Now lakhs of Indians with hearing disability will have access to a mobile dictionary in Indian Sign Language (ISL). Initiated by two youths in Vadodara – Rajesh Ketkar, himself 100 percent hearing impaired, and his friend Virbhadrasinh Rathod, this dictionary will enable the disabled person to have an image picture word with video-graphed sign language, all on the screen of his mobile.

The seeds of this idea were germinated in the minds of these youths when they attended a conference by the World Federation for Deaf in Madrid last year. Depariti Basu reports their story in this article in Indian Express:

“There were deaf people from across the world and we were amazed to see their confidence level. In India people still look at the deaf with sympathy unlike in other countries. There they ask for ‘professional assistance’ and not ‘help.’ We were exposed to their technology which is not used anywhere in India or even in any other Asian country,” Ketkar said through an interpreter. 

The two also run an NGO called Mook Badhir Mandal in Vadodara, for the hearing impaired. All this inspite of just having received education till class X, which is provided by the government, after which Ketkar took up vocational training in tailoring. Once again it is proved that education is not really a barrier for a firm determination and a will to succeed. Kudos to these youngsters who have taught us a lot.

Read the complete article hear

Being disabled usually comes with its own set of economic limitations. However, this is now poised to change. Various products being made by different segments of physically challenged people shall now carry a brand name, and hence gain more market reach. This article in Business Standard reports:

The process began this week with the former President APJ Abdul Kalam launching the Association for Rehabilitation under National Trust Initiative in Marketing (ARUNIM), an autonomous body under the National Trust, for the welfare of persons with autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities. The body will be run under the Ministry for social Justice and Empowerment. 

In essence, all those products such as cotton fabrics, perfumed candles and incense sticks etc, shall now be brought together under a single brand name. The ARUNIM will now become the official salesman and marketing arm for all these products tied together.
How does ARUNIM plan to go forward from this initial proposal:

ARUNIM, with a corpus of Rs 1 crore, is already on the move. Its chairperson Sminu Jindal, who also heads Jindal Saw and an NGO Swayam, says she will soon appoint a researcher or consultant to identify the available products with the 800 NGO members of the National Trust. These will now naturally become members of ARUNIM making it a huge cooperative network right from the beginning. 

Sminu goes on to say:

While the branding and marketing plans to help those with multiple disabilities and conditions like autism, ARUNIM may also be able to support people with temporarily disabled bodies, like from an accident or disease, says the wheelchair borne Jindal who lost her legs in a road accident. She gives full credit to the National Trust chairperson Poonam Natarajan for the effort.”It is Natarajan’s vision which has led to the birth of ARUNIM,” she says. 

Read the complete article here.

Image by Dhimant Parekh from here.

They are afflicted with polio and are disabled. Yet these two casual labourers and friends – Amrendra Shukla and Ravi Paswan – have saved more than 40 people from getting swept away in the disastrous floods of Bihar. The old adage “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” has never been more beautifully depicted as by these two brave souls, reported by Amarnath Tewary in BBC News:

“Before our eyes little children, women and elderly people were being swept away in the strong currents of the flood water,” Shukla told the BBC.

An idea came to him and Paswan to tie three empty drums together with thick bamboo sticks and then place a wooden bed on top.

They initially took six children on it for 3km (1.8 miles) in neck-deep water to reach a safer place.

Over three days they evacuated over 40 people – mostly children, women and elderly people.

The disastrous floods in Bihar has brought in its wake untold tragedy and hardships on people. However, from the wreck have emerged many heroes who never really had any intentions of becoming messiahs for the millions trapped in misery. It was circumstances and their inherent qualities that made them look inwards and turned them into great comforts for the suffering masses.

Aastha Volunteers

Another one of them is Anand Mohan, a recent graduate of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), who intended to return to his home in Bihar for a few days before joining a multinational in Australia. Destiny had something else in store for him, and when he came to Sharsha, he found his hometown ravaged by the floods.

“Now we do not want to go anywhere else. Here we’re getting everything from these people. They’re taking care of us more than the government or other agencies,” said Sanjay Kumar Mukhia from the neighbouring district of Madhepura.

He lost 16 members of his family in floods caused by rampaging rivers.

“My three year’s old son survived only because of milk supplied by these bhaiyas, (brothers),” said another flood victim, Ghuran Ram.

Vijendra Rai’s three children were suffering from acute diarrhoea – but they all survived thanks to timely medical help from Aastha volunteers.

What is even more admirable is the way these youths shrug off media attention that most other proclaimed organizations, government bodies and media houses clamour for. Theirs is the spirit that The Better India strives for.

Read the complete BBC article here.

Image Courtesy: BBC News

Link Courtesy: Ramanand Nayak. Thanks.

The Tsunami that wreaked havoc in Dec, 2004

Everything that M Malar owned was washed away in December 2004. After eking out a bare subsistence for four years, this mother of three has finally been shown a ray of hope. She and 37 other Tsunami survivors like her can begin life afresh working as permanent staff members of “Green Friends” at the new vermin-compost yard set up at Sholinganallur by the town panchayat.

The yard has been set up with the help of an NGO Hand-In-Hand (HIH), which runs 19 yards in Kancheepuram district with the participation of the local bodies.

D Madhavan reports in this article in The Times of India:

Two years ago, Malar, originally a resident of Odaikuppam in Besant Nagar, was accommodated in one of the 6,700 quarters built by the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board for tsunami survivors in Semmancherri.

But this was not enough for Malar. She had to feed her children and give them an education – she did several odd jobs, from working as a maid to hawking goods.

Two months ago, there came another turn in her life. She and 37 other tsunami survivors of Semmancheri were offered a permanent job by HIH in the new yard.

A self-help group was formed to help them sustain their livelihood. “It is a second life for me. Now I can ensure that my three children get a good education. I want to ensure at least one of them pursues medicine,” Malar told The Times of India.

The tsunami-survivors were given free training on all aspects of maintaining the yard. These women in turn will teach the residents about the need to segregate their waste into biodegradable and non-biodegradable parts. Initially, the “Green Friends” will receive monthly compensation, but after a year they will be in charge of sustaining the project.

Read the complete article here.

Image Courtesy: Inmotion Magazine, AREDS Team

If the Indian Railways executes the latest plans on its desk, passengers on premier trains like Shatabdi and Rajdhani will soon be able to access high-speed internet as well as audio and video entertainment facilities.

While a trial run for this is already underway in Mumbai-Ahmedabad Shatabdi Express, the Indian Railways has already set up its own high-tech V-SAT hub system in Delhi.

The Economic Times reports in this article:

Indian Railways have established its own state-of-the-art satellite-based V-SAT hub system in the capital, which is considered the best option for providing reliable connectivity for freight operation information system (FOIS) at remote locations where freight loading takes place.

It has already connected over 200 remote locations of FOIS and more stations are to be linked soon, said the official.

V-SAT system can be also be used for online reservation in running trains, train operation and maintenance activities.

V-SAT terminal will help in establishing communication at accident sites withing 20 minutes, said the official.

An interesting contrast can be seen in this bit of news on the Amtrak website, which introduces Amtrak passengers to wireless internet service while they wait for their trains in five key stations. While we do not intend to set US as a benchmark, comparisons are inevitable, and in this case we’ll be happy to say we’re one up!

Links Courtesy: Uday Arya

Image Courtesy: Indian Railways Fan Club

EMRI - Ambulance on call service

Now if you are in Andhra Pradesh or Gujarat, you can dial 108 and immediately get connected to emergency medical, fire and police services. A fully equipped ambulance with technical staff can be at your doorstep in an average time of 20 minutes. And if you do not belong to these two states you should still read ahead as this service, provided by the Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI) will soon be made available in the rest of the country.

William A. Haseltine, President of Foundation for Medical Sciences and The Arts, has written about the service in this article in The Hindu:
How it works:

EMRI dispatch centres are modern marvels. Addresses and map locations of fixed line callers are displayed on computer screens that summarise their call histories. The lines are then transferred to medical, police and fire professionals for action. By the time the call reaches the doctor, the location of nearby ambulances and local hospitals together with data describing available hospital services is on the screen. Life-saving procedures can become accessible within the golden hour, the crucial first hour following the emergency crisis.

With a fleet of 500 ambulances and 3000 technicians and drivers, it is estimated that the EMRI service helped in saving 22,000 lives in Andhra Pradesh itself last year!

Not only this, there is another service for remote medical care wherein a person can dial 104 and avail of free medical advice from health care professionals managed by Health Management and Research Institute (HMRI). Calls are prioritized and callers routed to appropriate destinations, including 108 if an ambulance is required.

The 104 workers currently operate from a call centre in Hyderabad. The target for the year is to increase the number of doctors in the call centre to about 200 and hire about 2000 paramedics, from about 50 doctors and 250 paramedics currently on staff. About one-quarter of the calls require professional medical advice and about half the calls originate from small farming villages with no permanent medical infrastructure. Shortly EMRI will field-test a mobile hospital.

The 108 and 104 services were the brainchild of three founders: Ramalinga Raju founder Chairman and CEO of Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services Ltd.; Dr. Ranga Rao and Dr. Balaji Utla.

Now the EMRI and HMRI models will also be used as role models for setting up similar services in other countries around the world.

On a similar note, residents of Bangalore have long been aware and benefited from an emergency ambulance service called Sanjeevini, which has rescued over 42,000 people till date. Sanjeevini is a part of Comprehensive Trauma Consortium (CTC) established as a non-profit, non-Governmental, voluntary organization by Dr. N. K Venkataramana.

The Sanjeevini helpline number is 1062, and you can visit their website here. Stay tuned to The Better India for a more comprehensive coverage of Sanjeevini.

Read the complete article in The Hindu here.

Image Courtesy: The Hindu

IGNOU

Being in jail will no longer be the end of all prospects if Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is able to execute its plans. The University, which had initiated a nation-wide campaign to educate prisoners in jail, has now come up with the brilliant idea of using educated inmates as teachers. Not only will this help in reducing the cost of the program, but also prove beneficial to both the “teachers” and the “students” in making the most of their time in confinement.

Excerp from this article in the Hindustan Times:

“These inmates have been leading an aimless existence despite holding a lot of promises. We decided not to let them waste their knowledge but train them to take up the job of teachers,” IGNOU Vice-Chancellor V N Rajasekharan Pillai told to PTI.

Inspired by the success of a similar model introduced at the Tihar Jail in Delhi a couple of years ago, IGNOU’s program aims to become free in a short while. It has already enjoyed an enthusiastic response in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. As other state governments make a beeline to adopt the scheme in a big way, we laud the initiative by IGNOU to impart knowledge to this oft-neglected section of the society and give them another lease on life.

Read the complete article here.

How many people can undergo the loss of everything they love, and then convert that tragedy into an opportunity for helping others? Not many. That’s the stuff that heroes are made of. And that is the reason why CNN has honoured Dr. Chandrasekhar Sankurathri as a CNN Hero.

After losing his wife and two children in the bomb blast aboard a flight from Ottawa to Mumbai in 1985, Dr. Chandra could not find any reason to live further. However after three years of tortuous searching, he decided to pack up his job as a biologist in Ottawa, and returned to a small village in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Excerpts from the article in CNN:

“India has so many problems,” says Sankurathri, 64. Two in particular caught his attention: a lack of school attendance and rampant blindness. With the money he had, Sankurathri created a foundation in his wife’s name, and in turn, built a school and an eye hospital in the small rural village of Kuruthu, not far from his wife’s birthplace. Today, his foundation’s efforts to empower the poor through education and health care are having significant success. Since its inception in 1992, Sarada School, named after the 4-year old daughter he lost, has grown from one to nine grades and graduated more than 1,200 children. It boasts of a zero drop-out rate as against the national average of 50%. The fees, books, uniforms, meals, even medical checkups are all provided free of cost by Dr. Chandra. All the students need to contribute is discipline and a keenness to learn.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has also written this excellent article on Chandrasekhar:

The Sarada school represents a ticket out of poverty for these kids, and there’s no fooling around at morning assembly. If you show up late, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb standing there with your backpack until it’s over. The children solemnly pledge their loyalty to their country… to their teachers, to their neighbours, and to their gods. After the assembly, there is a ritual walk around the statue of the goddess who is sometimes also known as Sarada, the name of the school and of the girl who inspired it. As the school day unfolds underneath the huge mango trees, you get a sense of what education means to these kids. Ask them how many have parents who cannot read and write. Most of the hands go up. For themselves, they have bigger ambitions. What do they want to be when they grow up? They answer: English teacher, doctor, teacher, police officer.

And this is not all. The same school buses then ply to bring in the blind and half-blind to the Srikiran Institute of Ophthalmology, named after his lost 7-year old son. Since its opening, the hospital has performed more than 137,000 cataract operations, 90% of them free. The article goes on to say:

Cataract surgery is a life changing experience whatever country you’re in. But it still inspires awe to see its impact on people who couldn’t possibly pay for it and who otherwise would be condemned to darkness for the rest of their lives. The blind watchman can see. “I can work as long as I want now because I can see, two grandsons, grandchildren, so I’ll be happy to see them again,” he says. “It’s really gratifying to see that satisfaction, the feeling on their faces, the elderly people. Those who thought they’d reached the end of their life, end of the tunnel,” Sankurathri says.

And how does he manage to run all this?

It’s all funded by donations from Dr. Chandra’s network around the world, a little from the Indian government, a little from charities like Help the Aged, and a little from CIDA, the Canadian aid agency. He gets a little, too, from strangers on the other side of the world. Like school principal Theresa Crisky and her students at St. Gregory’s Catholic School in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean. The kids have been raising money through bake sales and the like every year, a total of $14,000 to date.

Find the CNN Videos of Dr. Chandra and his work at this link.

It is remarkable indeed to see the difference one man can make in the lives of many. Even more so after having suffered such pain in his life. The Better India salutes the spirit of Dr. Chandrasekhar. Read the complete CNN article here and the CBC feature here. Image Courtesy: CBC News

Times of India’s Teach India initiative had the following text on their website when they closed registrations to their Teach India initiative on September 5, 2008:

“Thank you Bangalore! We are overwhelmed by your desire to give back to society. 
With over 15700 volunteer applications received by us all our current teaching slots 
are filled up. 5000 volunteers have already been offered to teach. We are currently 
in the process of placing the balance volunteers who have applied.“

I know someone who’s actually sad she could not make it into the list.

And all this applying to do what? To go out of one’s way and give one’s valuable time to teach.

Think about it. This program is actually oversubscribed? And it is not competition driven or a monetarily lucrative venture? Young adults, shouldering all kinds of responsibilities, familial and professional, consciously want to make time for one more thing worthy of doing -teaching.

To all the teachers in India, here is a heartfelt message sent with love. This one event could find no better day than September the 5th – Teacher’s day, to express the underlying intent and latent capacity of the children you have once taught.

To all the cynics, both young and old, afraid of the new India, afraid of the myriad changes, seeing and seeking the negative in events, behold this one light among a myriad lights.

There is no doubt that we have a long way to go, and uncountable hurdles will be flung our way. But we can sleep well with one guarantee – that the youth of this resurgent India will find a way to better what already is. 

This puts in perspective the power of the news media to engage. The urban reach of mainstream media is clearly wide and deep. If the media were to engage even occasionally into meaningful projects, the outcome can far outweigh the efforts for the same.

Kudos to the Times of India group for their efforts in creating this avenue to channel the energies and minds of our people. Even the smallest avenues can overflow with goodwill and sincerity to contribute, as they have with this initiative.

Written By: Uday Arya

On: September 5, 2008

The Irulas are one of the lowest groups in the Hindu social order, found in Tamil Nadu. Many of them work as rat catchers in the farms of others, who pay them a small sum for each rat they catch. This being the chief occupation, the Irulas live in abject poverty.

Jerilyn Watson writes about this tribe and their ways of catching rats in this article:

The traditional way they catch rats is to light a fire in a clay pot. They blow air through a small hole in the bottom to send smoke into the underground spaces where rats live.

Then, for food, the catchers dig out the rats and any grain stored in their burrows. But often the rats escape, and the rat catchers get burned on their lips and hands. Many also suffer lung and heart disease from breathing the smoke.

Sethu Sethunarayanan, the director for the Development of Disadvantaged people in Chennai looked for a way to improve this technique, and dvised a new steel trap.

With the new trap, the rat catcher still forces smoke into the burrow. But the trap is attached to an air pump operated by hand. The catcher no longer needs to blow into the trap. And the pump has a wooden handle to prevent burns to the hands.

The Irulas asked for and received almost one hundred thousand dollars from the World Bank. They used the money to establish a factory to build the traps. It employs fifty women. The traps are sold for about twenty-five dollars each.

This small contraption has led to a dramatic improvement in the lives of the nearly three million Irulas. They’re earning more money, getting better health care, and more importantly, their children can now go to school instead of catching rats.