A less traveled track to Tilonia gives one a journey into Indian entrepreneurship and perhaps changes the way our villages are perceived by city dwellers. Tilonia brings you face to face with the real spirit of India. Its misty hopefulness uncovers the nature of the task that is ahead for a social entrepreneur, its uniqueness and challenges.

Tilonia is a small town 25 kms from Kishangarh near Ajmer in Rajasthan. Barefoot College, established in 1972, inspires this town with the conviction that solutions to rural problems lie within the community. These solutions are broadly classified by Barefoot College into solar energy, healthcare, education, water, rural handicrafts, people’s action, communication, women empowerment, income generation, wasteland development, electricity and power as well as social awareness and conservation of ecological systems in rural communities.

Barefoot College was founded by Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy, an Indian social activist and educator. Roy was influenced by the philosophy of Mao Zedong, and modeled his organization after Mao’s Barefoot Doctors. Roy has worked all his life with the Barefoot College.

Spread over more than 8 acres of land, the campus of Barefoot College was built between 1980 and 1986, designed by a team of rural ‘barefoot’ architects, masons, blacksmiths, farmers and members of women groups who sat and struggled through the initial basic designing of the campus. This institution believes in imparting informal, non-structured, on-the-job practical training by identifying the poor, unemployed youth who have been unable to finish their formal education and have returned to their respective villages as dropouts. The five principles which are an integral part of the functioning of the college are equality, collectiveness, self-reliance, decentralization and austerity.

The education program focuses on the overall development of rural children, with literacy being just one part of it. It encourages hands-on or learning-by-doing process of gaining knowledge and skills. Lessons are focused on awareness about the environment and socio-economic and political forces that dominate development. The aim is to provide the children with a right balance of education and literacy so that they choose to stay in their village and work for its development. The college has different programs for children and women. There are Balwadis (rural crèches) established for children between the age of 6 months-5 years for the convenience of working mothers. Night schools have been set up for ‘working children’. There are bridge courses, courses for night school children who aspire to join formal day schools. In these night schools, initiatives like the children’s parliament are established which allow them to participate in the management of their schools through a democratic process. Candidates are selected through a proper election process, giving them an idea of the working of a democracy.

There is also a huge emphasis on the holistic development of women by empowering them socially, financially and politically. In the past 38 years, the college has trained more than 15,000 women in jobs ranging from construction work, education, metal craftsmanship, toy making and solar engineering, to mechanical repair and fabrication, health care, water testing, handicrafts, film making and social activism.

Vocational Training at Tilonia

The Barefoot College has setup eight field centers in Rajasthan and a society known as SAMPDA (Society for Activating, Motivating and Promoting Developmental Alternatives) through the collective efforts of which the Barefoot approach is replicated in rural communities across 14 states in India.

The global response received by the organization is worth acknowledging. The institute has witnessed semi-literate middle aged woman traveling from places as diverse as Afghanistan, Cameroon, Gambia, Mali and Sierra Leone to undergo training to become barefoot solar engineers.

To know more about this organization and to read on some of its wonderful initiatives, please visit their website at www.barefootcollege.org.

Every seven minutes, a woman in India dies due to pregnancy-related complications. Over a million babies born in the country die within their first month of life. India has the unfortunate distinction of claiming more than a quarter of the total newborn deaths in the world. The majority of these deaths occur in rural areas where poverty and lack of knowledge about proper maternal and child health care are the real cause of these fatalities.

The Indian government has come up with schemes such as the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the soon-to-be-launched National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) to address this dire situation. Both schemes give high priority to the issue of maternal and newborn health for marginalized communities, and seek to improve the availability of and access to quality health care for those at the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder. Additionally, government programs such as the Janani Suraksha Yojana incentivize delivery in hospitals by encouraging mothers to opt for institutional deliveries.

Effective development communication programs can play a pivotal role in bridging these knowledge gaps by identifying barriers to behavior change, analyzing these barriers, and developing original techniques to overcome them.

AKHA

For instance, in Assam, a collaboration between the Indian government, UNICEF, and local bodies is using a boat called Akha to reach underprivileged indigenous tribes that inhabit geographically isolated sandbars and islands called chaporis. The chapori residents, who live near the lifeline of Assam—the Brahmaputra river, are often cut off from accessing health care facilities due to floods and other natural hazards. What’s more, awareness about maternal and child health care is all but drowned out by the other concerns for survival that face this group.

The Akha Boat

The Akha, which comes equipped with medical staff and communications materials, makes visits to these isolated regions with the mission to regularly provide facilities for maternal and child health as well as promote awareness about health-seeking behaviors. Findings suggest that the service delivery undertaken by the boat, which has been continually expanding over the last few years, has dramatically improved thousands of lives. 71 percent of the chapori mothers sought some form of antenatal care during their last pregnancy; of these, 42 percent sought care from the Akha.

This is one example of how an intervention tailored to the specific needs of a community can raise awareness and create tangible change.

SURE START

Another example is the work done by a project called Sure Start—an initiative based at PATH, an international not-for-profit organization supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project is working with rural communities in Uttar Pradesh and settlements of marginalized people in Maharashtra to help mothers and their children to survive and stay healthy.

The project’s communications program is innovative in its efforts to raise awareness and interest about maternal and child health care issues. In villages, for example, the “letter from an unborn child” campaign reached out to 40,000 fathers-to-be, educating them about the importance of taking care of their wives during pregnancy. In both Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, the program uses interactive and entertaining tools including dance, music, theater, and games to create awareness.

Mr. Nirbhay Singh, the elected head of one of the villages in Uttar Pradesh where Sure Start operates, estimates that since the program began in his village in 2008, 70 to 75 percent of adults in the community have become aware of safe delivery practices and the vital importance of ensuring access to maternal and child health services. One result is that payments under the government’s Janani Suraksha Yojana (a scheme that incentivizes institutional delivery) have increased alongside the growing awareness about the health benefits of giving birth in hospitals.

In this way, projects such as these use customized communication techniques to raise awareness of maternal and newborn health issues, thus helping local communities benefit fully from existing government schemes. It has often been said that knowledge is power, and the projects mentioned above give that power back to the communities they work in.

Sure Start works to educate women in India on maternal and neonatal health. Sure Start, an initiative by PATH, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to promote safe childbirth practices in India.

Connect with PATH at:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sure-Start-Project-by-Path/178629192101
Twitter: http://twitter.com/pathsurestart

Article courtesy: Vikas S from PATH Sure Start. Thanks Vikas!

A non-profit and secular organization currently working in Andhra Pradesh, Synergy India Foundation or SIF has impacted the lives of more than 8500 people in the areas of Health, Environment, Safety and Education. Their main aims include:

1. Making available basic and emergency medical facilities to the poor
2. Disseminating information on clean and green environment
3. Bringing about a social change in Education and Healthcare
4. Ensuring compulsory primary education for children

With these objectives in mind, SIF has launched a number of projects in each of its area of focus. These include:

Healthcare:

With their main intention of spreading greater awareness among people about diseases and their cures, SIF undertakes several informative programs in a year. One of these was “Unite for Diabetes”, a Diabetes awareness walk organized in Hyderabad in November 2008. Another ongoing project of theirs is the “ESI Project” in which they sensitize the beneficiaries on available corporate health services of ESI and to increase efficiency of the ESI program by setting up Helpdesks, Helplines, Blood Donation Camps and Medical Camps.

Environment:

By developing pollution-free and healthy colonies in select areas, SIF aims to create “model colonies” that can be replicated in other parts of the nation and help sensitize the population about environmental ills. This is achieved by engaging the local populace in tree planting activities, assessing the pollution levels and educating the residents on pollution hazards and healthy practices of sanitation, etc.

Safety:

With the help of NCC cadets, Bharat Scouts and Guides, NSS, Institutions, Schools and Government support, SIF has initiated the “Safer Society” Project for implementing road safety, school safety and environmental safety in a model zone. With this initiative, they have undertaken several awareness drives to promote greater safety standards among the general public.

Education:

In collaboration with the Government of AP on the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan program, SIF has undertaken the construction of two model schools in Tirumalagiri. Serving as an example of Public-Private Partnership with the government contributing 80% financially and SIF the other 20%, these 2 schools (one for girls and the other for boys) will actively seek people’s participation in providing all facilities appropriate for the overall development of each student in Academics, Sports and Community Services.

The organization has also started a “Security Guards Training and Employment Program” to promote employment and capacity building of unemployed youth and find them jobs in the security sector.

Contact:

To know further about Synergy India Foundation, their work and ways in which you could volunteer/contribute, visit their website http://www.synergyindiafoundation.org/ or contact them at the following address:

Plot No. 30, Kalyan Nagar, Near Central Bank of India

Hyderabad – 500038

Phone: 040-64601995

Fax: 040-23811192

e-mail: info@synergyindiafoundation.org

Prof. AV Ramani

A Chemical Engineer and lecturer at IIT Madras is an unusual candidate to have worked on a heart valve that has drastically reduced the cost of such a medical procedure, in turn bringing relief to millions of poor cardiac patients in Asia. However, Professor AV Ramani has done just this.

The Heart Valve Prosthesis

damage to their heart valves. The device – an indigenous heart valve, which costs a fraction of the imported ones in use at the time, has been created after years of research and hard work.

Developed at the Chitra Thirunal Institute (CTI) under the patronage of Dr.Valiathan and Prof. S. Ramaseshan, the heart valve adheres to all international standards and has a titanium-based metal cage that is long-lasting and wear-resistant. The engineering demands of such a valve were very high. Deepa Mohan tells us more about the requirements of such a machine in this article for Citizen Matters, a Bangalore based news magazine:

“It is worth remembering,” points out Prof. Ramani, “that the life of the heart valve IS the life of the patient”. The human heart beats about 80,000 times a day. For even a ten year life-span, the valve would have to function for at least 400 million cycles, which means a very high-precision engineering requirement, and, because the heart valve, typically, would be surgically implanted in younger people, it needs to be something that would last for a ‘normal’ lifetime.

Important decisions like allowing contributing partners to retain their intellectual property rights under a concept of joint ownership, and designing the valve specifically for Asian anatomy, where the valve dimensions are different from those of the western population, were other factors contributing to the success and prominence of the venture. Once developed, the challenge of marketing and large-scale manufacture of the product was undertaken by the TTK group, which set up a unit for this in Bangalore.

The indigenous heart valve is, in the words of Deepa Mohan:

..a living proof of how academicians, government officials and business people can work together with great synergy to bring out a product that is both profitable and beneficial.

Read the complete interesting article here.
Image Courtesy: Deepa Mohan in Citizen Matters

Link Courtesy: Uday Arya. Thanks a ton!

The hills of Shimla are rich and fertile. All major agricultural products are grown here, including  wheat, rice, pulses, potatoes, ginger, turmeric and many other fruits and vegetables. However, in the early 1970s, the problem was that the menfolk of this area would squander away all their income on liquor. Women were deserted and led miserable lives. Enter Subhash Mendhapurkar who transformed the lives of the women in the Shimla Hills.

Kallol Bhattacherjee of The Week writes this extensive report on Subhash Mendhapurkar and how he brought about a revolution in the hills of Shimla:

Mendhapurkar knew it was not going to be easy in Shimla. He started off in a room in a youth hostel near Jagjit Nagar village. The chain-smoking young man punching the keys on a rickety Remington intrigued the local people. He started introducing the women to feminist thoughts. “Sometimes he would stay up for weeks as people came continuously to consult him,” said Vimla Devi. 

Under his guidance, the women learnt of a rule that every liquor vendor needs to seek permission from the Gram Panchayat to open a store.
This then led to more active involvement from the women:

The hills were changing. In 1983, Mendhapurkar ended his association with SWRC and started Sutra (Social Uplift Through Rural Action) with rural women as members.
“We told liquor vendors to seek permission of the panchayat members before vending liquor in the neighbourhood,” said Leela Devi, one of the pioneers of Sutra. The panchayat was still under the thumb of the menfolk, and female panchayat members’ role was limited to making tea and pakodas for the male members. Mendhapurkar asked the women to decide if they required a liquor vendor in their neighbourhood. “If not, you should form majority in the panchayat meetings and convey your opposition through mahila mandalis,” he told them. The women just did that and nixed every attempt to open new liquor shops. “We mobilised all the women suffering from alcoholic husbands and ensured that they formed majority in every panchayat meeting,” said Vimla Devi, who emerged as a prominent anti-liquor crusader. 

Subhash just didn’t stop there. He also looked actively in to the issues faced by the women who were deeply reliant on the mountain lands for their living:

The forest department had been planting thousands of pine trees on the hill slopes to prevent soil erosion. But it was of no help to small women entrepreneurs. “What is good for the forest department is often not useful for women. They want small fruit trees that hold soil, and grass which is good for their cows,” said Mendhapurkar. How to use mountains for social benefit without triggering landslides in the rains was a challenge that pushed him to understand them better. Now he visits the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, to deliver an annual lecture in December. According to Mendhapurkar, since women control the rural economy in the Shimla Hills, and since they benefit from forestry, the Shimla-Kassauli region of the Shivalik ranges should be utilised for female health and their economy. 

Subhash then went ahead and introduced the concept of water harvesting to help women manage water resources better. The association started by him, Sutra, became immensely popular. After focusing on these livelihood issues, Subhash then turned to healthcare and micro-credit to make them more independent:

“Denied care and affection, and always illiterate, these women did not know how to improve their condition,” he said, narrating a campaign he began in the mid-1980s for single women. It is known as Ekal Naari Shakti Sangathan or simply ‘ekal’ in the hills. 

Hearing of the campaign in the hills, women from all over Himachal Pradesh sent requests for similar help. In Hamirpur and Una districts, a large number of single women were HIV+ thanks to their husbands who were migrant workers. In April this year, around 3,000 single women from rural Himachal marched to Shimla, and Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal promised them that the rural single women would get free treatment for all ailments in government hospitals. “We want respect for single women of Himachal villages. We should not be treated differently,” said Nirmal Chandel, leader of Ekal. By 2009, Ekal will launch its pan-Indian avatar.

The impact of all that Subhash has done is there for everyone to see. The article says:

The impact of Mendhapurkar’s work is best felt in the way the sex ratio in Solan district has stabilised at 940 females to 1,000 males, which was much lower earlier. 

Truly, what Subhash has managed to achieve is a lot and beyond what can be put in words in a single article. And of course, the hills have changed. The Better India salutes the spirit of Subhash Mendhapurkar and all his associates who helped bring about this change.

Read the complete article which covers the initial days of Subhash and how he managed to bring about these transformations.

Image courtesy: Arvind Jain of The Week.

Act Now For The Better India.

When you think of eye care and restoration of sight, the first thought that comes to mind is of Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai and its founder Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy. The largest single provider of eye surgery in the world, Aravind has given sight to more than a million people in India since its inception in 1976. Having perfected the art of treating cataract and other eye problems to the point where any further improvements would necessitate a revolution in the field, the hospital and its team of dedicated surgeons and staff has achieved unimaginable economies of scale. A cataract operation that would cost $1,650 to perform in the US takes them about $10. Harriet Rubin has profiled the life and work of ‘Dr. V’ beautifully in his article published in FastCompany, from which here are a few excerpts:

How do you achieve perfection in the never-perfect and always-compromised world of business? It helps to have a service that you can’t sell. That way, you have to give it away. Your toughest customers are always the people who don’t need you. Many of Aravind’s patients can’t afford cataract surgery. Most don’t remember what good vision is — and don’t understand why it would offer any benefit. So Aravind has to keep educating them — and perfecting its own service.

On a slow day, Aravind treats 400 patients. Offering free services to all who need it, with absolutely no criteria for availing for free service, the hospital still manages a gross margin of 40%. This is despite the fact that almost 70% of its patients paying nothing, and it does not depend on donations or government grants. It has been achieved by constantly cutting costs, increasing efficiency, innovating and building a market. Most of Aravind’s potential beneficiaries are not even aware of such a service or their need for it.

“In the third world, a blind person is referred to as ‘a mouth without hands,’ ” says Dr. V. “He is detrimental to his family and to the whole village. But all he needs is a 10-minute operation. One week the bandages go on, the next week they go off. High bang for the buck. But people don’t realize that the surgery is available, or that they can afford it because it’s free. We have to sell them first on the need.”

Aravind has managed to beat costs in every area of its service: The hospital’s own Aurolab, begun in 1992, pioneered the production of high-quality, low-cost intraocular lenses. Aurolab now produces 700,000 lenses per year, a quarter of which are used at Aravind. The rest are exported to countries all over the world — except to the United States. (In order for Aravind to get its lenses approved for sale in the United States, it would have to pay for an FDA study and a clinical study, which the hospital cannot afford.) Aravind even has its own guest house, and students and physicians from around the world come to teach, study, observe, practice — and boost their training. Poles for stretchers? They’re made from bamboo that grows in Dr. V.’s garden. “We also have the $5 pole, which is bright and shiny,” says Dr. Natchiar, “but we prefer these bamboo poles.”

How many people knew that Dr V had studied to become an obstetrician but a crippling rheumatoid arthritis forced him to take an alternative path. If anything confirms the saying that ‘everything happens for the best’, this would be it. Rubin talks about the passion and leadership qualities of the humble man who has been inspired by Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo, but set his own standards.

You know he knows. He’s an eye surgeon — a man of vision. He has learned how to deliver perfection, and to do it despite crippling obstacles. As a young man, a brand-new obstetrician, he contracted rheumatoid arthritis and watched helplessly as his fingers slowly twisted, fused, and grew useless for delivering babies. So he started over, this time studying ophthalmology. He managed to design his own instruments to suit his hands, and these tools enabled him to do as many as 100 surgeries a day. He became the most admired cataract surgeon in India.

Twenty-five years later, he confronted another potentially crippling obstacle: retirement. In 1976, facing the prospect of social shelving at age 57, he opened a 12-bed eye hospital in his brother’s home in Madurai, India. Today, he runs five hospitals that perform more than 180,000 operations each year. Seventy percent of his patients are charity cases; the remaining 30% seek him out and pay for his services because the quality of his work is world-class. He is a doctor to the eyes and a leader to the soul.

Tossing all market intelligence to the wind, Aravind Eye Hospital has managed to create a huge demand by the quality of its service and the education its customers. This is one of the lessons that Rubin takes away from Aravind:

Give people a new experience, one that deeply changes their lives, make it affordable, and eventually you change the whole world. And your customers become your marketers.

In the end, to get more insight into the ideals of a great man, read Dr. V’s response to Rubin’s question:

I ask Dr. V. a simple question designed to get him to talk about his unique vision: “What are your gifts?” I ask him. Dr. V. replies, “People thank me for giving them sight.” This is no error of translation, no slipup of English. Dr. V. considers his gifts to be the things that he has given others, not what he possesses.

There are many lessons to be learnt from this single man and his shared vision.

Find the rest of the must-read article here.
Image Courtesy: World People’s Blog

Sanitation and clean drinking water are serious issues. And what better way to convey such a serious message than with the help of humorous plays? This is exactly what the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) in Assam has undertaken to spread awareness about their programs and involve the intended beneficiaries.

These plays do not have a written script and adapt to the place where they are staged. They are also enacted with the help of local talent at the particular venue, so as to connect better with the people. Robin Chandra Das, an assistant executive engineer with PHED has conducted several such plays, and talks of its success to Teresa Rehman of Tehelka:

“We have few other staff members who assist me in staging the play. And in any locality, we often go hunting for local talent a few hours before the play is actually staged. We urge the women and children to participate in the play and once it is over, we hold an interactive session on sanitation. The humour in the play manages to strike the right emotional chord,” says Das.

The play also incorporates local dialects and even a few Assamese songs with the sanitation theme keeping the audience hooked. Another scene has a mother walking in with a boy who plays truant. The mother complains, “Earlier he used to skip school complaining of stomachache. But now that I have built a toilet at home with my savings, he cannot play around with the same excuse. Today, I heard something move. I thought that our neighbours had come out to defecate in the open but, instead, I saw my son perched on a tree near the bamboo grove.” She then explains to Jadu’s mother on the benefits of having a toilet at home and how it helps keep flies away.

The plays are a part of Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) – a comprehensive program to introduce proper sanitation facilities in all rural areas with the broader goal of eliminating open defecation practice. In Assam, PHED is responsible for enforcing TSC and ensuring hygienic practices are followed, along with safe drinking water in all schools in rural areas. The government of India has been active in encouraging as well as recognizing their efforts.

The main goal of the GOI is to eradicate the practice of open defecation by 2010. To give fillip to this endeavour, GOI has launched Nirmal Gram Puraskar to recognise the efforts in terms of cash awards for fully covered PRI (Panchayat Raj Instituitions), and those individuals and institutions who have contributed significantly in ensuring total sanitary practices in their area of operation.

In the past two years, Assam has bagged eighteen Nirmal Gram Puraskars. Nareswar Kakati, Secretary, PHED, Assam told TEHELKA, “Our main target is to initiate behavioural change in the people using innovative means, paying special attention to whether they belong to the hilly terrain or the plains” The play is a small step in this direction but the sanitation campaign in Assam still has a long way to go.

The joint efforts of the state and central governments have given a tremendous boost to the sanitation program in Assam, and its results are plain to see. We hope that this serves as a lesson on how co-operation and initiative can help governments and men in power to clean up the country’s act.

Read the complete article here.

Image Courtesy: Ministry of Rural Development

“All the wealth of the world cannot help one little Indian village if the people are not taught to help themselves”

These are some of the words of Swami Vivekananda that inspired a young Dr. Hanumappa Sudarshan to venture into the B R Hills region near Mysore and devote his life to the development of the native Soliga tribe.

The Beginnings:
As a student of Bangalore Medical College, Dr. Sudarshan spent his free time helping the tribals of the Nilgiris with Dr.Narasimhan. And after graduation, he was clear in his mind about the purpose of his life. One day in 1979, he took a solitary bus to the forlorn and perilous B R Hills, and his life changed forever.

Dr. Sudarshan in a tribal village

With the humble beginnings of a small hut on a rock, Dr. Sudarshan started operating his clinic with two staff members. The initial challenge was to find patients, as the sight of new people, especially people with needles and pills, was enough to frighten away the forest dwellers. However, as the doctor and his assistants became a common sight, and did not show any signs of going away, the tribals slowly gave in to their curiosity and began approaching them. It took several ‘miracle’ cures for them to start trusting the medicine man.

The Purpose:
Thus was founded Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK) in 1981 for the improvement of these tribal lives. Once the treatments of Dr. Sudarshan found acceptance among the Soligas of B.R.Hills, tribals from neighbouring villages also started pouring in. Dr. Sudarshan and his team would conduct information sessions in all these small hamlets to educate the local population about their work. The tiny hospital began treating a number of ailments and VGKK’s pioneering work began to show results.

While the medical facility took off and became a huge success, Dr. Sudarshan found from living among the Soligas that only health care did not bring about lasting changes in the lives of these people. They lived in abject poverty and unawareness, and while curative treatment was a necessity, it was not the only one. These people needed a lot more.

Thus VGKK started adapting to the needs of the community and evolving into ways not envisioned in the beginning. It came to focus on 3 more aspects of tribal development – education, empowerment and livelihood support – in order to provide more sustained benefits.

Health Care:
The ‘hut on the rock’ is now a 20-bedded hospital with all necessary infrastructures – laboratory, x-ray facility, operation theatre and a well-stocked pharmacy. This hospital caters to a large population of tribals in the region, including some from neighbouring Tamil Nadu as well, and offers them free treatment. The hospital maintains detailed case records of the tribals, and computerization of these records is ongoing.

The Soligas and other tribals are indigenous forest people and have extensive knowledge of nature cures and medicinal herbs. Dr. Sudarshan decided to nurture this aspect of traditional herbal cure, and incorporate it in his treatments. The medicinal plants have been identified and documented, and are grown separately for therapeutic purposes.

There are several communities of tribals living in very far flung and inaccessible forest areas which cannot be serviced by the BR Hills facility due to the immobility of these people. In the beginning they were served by Dr. Sudarshan with his medicine bags, traveling on foot to reach them. However, now a special mobile health unit comprising of a doctor, a pharmacist/health worker and a driver has been dispatched to visit these areas.

Education:
Looking at the needs of the community, the small hospital hut also started serving as a school at nights.

The School in B R Hills

Starting with a first batch of 6 students, the school has grown to a strength of 500 students, and now offers primary, secondary, high school, college and vocational training.

Dr. Sudarshan realized very early on that it was essential to help these Soliga children learn about their tribal traditions and keep them alive, in order to remain connected to their roots. So, along with studies, the school imparts knowledge on the several plant and animal species that abound in the nearby forests and the children are taught to cultivate vegetables, medicinal herbs, poultry, bees and silkworms.

Care has been taken to ensure that the children who are educated at this school are not left without means of livelihood, and have ample choices in life, which were perhaps not available to their parents.

Three among the first batch of students have completed their post-graduation, with one of them holding a PhD, a remarkable feat indeed. Most of the children who graduate from this school return to the community to help further education and other causes that VGKK stands for.

Vocational Training and Livelihood:
It became evident that primary and secondary education is not sufficient to guarantee a means of livelihood. In order to bridge this gap, the students and other members of the community were taught other skills like tailoring, knitting, spinning, silk, cotton and jute weaving, cane and bamboo works, baking, carpentry,

Vocational Training centre

smithy, agarbathi-making, bee-keeping, handmade paper making and food processing.

The vocational trainings were selected based on the easy availability of indigenous raw materials and to cover all sections of society, whether literate or illiterate. Care has also been taken to divert the Soligas from being completely dependent on the forest and its produce, so as to better conserve their habitat. In order to enable these tribals to generate income with their acquired skills, VGKK set up manufacturing and processing units and employed them. More skilled training programs like welding, motor rewinding and household appliances were started to offer the youth a range of opportunities.

The Vocational Training Centre (VTC) was set up in 1982, and since then has trained more than 700 girls and boys. Most of the trainees have then gone back to their villages and set up their micro-enterprises with the availability of loans.

Community Development:
The Soligas, like other tribes across the country, have been largely exploited by the government and local forest authorities. With no clear land titles and no formal education, it was easy for them to fall prey to scheming outsiders. It was essential to unite all the Soligas across the region, and give them a common voice for their petitions and struggle to be heard. This was accomplished with the organization of Sanghas in every village, which was a group of Soliga representatives, to fight for their rights. Most of their alienated land has been restored to them and Soliga candidates have done well in local elections as well.

The Person:
Dr. Sudarshan is a study in commitment and humility. The recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (1994) and the Padma Shri (2000) among many others, he brushes aside all his achievements with a sweep of a hand and a shy smile, and continues talking about the tasks he still needs to accomplish.

Dr. Sudarshan

Dr. Sudarshan has been Vice-President of the Voluntary Health Association of India, and a member of the Independent Commission on Health in India, the National Commission on Population, the National Nutrition Mission, the National Human Rights Commission, and the Indian Planning Commission’s Steering Group for the development of Scheduled Tribes. As Chairman of the Task Force on Health & Family Welfare he has brought out a comprehensive report to reform the health system of Karnataka. As Ombudsman for Health, Education & Social Welfare, Karnataka Lokayuktha, he is fighting against corruption and promoting good governance to make the public services reach the poor including the tribal people.

Having pioneered the role of public private partnership in the social sector, Dr. Sudarshan manages more than 40 public health centres in Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh and now Orissa, in conjunction with the Government. This is part of a related organization founded by him called the Karuna Trust which focuses on rural development. The largest community health insurance program in India is also run under its aegis, which offers incredible benefits to the poor like insurance at ultra-low premiums of Rs. 30 per annum for wage loss compensation of Rs.50 per day. Such initiatives are what make Dr. Sudarshan the person he is. Greatly inspired by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda and Albert Shweitzer, Dr. Sudarshan emanates urgency of purpose and tranquility of inner peace, both at once.

Contact VGKK and Karuna Trust at:
#686, 16th Main, 4th T – Block Jayanagar
Bangalore – 560011 , Karnataka
Phone : 91-80-22447612
Email :ktrust@vsnl.net
Website: http://www.karunatrust.org/

Read More:
Wikipedia, Right Livelihood Award, The Hindu, Karuna Trust

Not many know that Kerala was the first state to ban smoking in public places way back in 1999. And this had come about by the mantel taken up by a single woman professor, Monamma Kokkad, who had the courage to stand against tobacco giants and smokers’ ire and file a petition for the smoking ban. The historic verdict of the Kerala High Court on July 12, 1999 is the backdrop for the current smoking ban implemented all over India on Gandhi Jayanti.

Monamma looks like an unlikely person to be spearheading an anti-tobacco campaign but this 61-year old retired English professor from Kottayam had enough reasons to. She had been exposed to a lot of “insensitive” smokers during her regular work commutes. On one such occasion, one of her colleagues who was an asthma patient, fainted in the train. Even this did not move the smokers, and Monamma decided to take on the challenge of fighting for the right of the passive smoker. John Mary expresses Monamma’s views in this article in Outlook India:

But what led this affable teacher to take up the cudgels? It was while commuting by train between Kochi and Kottayam that she was exposed to “insensitive” smokers. Recalls Monamma: “The up and down journeys used to be a torture. Men would puff away as if it was their birthright. Some of them couldn’t care less and swirled the smoke at us. There would be just me and three other ladies in the mixed coach. Working women were themselves rare in the ’70s, let alone their trying to take on smokers.”

But what really made her determined to take up the fight later was an incident involving her colleague, an asthma patient, who fainted in the train unable to suffer the smoke. “The people smoking would not stub their cigarettes even after I requested them. That’s when I raised my voice…. Don’t non-smokers have a right to inhale pure air?” she asks.

Monamma had to overcome a lot of barriers in terms of lack of information and support, but she stood her ground and won her cause. In fact, the Kerala ban was so effective that the police claim that only one percent of smokers light up in public places, a number likely to go down further with the national ban. No doubt Monamma breathes easy these days!

See also: Citizen essay on the smoking ban

Read the complete article here.

Image courtesy: Outlook India

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.

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