Where does the motivation to cause change come from?

...For Kailash Satyarthi, the impulse surfaced at age seven. Satyarthi is the founder of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), an organization based in Delhi, India that has reportedly won release for 40,000 slave laborers, many of them children, and is now campaiging across India to promote free and compulsory schooling for children up to age 14. Satyarthi's "Rugmark" trademark, which guarantees that a rug has been manufactured without child labor, has brought powerful market pressures to bear on rug manufacturers in South Asia, forcing many to stop employing children.

In 1961, when Satyarthi was seven years old – a high-caste Brahmin boy growing up in the conservative state of Madhya Pradesh -- he was standing outside his school watching a cobbler working with his son. He couldn't figure out why the boy – who looked to be his age -- wasn't in school. He asked the cobbler.

"My son has to work because he is an untouchable," he was told. "That is his fate."

"It seemed so unfair," Satyarthi recalled.

Other things seemed unfair, too.

In his town, it was untouchable women who swept the streets and cleaned the open toilets. When they came along Satyarthi's street to beg for food, they wouldn't dare touch even the fences outside the houses. They would shout and people would throw coins and pieces of bread in the direction of their buckets. If the bread landed in the dirt, the women wiped it off and kept it. Satyarthi would run and snatch pieces of bread from the women and eat it before anyone could stop him. He knew that this was a terrible and grave offense. "It was the only time my parents ever hit me," he recalled. "And I would think, 'Why do they throw the bread on the ground?'"

In 1969, when Satyarthi was fifteen, India was commemorating the centenary of Gandhi's birth with celebrations across the country. Streets and parks were re-named, statues erected, rallies and exhibitions held. Gandhi had campaigned against untouchability, referring to untouchables as "Harijan" -- or "children of God." (Today, they prefer the term "Dalit" or "the oppressed.") Satyarthi attended a rally and heard politicians passionately denouncing untouchability. "It was a very emotional day for me," he recalled. "I found what they said very beautiful."

It gave him an idea. In his town, Vidisha, untouchability was deeply ingrained. You never saw them in restaurants or temples; they lived like a species apart. "I thought I would organize a feast," he recalled. "The sweeper women would be invited to cook and the big politicians would be invited to eat. It would send a strong signal to the whole town. I thought it would be a great symbol to break the caste hegemony. We would hold it in the newly built Gandhi park near the new Gandhi statue."

Friends said he was crazy. But he managed to persuaded a few to help.

Satyarthi approached some sweeper women.

"What are you talking about?" they said. "How can you possibly think people will come and eat?"

"I heard their speeches," Satyarthi said.

They laughed. "You're very naive."

Still, he convinced them to do the cooking. If no one came, they would share a good meal.

The boys rode their bicycles around town, dropping off invitations at fifty or sixty houses. The response was encouraging. People said, "Okay, good idea, very progressive." Some said, "Can we bring friends?" They expected thirty to actually show up.

"In the evening I saw these sweeper women come to cook," Satyarthi said. "They must have washed themselves and their clothes one hundred times. They looked so clean."

And for the first time he worried: Would there be enough food?

The feast was called for seven o'clock. By seven, no one had come. Satyarthi thought: 'Okay, it's Indian time, don't worry.' By eight, still no one had arrived.

"We thought there must be some confusion about the location in Gandhi park," Satyarthi said.

He had invited a high caste communist leader. Surely, he would come! "I went on my bicycle to see him and his wife answered the door. She said, 'Oh, my husband is in bed. He's not feeling well.'"

He went to another house, and was told. "Oh, we're coming."

At another house a girl told him, "My father has already left for it."

He returned to Gandhi park to tell his friends that people were on their way. "We waited until nine, ten, eleven. We waited until our hearts were empty." No one turned up. Not even the Gandhians.

At eleven, they decided to eat. The women said, "We told you it would never happen in this town."

They ate in silence, then walked their bikes home. At midnight, Satyarthi arrived at his house and was suprised to see the lights still on. The gate was open and people were sitting in the courtyard. He heard noises and was shocked to see some of his relatives there.

"You fool!" they shouted angrily when they saw him. "You fool! With your nonsense!"

"I haven't committed any crime!" he yelled back. "It is you people here who have committed a crime by perpetuating this terrible inhumanity."

The argument grew more and more heated, until threats of "social boycott" -- one of the most severe punishments in Indian society -- began to be uttered. Satyarthi was the youngest of five children. His brothers pleaded: Don't punish the family for something Kailash did on his own. Elders said he would have to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Ganges, shave his head, organize a feast for 100 high caste people and undergo a cleansing ritual.

"Okay, okay, he will do it," his brothers said.

Satyarthi refused. "I am not a sinner," he said. "And you cannot outcast me. I will outcast you! I will not have any relations with any of you any longer!"

His mother and sisters-in-law, fearful of the social boycott, were begging, "Please, please, Kailash, please take a holy bath."

Eventually tempers cooled and a compromise was made: Kailash must never again enter the kitchen, or touch the water source, or eat with the family.

For the remainder of his teenage years, he ate alone in his room.

In time, people died and memories faded and Satyarthi was once again permitted to enter the kitchen, but the incident continued to burn inside.

"I learnt that if you challenge something," he told me, "you should be prepared for the reaction."

In February 2000, thirty-one years later, I traveled by train with Satyarthi to Chandigarh, five hours north of Delhi, where SACCS had recently freed ten bonded laborers, members of an indigenous tribe, the Bhil, who had spent their entire lives working in mines and quarries without pay. Even after all the years, Satyarthi still attends these events to keep the pressure on state governments.

The Bhil adults appeared to be in their late twenties or thirties; they wrapped themselves in shawls and peered at the crowd of journalists through haunted, flinching eyes, as if they expected to be punched in the face at any moment. They couldn't read or write; they didn't understand Hindi or English; many of them had never been more than a few miles from the quarries, and prior to their release, never out of range of armed guards, even when they went into the fields to defecate. One journalist told me that that they didn't know that they lived in a country called India.

Satyarthi and his colleague, Jai Singh, an untouchable, gave a series of interviews. Satyarthi was very much the showman. Tall and handsome, with a salt-and-pepper beard, dressed in a crisp white punjabi, brown vest, and cream colored shawl -- all hand woven in Gandhian tradition -- he towered dramatically over the Bhil laborers. He reminded me of Gary Cooper riding into town to save the day. He told the press that the man who had enslaved these people was a well-known figure in the state, with senior government connections. It was known that the local government had let him get away scot free for years, even though indentured labor had been illegal in India since 1976. They would do everything to see that he was punished. In the meantime, other Bhil were being held, including relatives. They had to be freed and immediately reunited with their families, then rehabilitated and repatriated to their home region in the state of Gujarat.

Reflecting on Satyarthi's interview a year later, what stays with me is the look he had in his eyes while he was speaking about the injustices the Bhil had faced. He was very serious and yet there was something peaceful about him, as well, as if he understood that he was doing precisely what he was on earth to be doing.

I could picture him questioning the cobbler and arguing with his uncles. He'd learned from his miscalculations. He was surrounded by TV cameras, journalists and photographers. Never again would he throw a party and have nobody attend. People paid attention to SACCS across the country and across the world. And watching this obsessive, theatrical, radically principled man, I thought: What good fortune for others that this is how he derives satisfaction in life.

"I love this work," Satyarthi said on the train home. "I could not live without it."

Notes from Fareed Zakaria's talk

US: Bush’s election represents high water mark of US conservatism. - Like LBJ’s election in 1964 for liberalism. What we'll see: More direct control and ongoing secrecy. Typical trajectory in second term: deputy secretaries succeed secretaries for cabinet positions, WH staff goes on to high paying lobby jobs. Bush: big difference. Rather, WH staff directly to 4 cabinet positions. Will see very little ‘give and take.’ President’s power extended very directly.

Iran: Iran’s nuclear program is “post Osirik,” decentralized, spread out to a dozen places, hidden, underground, in populated areas, virtually impossible to destroy militarily. US has no military option with Iran’s program. An attack would create popular domestic support for nuclear program. US also has little economic leverage with Iran because it doesn't trade with the country (and won't even talk to it). Economic leverage must come initially from Europe which is a big trader. Better than military, let ‘acids of modernity’ come into Iran through trade and destroy the regime.

Russia: Big question: Russia possesses 80% of fissile material that could get onto black market. US has given Russia a blank check in recent years. Possibly due to Bush relationship with Putin. Bush met Putin and said he “looked into his soul.” Putin showed him the cross that his grandmother had given him and they made a strong connection. US has said next to nothing about Chechnya. Russia has killed 100,000 civilians in Chechnya and destroyed 35% of the country. Under the dubious argument that this is part of the war on terrorism.

Iraq: US has quietly reversed its 4 main policies in Iraq without saying that they are reversing policies. US has ended De-Baathification. Stopped and tried to reverse the disbanding of the Iraqi army. Started talking with Sistani. Now sending more troops. Insurgency in his view appears to be weakening. It has not succeeded in stimulating mass support among Iraqis. Zakaria sees Islamic fundamentalism all around the world as on the defensive. Where it has been put to a popular test, on the ballot, eg. in Malaysia, it has failed to win elections. In Egypt, he sees a similar below the radar effective move for reform.

China and India: Calls the rise of Asia the third of the great historic changes over the past 500 years, the other two being the rise of western Europe as center of wealth and power, and the rise of the USA. If 20^th Century globalization was 'everyone becomes a little like us' (ie. drinks coke, watches our movies, uses our products), 21^st century globalization will be much more Asia-led. Asia understands globalization and is playing it very well. China creating a regional trading block. Everyone needs China’s market. The "China price" is now the global standard for low cost production. Eighty percent of everything produced for Walmart comes from China. China over the past 25 years has quadrupled its GDP, the fastest economic growth in human history. China is making all Asian producers dependent on it is huge market. Through its economic strength and the power to grant or deny access to its market, China will be an economic superpower very soon. More so than Japan which kept its market much more closed to Asian producers. India is trailing but not by very much. Quotes Murthy, founder of InfoSys – “Four words: American revenues, Indian costs… Anything that can be done over a line, don’t do yourself. Let us do it…” Vast middle classes to come in India and China. US doesn’t understand Asia, doesn’t really know much about it, but it will have to respond. The learning curve will be steep.

Middle East: Two interesting developments to watch for Jordan signed a free trade agreement with the US. Past 7 years exports to the US have increased from $13 million to $1 billion. And a new policy to offer trade benefits to Egypt-Israeli joint manufacturing partnerships had the Egyptian govt worried that nobody would apply for the license. They received so many applications they couldn’t handle the volume.

An Introduction to David Bornstein

David Bornstein is the author of The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, which chronicles the worldwide growth of the anti-poverty strategy “micro-credit.” The Price of a Dream, which drew on ten months of research in villages in Bangladesh, won second prize in the Harry Chapin Media Awards, was a finalist for the Helen Bernstein New York Public Library Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and was selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the best business books of 1996.

His most ecent book, How to Change the World, tells the fascinating stories of these remarkable individuals—many in the United States, others in countries from Brazil to Hungary—providing an In Search of Excellence for the social sector.

In America, one man, J.B. Schramm, has helped thousands of low-income high school students get into college.

In South Africa, one woman, Veronica Khosa, developed a home-based care model for AIDS patients that changed government health policy.

In Brazil, Fabio Rosa helped bring electricity to hundreds of thousands of remote rural residents.

Another American, James Grant, is credited with saving 25 million lives by leading and “marketing” a global campaign for immunization.

Yet another, Bill Drayton, created a pioneering foundation, Ashoka, that has funded and supported these social entrepreneurs and over a thousand like them, leveraging the power of their ideas across the globe.

Bornstein's articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, New York Newsday, Il Mundo (Italy), Defis Sud (Belgium) and other publications. He co-wrote the two-hour PBS documentary series "To Our Credit," which focuses on “micro-credit" programs in five countries.

Bornstein received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University in Montreal and a Masters of Arts from New York University. In addition to writing, he has worked as a computer programmer and systems analyst. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.