Theos-Talk Archives (July 2008 Message tt00293)

Dear Brother/Sister:

MEMBERSHIP TREND

Taking a bird's eye view of the TS world-wide, the most serious problem
facing today is the downward long-time membership trend in countries outside
India. When world population is increasing, and the fall of the Soviet Union
& democratic system expanding to many countries, what we should expect is a
significant increase in the growth of membership. What we see is shocking.
Over the last four decades, membership has been falling world-wide except in
India where the membership has been on the rise.

LODGES & THEIR VIBRANCY

Lodges have always been autonomous in their activities within the overall
objects of the TS and the national sections are fully autonomous as well.
Actually the National Secretaries who are elected by the members are like
fiefs. The growth of membership is directly tied to the active dedicated
members at lodge level and vibrancy of the lodges themselves. With this
fact, we do not know how many sections have recognized the problem and tried
find out the weaknesses which has caused the drop the in the membership
world-wide, so that steps can be taken to do something to turn the trend
around. This is hard work which has to be done at the grass-roots level and
grass roots level only.

TRANSPARENCY

As we have already discussed before, the lack of transparency in the
bureaucracy at top levels has not helped the TS. On the one hand we have the
ordinary members like you and me and on the other hand the elite leaders.
Due to the lack of transparency, there seems to be a disconnect between the
two.

HOUSE ON FIRE & NIT PICKING

What we now have is a situation similar to the House on Fire. After the
election, I am hearing that a lot of nit picking is going on among the elite
about the minutiae of the rules and regulations of the TS, whereas the
fundamental problem is not with the rules and regulations, it is about the
growth of the organization which is going down the hill.

ELITE TALKING TO RANK AND FILE

If anyone of the elite has anything to say about the above to rank and file
members, they are welcome here and join us in the discussion. It is free and
does not cost a dime!!! Looking at their past behavior, I doubt anyone will
show up, because while they go on lecturing about technology and
communication, they just talk the talk and don't walk the walk.

AGING LEADERSHIP WORLDWIDE

As already we all know, what we have world-wide is aging leadership ?
septuagenarians and octogenarians. While they may have all the worldly
wisdom in the world, when you look at thousands of years of history, you
will always find growing movements and organizations are always headed by
young and middle aged leaders. Look at Lord Jesus Christ, Lord Buddha, Lord
Krishna, Shri Shankaracharya, H S Olcott, H P Blavatsky, Krishnaji. They
were all young or middle aged and worked full time not for any titles or
name or fame ? not a second hobby career after retirement and we have seen
the far reaching results. I hope we will soon see young leaders world wide
which will propel TS and its ideals for coming generation. We all need to
take this very seriously and work at it. If this trend is not reversed, how
long it will be before we run out of members (except in India), is anyone's
guess.

My 0.02.

M K Ramadoss, Member, TS, San Antonio, Texas, USA


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