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Saturday, February 6, 2010

Daffodils in face of bullets

The Times Of India
04 February 2010

Tarun Vijay

In times of a petty political strife hogging headlines and the very concept of Indian under strain, a great number of dedicated souls are trying to help daffodils - symbolizing friendship - flower in their own way. Naturally, the media's award-winner sirens won't be interested in it. There are people who think they can bring about a change in society through bullets and take up guns killing innocent Indians. But there are many others who choose the placid path of silent devotion and service, helping daffodils of joy flower. They are there in every area of our land, comprising varied religious or spiritual, or even atheist, groups who consider people alone are their God. Here is one unknown chapter from that grand book of sharing the joy which genuinely makes the fibres that weave the Indian fabric beyond boundaries.

Ashok Kukde, a highly qualified medical practitioner, thought of providing the best medical facilities to the poor and disadvantaged in the remote rural area of Latur and with four of his doctor friends started Vivekananda Hospital way back in 1966. It grew wonderfully with local support and developed into a 120-bed superspecialty medical centre providing the best medical help to 50,000 patients every year half the cost other hospitals charge. It was recognized as a postgraduate training centre by the government's National Board of Examination in Medicine. Dr Kukde, an MS in general surgery, is the chief of the RSS organizational network of that region comprising five states and a member of RSS national executive. Surely, he will never get a Padma award.

Shyam Parande told me this story from Tamil Nadu. A woman full-timer, Seva Vrati as they are known, narrated the action in one of the Self Help Groups (SHGs) in Kanyakumari district in which more than 3000 SHGs are being managed by women under Seva Bharati. In a village called Thirparappu, the SHG comprised 18 women members belonging to one particular caste and two members from another caste. Caste divisions in rural areas are distinct and divide society many a time. The caste association wanted the less-represented-caste women to be removed from the SHG. The activists who were running the SHG refused bluntly to budge.

In Kanpur, the grandson of a great RSS leader and a legendary barrister who originally hailed from Kashmir, spent all his profits from business to establish a centre of child empowerment, Vatsalya Mandir, bringing little girls and boys from slums and remote poverty struck villages who would, in many instances have ended up as beggars. He is efficiently but silently running it with facilities for improving English communications skills and training in IT. Having been associated with it, I can guarantee this centre would produce meritorious sportspersons and promising administrative officers.

Recently, Doordarshan, Sahyadri, telecast an inspiring story on the "Samvedna Cerebral Palsy Vikasan Kendra", an organization working for Cerebral Palsy in Maharashtra recognized for its efficacy by the central government. In Assam, more than 5000 healthcare centers are being run efficiently with a thousand bare-foot doctors, called Arogya Rakshaks, comprising a large number of women medical-help providers. In more than one instance, they have saved the lives of patients in dire need of immediate primary medical care. At the all-India level there are more than 5,000 bare-foot doctors providing basic and primary medical help to rural folks in times of emergency. They are all trained in primary healthcare and work voluntarily, not getting any salary. "To serve humanity is to serve God" is their slogan, as was said by Dr Hedgewar, the RSS founder.

A Pune centre Seva Vardhini is efficiently running several service projects in education, child rights and gender equality under a young IAS officer Ravindra Wanjarvadkar, who resigned as district collector to devote more time to social empowerment. When I was in Pune this Republic Day, I met a young activist, Kshipra Vaidya, who was working among the dyslexic children educating parents and training teachers. She was a student leader in ABVP, and chose this field as her career after marriage. Similarly Mohan Rao Ghaisas, an RSS chief of the area, working among tribal farmers under an organization Suyash, formed 168 self-help groups to encourage water harvesting and bio-farming, making them get many times more yield per acre and improving their economic status.

Rashtriya Seva Bharati affiliate groups number many thousands.In a global record making effort, RSS-inspired workers have spread centres of literacy and social values to more than 27,041 centres called 'One Teacher, One Schools' (Ekal Vidyalayas) catering to 7,53,123 students (as on January 2010) in remote rural areas who would otherwise have no access to schooling. In the formal education sector, Vidya Bharati is running 25,000 schools in virtually every corner of the land with student enrolment crossing an astounding figure 2.5 million - all under one federal structure enabling a pan-Indian vision strengthened in times when fragmentation pays political dividends.

In Aurangabad, a 150-bedded hospital, Dr Hedgewar Rugnalaya, was established to commemorate the birth centenary of the RSS founder in 1989. It provides medical help, almost at negligible cost to more than 600 patients daily and has 35 highly qualified doctors and surgeons like Dr Tupkari and Dr Diwakar Kulkarni on its rolls. But its specialization stretches to another facet too: treating the caste-ridden social malaises and hence it runs several mobile medical help and literacy centres in slum areas of the city where doctors' groups go and teach little kids , giving a message of social harmony and powering voices against caste -based discrimination. Only slum area medical help is received by 1.5 lakh patients every year. Lahuji Vastad Salve, a great social reformer from the so-called untouchable class, is their ideal and the trust running the hospital is named after Dr Ambedkar.

From Jodhpur to Leh and Chitrakoot to Indore and Vizag to Mangalore and Dimapur and the border posts touching Moreh and Dibang valley, such inspiring stories are scattered exuding fragrance of one India, one people and one spirit to serve without any discrimination on religious or caste or parochial lines.

Nanaji Deshmukh, an RSS worker, established a new paradigm in rural self-help, education and empowerment in Chitrakoot, inspiring many a President and top entrepreneurs like Ratan Tata and Ramnath Goenka.

An MTech from IIT (Powai), Anil Vartak, is helping coordinate all service projects numbering more than 1.5 lakh all over India while a postgraduate in science, Kripa Prasad Singh, works with a thousand youth force in Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, that includes women workers in a large numbers, among the tribal segments from Arunachal to Western Ghats and Andamans to Spiti, monitoring and helping 14,000 projects in areas of education, entrepreneurial development and medical help.

One of the brief info sheets of Rashtriya Seva Bharati, the umbrella organization of 400 various service trusts and societies, has listed a bit modestly, several of its works in simple tables. The following one, for example, lists its works in the health sector:




More than 1.5 lakh service projects can’t go waste, and if we also add the efforts of many other organizations working in their own way, through their different methods and policy inputs, the number of such efforts may run into millions. And remember, most of them are not funded by the government. Collectively, aren’t we all working to make India a better place to live? But then, to see it, we must turn our attention from Delhi’s murky headline making tribe.


That’s India, my dear. And not the hate-spreader extremist missionaries.

1 comment:

Pagan said...

Inspiring stories of Seva - in the best traditions of Bharat. Thank you, Tarunji.