to night school only after completing her daily chores—and after overcoming resistance from her husband and his family to getting an education at all.

Once Kamala got to night school, she was lucky enough to be chosen for a training workshop in solar engineering being given at a nearby town. That workshop changed her life.

The men in her family scoffed at the idea that a woman could understand how to assemble and repair solar equipment—but after months of training, she was adept. And now she heads the local school for training other women like her in the manufacture and repair of solar units.

That school and Kamala Devi’s training were part of the mission of the Barefoot College, founded in 1972 by Sanjit “Bunker” Roy, another friend of the Dalai Lama’s. By elevating the social and economic status of women in the poorest regions, the college not only changes how women (and men) there view their traditional role but also boosts public health: Children get better food and education.

Roy has now spent more than forty years living in a small village in rural Rajasthan, a far cry from his privileged upbringing. In 1965, shortly after finishing college, Roy volunteered to help in villages in the destitute state of Bihar, which was suffering a famine.

Inspired by Gandhi’s teachings to help the very poor, Roy worked for five years digging wells in Tilonia, a village in Rajasthan where he later founded the Barefoot College—and pioneered training solar engineers like Kamala Devi. That training is unique: The students are typically unschooled grandmothers from hardscrabble villages. But when they return to their hometown as solar experts, suddenly these women have new status and respect—another goal.

“For me, the best investments are in training grandmothers,” Roy told the Dalai Lama. “These women, most between forty and fifty years old, are illiterate. But they are the most mature, the most tolerant, and they have so much courage.”

The instruction is given through sign language, gesture, and demonstration rather than on the printed page. This has meant that even women from rural Africa can be trained as solar engineers—such as the group from a village in Mali, two days by road and seven days by boat from Timbuktu, itself an icon of isolation.

Even though designed for those who cannot read, the training does not skimp on technical expertise. The students learn to make sophisticated equipment, like charge controllers and inverters, and how to install solar panels and link them together in a local power grid.

By now the Barefoot College has turned out hundreds of solar engineers, who have brought this sustainable electrification to some six hundred Indian hamlets as well as to twenty-one African countries—even to Afghanistan. This means poor villagers in those places can supplement their income from a day’s work by making handicrafts at night in their newly lit home, and older women who had been relegated to second-class status are now wage earners with a valued skill.

It also means that children can study and go to school at night after looking after their family’s cattle or goats during the day. More than seven thousand children attend some one hundred fifty night schools founded by the Barefoot College and lit by solar units.

Among the Barefoot College’s other services to the rural poor are glove puppets used by health workers “to talk about social messages like why you should not beat your wife, why you need clean drinking water, why you should send your child to school,” Roy told the Dalai Lama at a conference on altruism and compassion in economics, at a Mind and Life meeting in Zurich. The puppeteers spread their messages in places “where there is no radio, no written word, no television,” as is true still in many parts of rural India.

As Roy finished, the Dalai Lama put his hands together and gave a gasho-like bow, in honor of Roy’s work and his message. Then he told Roy, “The real transformation of India must start from the countryside and village, and you really have done that. This is an example for the rest of the world of how to help poorer countries, particularly in the Southern world.”

The Dalai Lama had first been alerted to the importance of rural development in alleviating global poverty on his visit to China in 1955, during the years that the Communist government was courting his favor—four years before he fled to India. On that trip he met the then-mayor of Shanghai, “a very nice person,” who told him he felt that the key to China’s economic development was in building up rural areas rather than Shanghai itself.

“That’s a socialist way of thinking,” he told me, “spending more money to help the majority—needy and poor people in rural areas. That’s an immensely helpful way to build a country.”

The Dalai Lama said he was impressed seeing the efficiently mechanized small farms of Taiwan and Japan. There the farmers seemed prosperous. The local villages and towns had hospitals and even regional universities—all of which signify a healthy economy. “I’m always saying that the real transformation of countries like India and China must take place in rural areas, not just in a few big cities.”

China too could learn about village development for the rural poor, he added, gesturing toward Bunker Roy, from this “Indian guru—not from Karl Marx!”

And then he invited Bunker Roy to teach solar engineering in Tibetan settlements throughout India. Roy accepted on the spot.