Ekatva · Orchestrators
The Orchestrators
Alok Kumar & Prashant Nikam
Ekatva is orchestrated by two people who arrived at the same question from opposite directions — one through scripture, service and poetry, the other through systems, institutions and the architecture of artificial intelligence. What they share is not an answer but an inquiry.
The beginning
How Ekatva began
Fifteen years of conversation
The friendship between Alok Kumar and Prashant Nikam began more than fifteen years ago, when Alok Kumar was Deputy Inspector General in the elite National Security Guard and Prashant Nikam was Director (Police) in the Ministry of Home Affairs.
What started as a working acquaintance between two officers became something else in the years that followed: a long conversation about duty and detachment, about the self that acts and the self that watches it act. Those discussions never arrived at a conclusion — which is precisely why they continued.
Somewhere inside them the idea of Ekatva took shape. Not as an event to be organised, but as a room worth building: a place where the question of oneness could be examined properly, by people who had come to it from very different places — a scholar of the scriptures, a physicist, a poet, a neuroscientist, a leader with a decision to make on Monday morning.
The wager they kept returning to is the old one. That the separateness we take for granted is a construction of the senses rather than a report of reality — and that this can be shown, argued, and, briefly, tasted.
Founder, Ekatva
Alok Kumar
Founder, Ekatva · Director General of Police, Goa · Indian Police Service, 1996 batch · author of Sajhe Lamhon Ki Mehak
Alok Kumar is the founder of Ekatva, a platform for consciousness studies. A scripture scholar from childhood, he served more than 25 years in the Indian Police Service while pursuing a lifelong engagement with spiritual wisdom. He is presently Director General of Police, Goa. He is the author of Sajhe Lamhon Ki Mehak (The Fragrance of Shared Moments), a Hindi poetry collection on Advaita, and now brings experts together from many disciplines to explore the nature of consciousness.
From an early age, Alok Kumar was drawn to spiritual wisdom. As a precocious child he mastered the Hindu scriptures, committing them to memory and reciting them verbatim. That early devotion became the foundation of a lifelong inquiry into the nature of consciousness.
He went on to serve in the Indian Police Service for more than 25 years (1996 batch), holding several distinguished positions — among them Deputy Inspector General in the National Security Guard — and is presently Director General of Police, Goa. Even through a demanding public career he never stepped away from the contemplative path, and he kept studying and reflecting on spiritual philosophy alongside his duties.
His Hindi poetry collection, Sajhe Lamhon Ki Mehak (The Fragrance of Shared Moments), explores unity consciousness — Advaita, the recognition that the many are expressions of the One. Over the years he has also gathered a circle of like-minded seekers and thinkers for regular philosophical and spiritual dialogue: a practice of conversation that Ekatva now widens.
Ekatva grows out of this journey. It is a platform for researching and promoting consciousness studies, bringing together experts from diverse disciplines through programmes, discussions and collaborations. Its name, meaning Oneness, reflects a simple conviction: that understanding consciousness is a shared inquiry, and one worth exploring together.
- FoundedEkatva — a platform for consciousness studies
- PresentlyDirector General of Police, Goa
- ServiceIndian Police Service, 1996 batch — more than 25 years, including Deputy Inspector General, National Security Guard
- AuthorSajhe Lamhon Ki Mehak — The Fragrance of Shared Moments, Hindi poetry on Advaita
- At EkatvaFrames the day; holds the argument and the silence
Co-founder & orchestrator, Ekatva
Prashant Nikam
Co-founder, Ekatva · founder, AI Native Org · author of Converging Paths and The Conscious Lab Rat
Prashant Nikam is co-founder and orchestrator of Ekatva. He served the Government of India as an officer of the Indian Railway Accounts Service (1997 batch), including as Director (Police) in the Ministry of Home Affairs, and later founded AI Native Org, an advisory practice that helps companies and public institutions redesign themselves around AI-native ways of working. He is the author of Converging Paths and The Conscious Lab Rat, and writes on the meeting point of consciousness and organisation — two directions of a single inquiry.
Much of Prashant Nikam's working life has been spent inside institutions that run on the premise Ekatva questions. In public service he saw how policy, security and administration all depend on clean boundaries: this unit, that jurisdiction, my mandate, your file. Later, building AI Native Org, he ran into the same premise from the other side — an organisation trying to hold a coherent sense of self while the work inside it is distributed across people, models and machines.
He served the Government of India as an officer of the Indian Railway Accounts Service — 1997 batch — including as Director (Police) in the Ministry of Home Affairs, where the work ran across central and state agencies. That posting produced the friendship with Alok Kumar which eventually produced Ekatva.
Since leaving government he has built an advisory practice working with partners in cloud, edge and operational technology on Industry 4.0 and AI-native deployment, and advises on technology policy — including as Advisor (Policy) to the E-Sutra asset-tokenisation think tank, contributing to India's public conversation on tokenisation standards. His formal training is in management and economics: an MBA from Cranfield University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and the ACMA professional accountancy qualification from CIMA, UK.
His writing keeps circling one question: not only what to automate, but what an institution is and where its boundaries actually lie. He writes about this alongside consciousness on a Substack whose two subjects are usually treated as unrelated — “one inquiry, two directions.” Ekatva is where those directions visibly meet.
- ServedIndian Railway Accounts Service, 1997 batch — Government of India, including Director (Police), Ministry of Home Affairs
- TrainedMBA, Cranfield University · MSc, London School of Economics · ACMA, CIMA (UK)
- FounderAI Native Org — advisory practice for AI-native operating models
- AuthorConverging Paths · The Conscious Lab Rat
- In preparationThe Governance of Consciousness — a policy book on the inner capacities public policy depends on, and what changes once they are taken seriously
- Websitemonkabode.com — Monk Abode: conscious living, research & reflection
- At EkatvaConvenes the programme — the shape of the day, speakers and practice
Together
Two directions, one inquiry
Ekatva's design reflects both temperaments. The gathering argues like a seminar on the first day and closes like a practice on the second — because one of its orchestrators trusts the argument and the other trusts the sitting, and neither is willing to give up their half.
Alok Kumar
From the scriptures inward
Scripture learned by heart, twenty-five years of public duty held together with contemplative practice, poetry as the shortest route to what cannot be argued. Brings the classical spine of the programme: what Advaita actually claims, and what it does not.
Prashant Nikam
From systems outward
Institutions, coordination across jurisdictions, and now AI systems that unsettle what counts as a self in the first place. Brings the practitioner's question: what changes in a decision, a policy or a portfolio once separateness is no longer assumed.
Come and test it
The pilot edition is deliberately small — around twenty to twenty-five people, one day, in Goa in November 2026.
Register your interest and Alok and Prashant will write to you first when the dates, venue and faculty are confirmed.