Vision: Spiritual Capitalism; Click Bandobasta

Being at the upper part of Bharatbarsha with Hindu domination; spiritual capitalism could be feasible economic strategy for Nepal. The appeal of spiritual capitalism is that it makes full use of the power of free market to create an efficient economy while at the same time incorporation into market behavior, the value of cultural and spiritual resources.

The base of spiritual capital includes both, derivatives of primary spiritual product as earth, sky, air, water, and heat and spiritual services along with purity of those derivatives. The key tenets of spiritual capitalism are spiritual environment creation, bringing them on market system, maintaining matter - man - mimicry (3m), sale of services rather than products and re-investment of profit in human and spiritual capital. Spiritual capitalism holds the promise of directing technology in ways that will create spiritual climate of Ganga watershed.

 

The beauty of spiritual capitalism is that when spiritual capital comes to be valued in market decision, the incentives of the marketplace will work toward preservation rather than destruction of spiritual assets (liabilities).

 

Himalayas, ice lakes, Ganges, Salgram, with place value of Buddha and Pashupatinath  could be our spiritual capital industries and spiritual climate around those industries could help to increase productivity of those industries. Nepal can maintain own different value on such industry and identity of Tibet could help to enhance the importance of this sector. People of India, NRI and NRN could be prime customer of this sector, which will help us to harvest cross boarder benefit.

 

 

Bandobasta was established on 1995, with the aim of in-situ conservation of culture and agro-bio-diversity. After preliminary preparation it was registered as service industry. Social marketing of indigenous product (both tangible as well as intangible) was the initial objective of firm, largely depended on rural traditional products.

 

As negative impact of insurgency, the movement of Bandobasta toward rural Nepal was heavily affected. Despite significant private investment, Bandobasta turned into hibernate position and limited to some social academic activities like encouraging social institution on in-situ conservation of agro-bio-diversity.

 

After long hibernation, Bandobasta is reactivated again as company with new arrangement and teams. Utilizing the experiences of Bandobasta with academic, financial, social, and spritual institutions is central objective of new setup. Organizing the workshop, seminar, training, spritual discourse to promote green consumerism and green entrepreneurship is on priority to achieve the above mentioned objective.

 

GREEN   MARKETING

Model Project: Padmawati Handicraft, Dam side Pokhara

 

"People will not cut tree, if they can harvest leaves" is the basic principle adopted by Bandobasta to encourage people on participative conservation. In this slogan tree denote bases of agro-biodiversity and leaves as renewable parts can be harvest  for benefit of society.

Green marketing encompasses the strategic design, implementation, and control of programs that seek to increase the acceptability of a social as well as environmental idea, cause, or practice among members of a target audience and, ultimately, to change the behavior of key target audiences. Green marketing differs from commercial marketing in two important ways: (a) benefits are not only for the organization, but also for "society"; and (b) the focus is on changing high-involvement behavior, i.e., changing behavior that is entrenched and that involves considerable risk-taking and/or incurs significant costs 

 

Bandobasta will adopt following strategies to meet the requirement of green marketing. 

• Benefit-sharing: Strengthening local participation in biodiversity management, particularly through development of mechanisms to better involve local communities in benefit-sharing, is one strategy for the sustainable utilization of biodiversity and cultural resources. 
• Access to markets: The need to take positive action to ensure that local communities have access to markets, for example by providing information on prices, purchasers, technologies and creating institutional arrangements that shorten trade links.
• Sustainable harvesting: Price volatility can have rapid impact on producer’s behavior, resulting for example in the rapid over-collection of NTFPs and other products. Knowledge and mechanisms to ensure the sustainable harvesting of NTFPs may include price regulation, creation of marketing organizations and the introduction of appropriate harvesting techniques and technologies.
• Supporting creation of markets for sustainable products: Increase the understanding of both local people and potential consumers about the sustainable use of natural resources through public education efforts aimed at producers and consumers. This would be essential in order to create outside markets that can sustain local cultures and biological resources.

 

A target behavior is identified on the basis of its presumed environmental benefits, and communication and diffusion instruments are mobilized to increase the prevalence of the target behavior in a target population. Green marketing interventions may use the full range of communication and diffusion instruments. They may appeal to the target group's values and beliefs, try to shape those values and beliefs, provide information or skills, elicit commitments, promote social norms and expectations, create partnerships with organizations that might be influential with the target population, and so forth. Like other kinds of marketing, green marketing works within and does not attempt to change the context set by social institutions, financial incentives, and existing infrastructure. It normally focuses on behaviors that have fairly direct impacts on environmental quality behaviors

 

Padmawati Handicraft is market out let of women's product largely based on traditional skill and local resources. In situ conservation of culture and biodiversity, strengthening of women's self help group and productivity management of local resources is basic objective of this organization. Bandobasta is trying to reflect the recommendation of EMBA project report of Kul Raj Chalise " Role of Social Marketing on culture and biodiversity conservation" through this project. We are trying to convert organization as cooperative organization, where womens entrepreneurs will be member and production will be share capital.. The project is situated at Dam side Pokhara, where Mrs. Hira Bhattrai will work as project leader and major promoter.

 

Bandobasta has set of communication experts having long experiences of green communication. Combining spiritual philosophy of different ethnical cluster with conservation education is our specification. Collection of spiritual thought and tradition, searching scientific justification to make information as reliable and adaptable and delivering the information to promote green consumerism as well as green entrepreneurship is our communication strategy, where religious consultant will work as media manager.

 

 

Green Finance

Financial institutions, as the providers of finance for businesses of all shapes and sizes, have a pivotal role to play on sustainability promotion. Discouraging the bank for priority sector lending and encouraging consumer credit could not be considered as sustainable. Considering the above mentioned fact banks of competitive market are moving from defensive banking, where management of social and environmental impacts is seen as an additional cost to sustainable banking, where sustainable development is seen as an advantage and opportunity for growth. Influencing the financial institutions to add green flavor on their general financial services is one objective of Bandobasta. For this propose we provide following services

• Organizing the training on social and environmental risk management in strategic decision making and credit appraisal
• Conducting the research to identify the opportunity for innovative product development in new areas related to sustainability. This entails creating, financial products and services that support commercial development of products or activities with social and environmental benefit.

Green Management Accounting (GMA)

Environmental issues increasingly influence the economic performance of companies and organizations. Growth in environmental regulations, rising costs of electricity, fuel and raw materials, the demand for environmental information by investors and requirements of business and private customers for environmentally benign products provide several important examples. Managers thus need to incorporate environmental considerations into their regular decision-making activities and processes. The financial impact of environmentally related decisions is often underestimated or not even considered at all. One main reason for this is the lack of adequate information. Through conventional accounting processes environmental costs are often hidden as part of overhead costs and are not, or are at best only inaccurately, related to products, processes and activities. Furthermore, conventional accounting does not consider environmental impacts as long as they have no immediate financial consequences.

GMA service of Bandobasta aims to deliver and implement management systems, processes and technologies for production, processing and marketing that are economically viable and at the same time environmentally sound and socially equitable.

GMA can generate benefits at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic level by:

• cutting production costs 
• reducing the environmental impact of production facilities 
• enhancing workplace safety and social equity within companies and in their surroundings 
• improving transparency, thus giving personnel and local communities the opportunity to influence decision-making.

GMA will impact broadly on business only if conducive public and private sector frameworks are in place. Corporate services delivered to and used by business associations, networks and companies in order to enhance their productivity and competitiveness provide meaning of this thought.

 

 

Development action sometime conflict with community values, practices and belief system. Prevailing scientific concept and methods often do not adequately capture the diverse ways of understanding natural, spiritual, and social interactions in local communities. Therefore, research and development proposals should respect prevailing spiritual knowledge system. Specific attention should be given to the synergy between spiritual and modern knowledge systems to promote and enhance innovations.

 

While being linked in with external institutions and processes, most traditional and rural communities have organized themselves through local social, political, and spiritual institutions based on indigenous knowledge, practices, and innovations. These institutions and their leaders play important roles in the management of ecological and cultural resources, but these institutions and leaders are not always easily observed by outsiders. Indigenous knowledge, practices and innovations are closely related to spiritual concept, being and practices. Research and development agencies, on the other hand, are often resulting in inappropriate policies and practices 

Urban drainage outlet at holy Bagmati, landfill site on river side as on Pokhara and Dhunche, industrial discharge at Narayani are some examples of our narrow and incomplete vision. Accuse to honorary court is not considered as good practices, but we have bitter experiences in this regard  Efforts that take local knowledge, resources and values seriously should therefore understand, respect and address natural social and spiritual dimensions. Understanding of indigenous Cosmo-vision can only be achieved through engagement in inter - cultural dialogue processes 

 

Agro-biodiversity, an important sub-set of biodiversity is the major life support systems of the people living in the mountain agro-ecosystems. In broader terms agro-biodiversity includes all components of biological diversity relevance to food and agriculture (CBD, 1992). Agriculture provides a range of services including food, cloths and medicine. The mountain life support systems are complex, diverse and marginal with high risk. To make a living local people adopt a range of coping strategies such as high level of inter and intra species diversity.  The Nepalese mountain serves as reservoir of traditional knowledge and bio-resources. Despite marginality and complexities, Nepalese mountain agro-ecosystems are niches for uniquely valued biodiversity together with public resources. In the name of development, these valued reservoirs are being threatened with increasing intervention. Promotion of potential options linked to peoples’ livelihoods is always desirable no matter whether that is bio-resource based or not. Since mountains are away from the mainstream any initiatives that exclude bio-resource base options can hardly be viable option. The challenge therefore is to make better use of existing bio-resource based options, processes and networks in an eco-friendly manner. After understanding the fact, scientists of agriculture field had tried to conserve local gene and technology in farmer's field. If we can blend message covered by Matsya Puran, it could help to prepare people on agro-bio-diversity conservation.

Ganga can help on poverty alleviation if handle properly

Adoption of social marketing principle to capitalize Ganga is our objective

 

Observations of BANDOBASTA

Green Tourism

Eco-Agro-Cultural-tourism is about connecting conservation, communities, culture and use of indigenous farm products to meet the requirement of sustainable tourism.

Bandobasta will term this program as green tourism. Implementation and participation on this responsible tourism activity will follow the following ecotourism principles:

• minimize impact 
• promote in-situ conservation of culture and agro-bio-diversity
• build environmental and cultural awareness and respect 
• provide positive experiences for both visitors and hosts 
• provide direct financial benefits for conservation 
• provide financial benefits and empowerment for local people and institutions
• raise sensitivity to host villages' environmental, and social climate

Internal tourist and Indian pilgrims will be target audiences of this program. Bandobasta will adopt this business as source to sustain conservation business where cultural products, indigenous gene and traditional practices will keep on social marketing structure.

 

Betraganga society

 

Punaruthan Church is active to win at this holy site

Focus group discussion's report

If situation will remain same both will be looser and win by some body else who will not believe on God.

Therefore Trust on guru, following their direction is necessary to drive the society on correct path.

Mail at

uttargaya@gmail.com