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How cool is this?

Indian courier service hires only deaf workers

India has one of the largest deaf populations in the world, but social stigmas have eliminated many job opportunities for the roughly 6 percent of the population that is affected. Aiming to empower this isolated group economically, Mirakle Couriers is a service provider that hires only deaf workers.

Mirakle Couriers offers a pickup and delivery service in Mumbai. The company puts a heavy emphasis on the training of employees—right down to the finer points of professional grooming—and has grown dramatically since its late 2008 launch. Its client list now includes Johnson Controls, Bain Capital and the Indian Hotels Company, among many others.

Founded by former investment banker Dhruv Lakra, Mirakle Couriers stresses that it is “not a charity but a social business, where the social element is embedded in the commercial operations”. The firm plans to expand beyond Mumbai to other cities and countries around the world. Social entrepreneurs hither and yon: time to get in touch…?

Talk about doing some good and making a difference.  This has to be one of the coolest things I’ve heard about since Kiva.  We should all have ideas this purposeful.

I heard a guy on ESPN Radio of all places speaking about intent. Do you view somebody based upon what they did, or the intent with which they did said action? It’s a tricky thing.

It’s the question behind manslaughter. Somebody was killed. But the intent to kill them was not there. So maybe you still go to jail, but you don’t go for too long. So there, obviously, you primarily judge based on intent, but secondarily on the act.

What I heard this morning was trying to completely and entirely separate the two. I do not, personally, believe you can make this distinction. They are intertwined. By ignoring one, you are making the other much too important and perhaps irrelevant at the same time.

But which should be the primary and which the secondary in the way that you view things? Should it be like the court system where intent is primary and action secondary? That is for everybody to decide on their own. To me, if you are careless, you had to make the decision (or lack there of – aka. carelessness) to perform or allow said action to occur. By working on the intent (cause), you can eliminate future occurrences of the action (effect), or at least lessen them to some degree. Conversely, if you try not to perform the action, your carelessness may still exist, and if you slip up (inadvertently) the action will yet again be performed.

Let’s use the manslaughter example. Vehicular. Person A is driving and talking on their cell phone and runs a red, hitting and killing Person B who was crossing the street. What happened? They were careless. Consequence? Somebody was killed. Now let’s try to eliminate both the intent and the action from this scenario. Option 1: Person A does not talk on the cell phone, thereby paying more attention to the road and stops at the red light, Person B safely crosses the street. Option 2: Person A is talking on the cell phone, still runs the red light, but now the action – either Person A or Person B notices before it is to late, there is some swerving going on, death is averted.

What do you think Person A would do afterwards in Option 2? Would they think “I need to avoid people in the road when I drive” or would they think “I should have stopped at the red light?” To me, that’s how I look at things. You either fix the problem (Option 1), or you fix the consequence (Option 2).