Leopards, Livelihoods, and Learning to See: When Geographic Context Rewires Development Work

Standing at the Threshold (Again)

Forty leopards. That's where the story of geographic development starts.

Not with me in a classroom. Not with theories about development work. But with forty leopards in the Jawai region of Rajasthan, and what happened when humans decided to build an economy around them.

Forty leopards became 262 resorts. 262 resorts became 500+ jeep safaris. 500+ jeep safaris became 2000+ family livelihoods, all spinning in dependency on a predator that sleeps most of the day.

When I heard this number last week, not in a lecture, but in a conversation about how one geographic location calculates "development" differently, something shifted. It wasn't just a statistic. It was a question: Who gets to decide what development means in a place? And what happens when that calculation changes?

I'm learning that development isn't universal. It's geography-specific, context-bound, embedded in soil and water and distance and history.

Understanding Ecological Tourism as Development

Let me be honest about what I don't fully know yet. I'm still in Pali District, still learning the contours of this landscape, still sitting with people whose livelihoods depend on decisions made by governments and conservationists and tourists from Delhi.

But here's what I'm beginning to understand:

The leopard safari economy created something real. 2000+ families have income. Children go to school (some of them). Health outcomes improve (incrementally). Women get work as guides, as hotel staff, as vendors.

The Hidden Cost: Development Lock-In

But.

That same economy locked them in. If the leopards disappear, killed by farmers protecting livestock, or relocated by wildlife authorities, or simply don't show up one season, what happens to those 2000 families? If tourism drops, if international travelers stop coming, if the world decides leopards aren't worth the infrastructure anymore?

Development for some becomes precarity for others. Growth becomes fragility.

Why Development Narratives Miss Context

This is what nobody talks about when they discuss development impact. They show you the resort. They show you the income. They don't show you the family whose ancestors farmed that land before it became a safari zone. They don't show you the farmer whose crops attract the leopards that the tourists came to see, and who now lives in constant fear of losing both his harvest and his livelihood.

The deeper realization: You can't understand why something is happening in one location by looking only at that location. The leopard safari economy exists because of Jawai Dam, which changed water patterns, which exists because of colonial irrigation policy, which exists because of power, which exists because someone decided this geography was valuable.

Context isn't background. Context is the entire story.

My PLC: Seven Perspectives on Development

I have seven people in my PLC (Professional Learning Community). We're from different states, different languages, different professional worlds.

Suhani comes from Noida, studied Development Studies, worked as a project coordinator navigating systems and policy.

Dibbojit is from West Bengal, trained in business but landed in education work across five states, carries a traveler's spirit and deep commitment to reimagining learning.

Anandhi is from Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, chemistry background, worked in business development, brings a methodical, scientific approach to problems.

Nikita is from Wardha, Maharashtra, trained as a civil engineer, worked as a Gandhian Fellow focusing on healthcare access and community development.

Vikas is from North West Delhi, trained in community development, volunteered with education and social welfare organizations, navigates grassroots work like a native.

Harshada is from Mumbai, business management background, worked in implementation and foundation work, sees both structure and human complexity.

And then there's me, caught between all of them, trying to translate.

When we were first assigned to work together, I thought it would be friction. Seven different worldviews in one PLC. How would we even agree on what a "problem" is?

How Collaborative Learning Reveals Context

This week, we were analyzing the same Pali District data. Same villages. Same statistics about water scarcity, livelihood failure, gender inequality, migration patterns, and healthcare access.

Dibbojit looked at the education patterns and said: "In the schools I've worked with across five states, when water is scarce, girls stop showing up."

There it was. The connection nobody makes on spreadsheets. Water scarcity doesn't show up in education statistics. It shows up as 'absent girls.' Same problem, different column.

Nikita, drawing from her healthcare and community development experience, immediately reframed: "It's not just about building infrastructure. The same resource problem has different solutions depending on who experiences it. A borewell in the wrong place can breed disease instead of solving it. Infrastructure needs context."

Harshada added: "We tried implementing programs without asking the community what they actually needed. The programs looked good on paper. In practice, they failed because we didn't understand the context."

The PLC Advantage: Seeing Through Multiple Lenses

I watched this conversation and realized: This is what PLCs actually do. We don't just "work together." We see differently because we come from different places. We're not trying to reach consensus. We're trying to hold complexity.

When Dibbojit describes how water connects to education, he's not sharing a "data point." He's telling us that development decisions affect real humans in ways that statistics can't capture. When Nikita systems-thinks about healthcare, she's asking: what are we missing? When Harshada brings her implementation experience, she's asking: what have we already failed at?

From Individual to Collective Understanding

Alone, each of us would design a water solution based on our own context. Together, we're learning to design solutions that work across contexts.

This matters because in a few days, I'm going to sit with a farmer in Pali whose water strategy is different from any state I've worked in. And because of my PLC, I'll ask better questions. I'll see the context instead of just the problem.

Abhishek's Vision for Digital Literacy

Last Sunday morning, I had a call with Abhishek, founder working on AI education for schools.

Abhishek runs an organization working with child care institutions. But he's trying something new, an AI curriculum for mid-level school students. Affordable schools, 500-2000 rupees monthly fees. Kids who will graduate into an AI-driven job market but don't have access to quality digital literacy.

His vision is clear: Digital literacy (20-30%) into AI theory (how it works, best use cases) into Skill-based AI (presentations, spreadsheets, problem-solving, prompt engineering) into AI for education (how to use ChatGPT, Perplexity, Notebook LM to learn better).

It's a good vision. Thoughtful. Progressive. Built on a foundation of real concern for real kids.

When Scale Collides with Context

But here's where context crashed the party:

Abhishek: "We want to showcase this curriculum at a tech conference in Andhra Pradesh in March. 100+ IT companies will be there. If we show a good case study, we can get CSR funding to scale."

Me: "Scale where? Scale to which schools?"

Abhishek: "Any schools, really. We want it to be generic enough to work across Andhra Pradesh, or ideally, any state."

Me: "But which students? What's their background? Do they already have laptops? Do they have internet at home? Do their schools teach in English or Telugu? Are they in rural areas or cities?"

Abhishek: "That's the thing. We don't know yet. We're still ideating. But we're thinking: if we design generic enough, it works everywhere, right?"

And I heard the entire problem of development work in that one sentence.

The Generic Versus Contextual Design Problem

Because here's what Abhishek wanted to build: A perfect, scalable, one-size-fits-all curriculum that could be deployed to any school in any context.

And here's what he actually needs: To sit in a classroom in Vizag with 40 kids and understand their context, their language, their existing knowledge, their connectivity, their dreams, and then design a curriculum that serves them first, and only then think about scaling.

The call went deeper.

And that's when I asked him something that stopped both of us.

Baseline Assessment vs. Scalability: The Core Tension

I said something that stuck with us both:

"Before you design anything, you need baseline assessment. Not generic. Specific to the students you're serving. Because if you design generic and implement generic, you'll land somewhere in the middle, not good for rural students, not good for urban students, not good for anyone."

But then there's the tension: If you do baseline assessment for every school, you can't scale. If you scale generically, you won't serve anyone well.

This is the development sector's core problem, isn't it? We want to help everyone. But we can only serve people we know deeply.

The Path Forward: Start With One, Then Adapt

The call ended with Abhishek and me realizing: We need to pick ONE school first. Really understand that school's context. Design curriculum for those students. Get it right there. Document what worked, what didn't, why it worked. Then, and only then, adapt it to other contexts.

Not because it's the fastest way. Because it's the only way that actually works.

The Connection: How Geographic and Social Context Shape Development

Leopards. PLCs. Curriculum design.

What they all taught me this week is the same thing:

Context isn't a variable to control for. Context is the entire equation.

Why Context Matters More Than Solutions

When you ignore context, you create the leopard safari economy, growth that's dependent, fragile, locked into one set of assumptions. When you build PLCs across difference, you learn to see context because someone in the room is always saying "but in my place." And when you design curriculum, you realize that the teacher's ability to connect with students matters more than the curriculum itself, because connection is always contextual.

The Development Sector's Abstraction Problem

The development sector trains us to abstract. To find patterns. To scale. To see 2000 families depending on leopards and think "interesting business model."

But my PLC, my field immersion, my conversations with Abhishek, they're teaching me to do the opposite. To zoom in. To respect complexity. To design with people, not for people. To admit that development doesn't mean the same thing in Jawai as it means in Falna, as it means in your city, as it means in my village.

What I'm Still Learning: The Practice of Productive Uncertainty

I don't have answers yet. I'm 9 days into fieldwork. I'm still figuring out how to ask questions that don't carry my assumptions. I'm still learning to listen across my PLC without trying to fix everything. I'm still sitting with the reality that my brilliant curriculum designs will probably fail in the field because I didn't sit with the actual students first.

But that feels right. The best development work probably happens in that space of productive uncertainty, where you're learning faster than you're implementing, where you're questioning more than you're confident, where you stay humble enough to let context teach you.

My PLC taught me that. The leopard safari taught me that. Abhishek's pilot project taught me that.

This is what my field research for Realising India is teaching me. Not theories about development management. Actual people in actual places.

Next Steps: Listening to Context in Pali

Next week, when I sit in classrooms in Pali and ask girls why they stop going to school after 3km, I'll be listening differently. Not for data. For context. For the specific, embedded, geographic, relational reality of their lives.

Because that's where development actually happens.

Until Next Week

From Pali, where every kilometer tells a different story.

Nami 🌊

P.S. – If you're working in development and you think you have "the answer," you're in the wrong place. If you're asking "but what's the context?" you're starting to see. That's where we are. That's where the real learning begins.

One More Thing: Synchronizing Across Difference

The 404 Band played at our summit before we left. My PLC danced. We were all from different places, but for a moment, we were synchronized. That's what I want the curriculum in Pali to feel like, not uniformity, but resonance. Different students, different backgrounds, same moment of "oh, this matters for me."

That only happens when you design with context, not against it.