eBook Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World's Greatest Business Case for Compassion epub

When Pavithra first produced and brought to the world her acclaimed documentary film, Infinite Vision, I was stunned with the quality and emotional impact that the film brought forth. The depth of scholarship, insight, and pure inspiration that Pavithra and Suchitra have provided in this new book with the same title is stunning. If you pick up this book to read a business case for an extraordinary organization, good for you, but you will miss 90% of what this inspirational work is about. Transformation is about a shift in mindset. To simply take the work and try to duplicate it is bound to be frustrating. The mindset of Dr. V is what the profound lesson is about to me. That mindset created the culture which allowed the current Aravind to emerge. It was not planned and controlled into existence, it emerged from the will of those who envisioned it. What is the core to a culture of innovation? What mindsets are critical to its emergence? This book is inspirational and can provide the foundation for transformative conversations that have the opportunity to create social justice in our world. Embrace this book, internalize it, and create the conversations that can heal our world. This book has that spirit within it. Not many do. I highly recommend Infinite Vision and suggest that it be offered to anyone interested in creating a better world. Can one person make a difference in this world? From what I have seen, the resounding answer is yes. If each of us takes this challenge, there is no doubt in my mind that we can make it happen.

Don't miss this book, Infinite Vision. It's about one person, "Dr. V.," who revolutionized healthcare for those who cannot see. But it's equally about us, about everyone. It's about our creativity when we don't set limits. And about how it can spread, even globally. It is about our higher potential. <Also see [...] Saybrook University, where we teach about everyday creativity.>

If you ever had cataract surgery, take note. You know what it is like; seeing or not seeing can change everything. In India, some have used a derogatory term for a blind elder, "a mouth without hands." Can you imagine?

Infinite Vision tells how Dr. V helped reverse this tragedy. The book is personal and inspiring, and it also gives operational details and a recipe for success. Dr. V, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, a surgeon in South India, began, as a post-retirement project, what became the largest eye surgery operation in the world. And where a great many needy people now get eye surgery for free. His is a required case study for Harvard Business School, has been honored by Bill Gates (Award for Global Health) and many others. His Aravind organization has attracted visitors, promoters and collaborators from Seva Foundation to the International Lions Club, from Dr. Brilliant to Ram Dass to Wavy Gravy. Why? Here's a goodhearted doc moving from a clinic for 11 people to a massive medical movement which has brought hope to the 12 million blind people in India. A movement now spreading around the world. And a man who said, whose stated goal in life was, "to give sight for all." Now Aravind, is doing just that! Here is the story.

The recipe: Good person, hard times, a crippling arthritis that changed his career goals, a fundamental desire to help others. Deep spiritual roots, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, in Pondicherry, India, astonishing spiritual leaders. And let it be said, with all respect, that this could also have been another of the World's Great Wisdom Traditions. Here, to be sure, is our True Vision. Our True Creativity.

And an ability to reach out. To involve others. To collaborate, to share and learn--and this includes sharing with groups that might be called "competitors" in other settings. Instead we learn to thrive together. To have a new bottom line of compassion and love, not profit or loss. Yet to find a greater monetary profit in this approach than in that of the so-called competition.

Dr. V never married nor had a family. Yet a fascinating side note is that a full 21, yes twenty-one, of his relatives have now become opthalmologists! And all are helping. Talk about family spirit (and the human spirit).

Best of all--and this is sometimes hard for us Westerners to believe--here is the Gift Economy. This is what can happen when we move from grasping and getting to caring and giving. Those folks weren't fooling in the Bible (or elsewhere) when they said that we who give will receive in turn. (Actually, we may also live longer as well--which is another interesting story! Here is a new world view we need badly today.

As Dr. V. said, "When we grow in spiritual consciousness, we identify with all that is in the world...It is ourselves we are helping....ourselves we are healing."
Is InfiniteVision a religious tract? Not at all; it is a business plan--one set in an engaging personal story. But a business plan with a different bottom line, a different way of operating. A different way of living. No wonder Harvard Business School took note. And so should we.

Do buy this book, by all means! And also give it to your own doctor. I have done so myself. Let me dedicate this review to my ophthalmologist and cataract surgeon, Gary Aguilar, M.D., in San Francisco, who has volunteered his services each summer, in places including Guatemala, Peru, and China, to help people who could never see otherwise. Whose lives have been changed. He too is part of this story. What a gift. What a role model. May each of us, in turn, help this influence to spread.

In 2009, when I took my aged mother to the Aravind Eye care hospital in Coimbatore for a cataract surgey, I was struck by the kindness, courtesy and professionalism of the staff, right from the front desk clerk to the nurses and doctors. What is more, it didn't cost an arm and a leg to do the initial consultation, the surgery and the post-operative care. As one who is born and brought up in India, I tend to take indifference and lack of courtesy as part of life in our hospitals. I wondered then as to how come this hospital is so different from others I have encountered in India before.
When my mother's surgey was complete, I remember seeing a big photograph of Dr.V in the main hall and also pictures of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Little did I know the true story behind the institution and the vision of its founder. Now that I know the full story from this brilliant book by Pavitra Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy, it makes me proud that we in India, that too in my home state Tamilnadu, could create something so original, innovative and of such high quality. It makes me inspired to strive for better all the time and also specially, for the right, humane reasons.

The authors show that Aravind is an unconventional model, built on the power of integrating innovation with empathy, sound business principles with service and external change through inner change. Though all this sounds esoteric, the extensive data related to Aravind's performance over the past 30 years shows that it has been achieved in reality and what more, it is a model that can also be duplicated independent of the presence of the eminent personalities of the founding team of Aravind. Dr.V, the founding father of Aravind, believed in the following: "to be of service to others is to serve ourselves. Our limitations do not define us. Embedded in the human spirit is a wisdom and strength that can rise to meet our greatest challenges'. This was enough to make him start at age 58 a 11-bed eye clinic in Madurai with no money, no biz plan or safety net and turn it into the largest eye care provider in the world in three decades. It is difficult to enumerate here all the revolutionary things Aravind has pioneered over the years. That is why one must read this book.

The most important take-away from this book for me is the business model of Aravind. The revolutionary departure points in this model are as follows:
Service to the poor as the primary goal
Maximizing service instead of profit
Patients choosing either to pay or not for the service.
The enterprise built on the principle of 'Do the work first and the money will eventually follow'.
Applying the McDonald's and Burger King's service model to attain consistency, reliability, low costs and clear standards
Training their competition in all the key areas for success in the same business!

It is a real challenge to all the well-intentioned people of this world to try and see if this can be the new business model, especially in areas of fundamental needs of humanity. I believe that another enterprise - Narayana Hrdalaya - in Bangalore has applied many of these principles successfully in the realm of heart surgery. Perhaps, this is the way forward for developing nations in the area of healthcare.

Finally, it is also important to understand the spiritual inspiration from Sri Aurobindo in Dr.V's efforts and how he creatively applied them in Aravind. 'Man is a transitional and not a final being' is central to Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. Since Man is a work in progress, Aurobindo emphasised the ecumenical approach of Aspiration, Rejection and Surrender as a means to achieve transformation. Dr.V creatively applied it as follows: He saw Aspiration as a commitment and determination to move in the direction of one's highest purpose - that is curing needless blindness all over the world. He saw Rejection as not allowing mental prejudices to cloud one's thinking and not limiting oneself to small things but aspiring for higher. He saw Surrender as overcoming the pull of the conscious and rational mind and making crucial decisions through the inexpressicable logic of his deeper awareness of the unconscious.

This book is highly inspiring and is important in the way it integrates the ideas of innovation, creativity, courage and spirituality.