Darpan letter · No. 188 October 2026

Even a little is not lost

On sixty-one more tahr in a year, vultures returning after a drug was banned, a Nobel for small biases that grow, and Kṛṣṇa’s promise that no effort begun is wasted, with the Gītā’s word for steady, gradual work and its test of a joy that is bitter first and sweet later

प्रिय साथी,

Two numbers sit side by side in today’s magazine, and they seem to argue with each other. WWF’s Living Planet Report 2026 finds that the average size of monitored wildlife populations fell 73% between 1970 and 2022. On the same day, an article for Wildlife Week lists Indian gains: the Nilgiri tahr, Tamil Nadu’s State animal, up from 1,303 to 1,364 in a year; vultures in Madhya Pradesh counted at 12,981 in 2025 against 8,397 in 2019; 270 dugongs; 718 snow leopards. One number makes you want to give up. The other is so small, sixty-one goats on a mountainside, that it hardly seems worth printing.

You know this argument from the inside. There is the big average: the success rate, the cut-off, the thousands who sit for a few hundred posts. And there is your small number: one more chapter finished, two more marks in a mock, a little less fear in the answer-writing hall. On some evenings the big number wins and the small one feels like nothing. The Gītā speaks to exactly this feeling, in a verse from its second chapter.

Here it is: नेहाभिक्रमनाशोऽस्ति प्रत्यवायो न विद्यते। स्वल्पमप्यस्य धर्मस्य त्रायते महतो भयात्॥ — nehābhikramanāśo ’sti pratyavāyo na vidyate, svalpam apy asya dharmasya trāyate mahato bhayāt — “On this path no effort that is begun is lost, and no adverse result arises; even a little of this practice protects one from great fear” (Bhagavad Gītā 2.40). Kṛṣṇa is speaking of the discipline of acting without being ruled by the result, which he has just begun to teach Arjuna. Look at two words. Abhikrama: an effort begun, not finished. Svalpam: a very little. The verse does not say that a little is enough. It says that a little is not wasted, and that it already guards you against mahat bhaya, the great fear.

Now look at the tahr again. Sixty-one animals is not a recovery; it is the beginning of one. But it is not lost either. Each of those animals will breed, and next year’s count starts from 1,364, not from 1,303. The vultures show the same thing over a longer time. They were dying because they ate the carcasses of cattle treated with the painkiller diclofenac, which damaged their kidneys. India banned veterinary diclofenac, and the birds have been coming back. Nobody saw a dramatic day. There were only years of small, unglamorous steps that were not cancelled. The dugong story adds one more: fishermen are paid for nets they lose while freeing a trapped dugong, so that conservation costs the local person nothing. Small, fair arrangements, kept for years, are how a species returns.

Today’s Chemistry Nobel says something similar in the language of molecules, and it is worth hearing even though it is only a likeness. Many molecules come in two mirror-image forms, like left and right hands. In 1986, Henri Kagan’s team showed that a catalyst only slightly biased towards one hand could bias the product far more than anyone expected. About a decade later, Kenso Soai found a reaction in which the product helps make more of itself, ending with 99.5% of one form. A small tilt, kept up, does not stay small. Your habits work the same way. The hour you study before you open your phone is a tiny bias in your day. Kept for months, it shapes the next day, and the one after; the habit begins to produce more of itself.

The Gītā also tells you how that steadiness is held. In its sixth chapter, describing how a meditator quiets the mind, it says: शनैः शनैरुपरमेद्बुद्ध्या धृतिगृहीतया — śanaiḥ śanair uparamed buddhyā dhṛtigṛhītayā — “Little by little, let one become still, with an intellect held firm by resolve” (Bhagavad Gītā 6.25). The verse is about meditation, but notice its method. Śanaiḥ śanaiḥ: slowly, slowly, not in one heroic night. Dhṛti: a firmness that holds the intellect in place when the mind wants to run. The mind is not won at once, and neither is a syllabus. What wins both is the intellect that keeps returning to the work.

Be fair to the other side, as an examiner will want you to be. Someone will say that “little by little” is a comfortable excuse, and sometimes it is. Today’s Air Force story shows why. The IAF fields 29 operational fighter squadrons against 42 authorised, as reported from the Air Chief’s press conference, while engine deliveries for the Tejas have slipped. There, the rate is the whole problem; patience with a delayed engine is not a virtue. Your preparation also has a rate: the Prelims date will not wait for you. So śanaiḥ śanaiḥ is not permission to go slow. It is a warning against the opposite mistake, the burst of eighteen-hour days that ends in a broken week. Steady and sufficient beats heroic and interrupted.

How do you tell the right effort from the comfortable one? The Gītā gives a test in its last chapter: यत्तदग्रे विषमिव परिणामेऽमृतोपमम्। तत्सुखं सात्त्विकं प्रोक्तमात्मबुद्धिप्रसादजम्॥ — yat tad agre viṣam iva pariṇāme ’mṛtopamam, tat sukhaṃ sāttvikaṃ proktam ātmabuddhiprasādajam — “That which is like poison at the beginning and like nectar in the end, that happiness is called sāttvika; it is born of the clarity of one’s own understanding” (Bhagavad Gītā 18.37). Revising a chapter you hate, writing an answer you know will be weak, reading the mistakes in a mock: these taste bitter at first. A shortcut tastes sweet. Today’s cotton story shows where some sweet shortcuts lead: an unapproved seed that saves weeding money this season, with risks such as herbicide-resistant weeds that no biosafety review has tested, left for later. Ask of every habit: does it taste better at the start or at the end?

Let this make you proud of where you come from. A crowded country has kept room on its hills for a wild goat and in its skies for a scavenger bird, and paid its fishermen to spare a sea cow. The Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 still keeps the tahr, the dugong and the snow leopard in Schedule I. Today is also the Indian Air Force’s 94th anniversary; it was founded on 8 October 1932 and was built, one squadron at a time, by people who kept going. And long before anyone wrote about compounding habits, the Gītā told a frightened warrior that no effort begun is lost.

For your preparation. In GS3 environment, remember that the Living Planet Index measures the average change in relative abundance of monitored populations, not species lost, so neither despair nor comfort should be read off one number; the 85% fall in freshwater populations is the warning India should hear. Keep the 2022 Amendment’s four Schedules ready for Prelims. In GS3 science, the Nobel lets you explain enantiomers, racemic mixtures and the thalidomide lesson in three lines. In the Essay paper, a topic on small beginnings, patience or persistence can open with the tahr and close with 2.40. In GS4, 18.37 gives you a clean way to explain why a public servant chooses the slower honest process over the quick favour.

And now about you. Tonight, do not ask whether you are ready. Ask what your small number was today: a chapter, an answer, an hour without distraction. Write it down. When the big averages frighten you, read the list. It will look as modest as sixty-one tahr, and it will be just as real. None of it is lost. And when a shortcut looks sweet, remember the test: what is bitter first and sweet later is usually the thing that lasts.

One day you may sit in a forest office counting animals that seem to come back too slowly, or in a ministry where a programme moves one step a year. On that day, remember that a recovery always looks small while it is happening. Keep the step. Svalpam apy asya dharmasya: even a little of the right work protects against the great fear.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Bhagavad Gītā 2.40 · Bhagavad Gītā 6.25 · Bhagavad Gītā 18.37