A Miracle in a thirsty Indian village

January 23, 2009
Text: Shobha Warrier | Photograph Courtesy: Ram Krishnan
Article Link : Rediff News

It was Pongal with a difference for Ram Krishnan, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, who spent it in Vilathikulam, a village in Tamil Nadu.

Vilathikulam in Ramanathapuram district is one of the driest regions in the state. On an average, it receives only nine days of rainfall in a year.

But the parched village has seven million litres of water in three ponds today, thanks to Ram Krishnan's efforts.

His involvement with Vilathikulam started four years ago. Today, the villagers are like his family. In fact, he had invited many of them to the Pan IIT conference in Chennai in December and also arranged rural visits for the alumni, hoping to motivate some of them into working for the betterment of poor Indian villages.

Ram Krishnan, 62, migrated to the United States over 30 years ago and lives with his family in St Paul, Minnesota.
Like most IIT graduates, he opted for a well-paying job abroad after finishing his studies. But the severe water shortage in IIT-Madras forced him to realise the gravity of the problem. He was reminded of his childhood days when his mother had to wake up at 3 am everyday to collect the limited water supplied by the municipal corporation in Chennai.

Dr Sekhar Raghavan, a physics professor, started a door-to-door campaign in some residential areas in Chennai to popularise the concept of rainwater harvesting. He convinced over 500 homes, industries and charitable institutions to implement rainwater harvesting programmes.

When Ram Krishnan learnt of Dr Raghavan's efforts, he got in touch with the professor and the duo formed the Akash Ganga Trust, a citizens' action group comprising 10 persons who harvested rainwater in Chennai. Ram Krishnan, the president of the North America IIT Alumni Association, became the overseas coordinator of the project.
He invested Rs 4 lakh (Rs 400,000) to set up a model house called the Akash Ganga Rain Centre to create awareness about rain water harvesting.

Ram Krishnan admits that he didn't venture out to villages to spread awareness about rain water harvesting as there were no comfortable hotels for him to stay. But his attitude changed after he paid a visit to a village in Gujarat, which had been devastated by the January 26, 2001 earthquake. Ram Krishnan and many of his friends raised money to rebuild the village.

Four years ago, Ram Krishnan, along with 17 of his friends from US, went on a five-day trip to the Tamil Nadu countryside. After travelling through many dry villages, they realised that Ramanathapuram and Thoothukudi were the driest places in Tamil Nadu.
Ram Krishnan chose to start his work in Vilathikulam. "Everybody warned me that nothing grows in Vilathikulam. I was wasting my time there as it rains only nine days a year," he says.

Today, Vilathikulam has donned a new look. The villagers have collected 7 million litres of water in three ponds, which can be used for agricultural purposes, drinking as well as shared with three villages nearby.

Ram Krishnan plans to clean the water, collect in it 20 litre cans and ferry it to other villages in a bullock cart! Vilathikulam has sufficient water supply till the next monsoon.

Ram Krishnan has also started a community centre -- the Bharatiyar Community Centre -- for the villagers, where farmers are taught various things including organising health camps, Self Help Groups, improving agricultural production etc. IIT engineer-turned-farmer R Madhavan is helping him in this endeavour. At the centre, farmers also try out the methods adopted by Madhavan for first-hand knowledge of new agricultural methods.


Ram Krishnan visits Vilathikulam four times in a year to check on the work done by villagers. "It is worth a million dollars to see a smile on the face of a child or an old woman. When they welcome you, a total stranger, like a part of their family, you feel so happy," he adds on an emotional note.
Recalls Ram Krishnan, "On December 22, after the PAN IIT conference, we took a group of people to many villages including Madhavan's village. Madhavan's efforts touched one IITian's heart so much that he wrote to me. He wanted to help a village."

He urges the youth to "reach out and understand Indian villages."

"It is simple. You don't need a Tata or Birla to help a village, even one person can do that. We need many, many people to change the face of Indian villages. Youngsters do not have to wait till their hair turns grey," he says.

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He made Chhattisgarh's right to know affordable

Ejaz Kaiser
Raipur
Hindustan Times January 7th

OF THE 28 Indian states, Chhattisgarh, created only in 2000, has scored well on several counts of governance. So much so that then the ruling BJP govornment returned to power in the recent Assembly lections, political observers called it a vote for good governance. The real hero of good governance, however, in this tribal, impoverished state is the Right to Information Act (RTI), which is being used by ordinary citizens and activists to make the government accountable for its actions. And driving that transformation is Prateek Pandey Among Pandey's achievements is an expose of irregularities on part of the state's Public Service Commission in conducting its examination and evaluating candidates applying for jobs. The disclosures through the RTI Act, which translated into a petition before the court, forced the state to suspend commission chairman Ashok Darbari, its secretary Manohar Pandey and Examination Controller D.E Kashyap. The exam system was overhauled. Pandey has since been consultant to over 500 clients, helping some to write RTI applications and following up for others. He has trained over 1,600 government officials on the Act, organised 65 workshops for Civil Society Organisations and contributed to the national discourse on RTI. He has also founded a network of RTI activists, the Chhattisgarh Citizen's Initiative. The Act, he said, is promoting a culture of accountability and transparency in Chhattisgarh. "As elsewhere, the Act infused some fear among officials. We struggled on various fronts after the Act was implemented owing to hostile reactions from babus," he said. The first strong resistance Pandey met from officials was when he challenged the "suppressive" state order that discouraged the use of the Act the state started charging applicants Rs 100 per page for any query sought. When Pandey questioned the Rs 100-per-page diktat, he said officials gave him wrong information and misguided him. Dissatisfied with the answer, when Pandey approached the higher appellate authority for redressal, officials questioned his ability to understand the law. "Don't teach us rules," Pandey said he was told. He was relentless in his campaign though, and the state scrapped the Rs 100per-page order eight months after it was passed, making it affordable for people to benefit from what was meant to serve them. change@hindustantimes.com

Link : http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/Default.aspx?selpg=2803&BMode=100&selDt=01/08/2009

Young medicos offer succour toflood-hit Bihar

Jaya Shroff BhalIa & Neha Bhayana
New Delhi/Mumbai, Hindustan Times

ON BEING denied permission to work in flood-rayaged Bihar last year, 18 young doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences took unpaid leave and joined many other volunteers, ensuring that the state survived the flood of diseases that followed the calamity. With no funds from the government or sponsors, the doctors - between 25 and 30 years - used their own money to travel and work in Bihan Many of them ventured to flood-ravaged parts where locals and senior doctors refused to go. "We were needed there. As a doctor, I knew of the dangers that lurk in flood waters, from cholera to jaun- dice and typhoid," said Dr Kumar Harsh, a cancer specialist, who spent a week in Bihar's Sapaul district. Someone, he felt, had to set an example, and his sentiment found echo among young doctors across the country Maharashtra alone accounted for 70 doctors, including nine from Mumbai's KEM Hospital. Dr Ravikant Singh, a second-year preventive and social medicine student at KEM, spent four months in the districts of Saharsa, Supaul and Madhepura - the worst hit by the floods that killed 530 people and displaced 33.56 lakh people. "I was scared of losing the year as we were officially allowed to go only for 15 days, but I stayed on. How could a doctor turn away?" said Singh. His classmate Dr Chan- drakant Patil died after being struck by lightning in Supaul, but he and the other doctors did not rush back to safety "I am glad help reached the flood-hit areas in time. If we had relied completely on the state government, we probably would have had not one but many epidemics," said Dr Harsh. With absolutely no help from the state or central government, these doctors set up health clinics in districts with non-existing health infrastructure. change@hindustantimes.com VOLUNTEER DOCTORS They took unpaid leave, spent their own money to travel and work in Bihar

Link : http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/ArticleImage.aspx?article=07_01_2009_008_005&mode=1

MBA topper's pushcart is full of vegetables - and a dream

Patna: It may come as a shock to many that after topping the elite Indian Institute of Management (IIM), he opted to sell vegetables on the rough streets of this city. But then Kaushalendra is a man on a mission.

He is not moving around with his loaded pushcart to earn a livelihood but to make his home state, Bihar, the vegetable hub of India.

Kaushalendra, who is in his late 20s, is an IIM-Ahmedabad graduate of the 2007 batch. He could, like his peers, have chosen to sit in the plush air-conditioned premises of a top MNC like his peers. But he is roughing it out instead.

"I am here to do something. It was my childhood dream to contribute to the development of rural Bihar," he told IANS.

"I have opted to make vegetables the new brand of Bihar," Kaushalendra, the native of a village in Nalanda, which happens to be the home district of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, told IANS.

Clad in a simple shirt and trousers, the bespectacled youth is popularly known as the "MBA sabziwalla" among his loyal customers, particularly women in the Kankarbagh colony, a middle class locality.

Hailing from a farmer family himself, he started his venture about 10 days ago.

After passing out of IIM-A, he did extensive fieldwork, meeting farmers, studying cultivation techniques and finally taking a bank loan of Rs.4 million to start the project.

"Till date the response has been better than expected," Kaushalendra said, well aware of the attention he attracts.

Unlike other vegetable vendors, he is minutely studying consumer behaviour as he goes along. "It is important for me to study consumer behaviour when they purchase vegetables from my pushcart to help prepare a blueprint of expansion," he said.

Kaushalendra recalled that after doing his MBA, he along with some of his friends and teachers from IIM-A developed a pushcart to make it easy for vendors to carry a vegetable load of up to 200 kg.

His pushcart is made of fibre with an attached weighing machine, is ice cooled to keep vegetables fresh for up to five days, and sold under the brand name of 'Samridhi'.

"Initially, there was only one pushcart for trial but now I have already ordered 50 more. It will go up in the next phase," he said.

He plans to take Samridhi, launched by his NGO Kaushalya Foundation, across the country and abroad within five years. His vegetables are priced slightly lower than those sold by other vendors.

"I am confident that all major players in the vegetable market, including Reliance Fresh, will purchase from us in the next five years," Kaushalendra said.

In a bid to establish direct links with vegetable growers or farmers, Kaushalendra has tied up with over 250 vegetable growers in different villages in Nalanda and Patna districts.

He has also tied up with the Agriculture Training and Management Agency (ATMA) to take his dream to vegetable producers in different parts of state.

Kaushalendra said Bihar has an enormous untapped potential for vegetables. The vegetables produced in fertile land near the Ganges river can mark a turnaround for the state if marketed properly.

"It will assure better returns to growers," believes Kaushalendra.

It was not east for him to take to his pushcart selling vegetables as his family members initially opposed the idea and wanted him to go for a job with a fat salary and perks.

But here he is today, dreaming big and chasing his dream too. IANS

Link : http://indiaedunews.net/In-Focus/July_2008/MBA_topper's_pushcart_is_full_of_vegetables_-_and_a_dream_4928/

All aboard the learning train

Alok Kumar, Hindustan Times
Email Author
Gaya (Bihar), January 06, 2009

Pramod, Pradeep and Santosh were all hawkers, selling groundnuts, gram or books on local trains in and around Gaya. They were illiterate and had no means of studying. All these boys are matriculates today. Pramod and Pradeep have their own book kiosks, while Santosh has started a sweet shop.
Another such person, Niranjan Prasad alias Ganauri, has landed a job as a peon at Magadh Gramin bank. Praveen Manjhi, who was a matriculate, had no job. He has now completed his intermediate course and hopes to become a teacher.

They are among the 700-odd children and adults of various age groups, who were either totally illiterate or had given up their studies mid-way owing to poverty and ignorance. Today, all of them are educated and look at the future with hope.
And, all this has been possible because of one man, Vishwanath Vishwakarma, a teacher by profession, presently on deputation at Jethian High School as Principal in-Charge.

His big idea: Start a mobile school to provide education to poor children on trains running between Gaya and Munger. He began his mission 17 years ago, in 1991.

Vishwakarma has developed his own syllabus, comprising 11 chapters, which take the kids through a journey to make them aware of the nation, their rights, dignity of labour and self-betterment.

He started training hawkers on the Gaya-Kiul section, at his own cost. His best companion is wife Sudha Kumari, a government employee at Hasua, who also extends financial assistance.

“It is education based on human values and the syllabus has nothing to do with traditional education,” he told Hindustan Times.

Vishwakarma teaches his students about human rights, how to get certificates about social status, claim welfare funds for below poverty line (BPL) people and manage a balanced diet.

It also teaches them 11 fundamental rights and basics of welfare schemes of the government and how they operate. The children and elders, once taught, carry the message forward.

Earlier, posted at Gaya Zila school as a teacher, he had to travel to Nawada in local trains. This provided him the opportunity “closely feel” the problems being faced by hawkers owing to ignorance of fundamental rights, government-sponsored welfare schemes and other facilities. The mission is not restricted to hawkers on trains only. Vishwakarma has started imparting training to those involved in stone-crushing and street children.

A team from National Open School (NOS), which visited Gaya to meet him, was so impressed, that it is now fashioning a similar course for indigent children in other states.

Vishwakarma is spreading his wings. He has formed an NGO, Vishwa Kala Manch, to take his mission forward. He has also been entrusted with the responsibility by Nawada district magistrate Yogendra Bhakt to look after the functioning of the 82 recently started Bal Shramik Vidyalayas.

Article Link : http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=a095cda5-97d2-4bf2-b62a-74d95d312c32

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its all about doing it yourself, and this page , i hope, is going to be somewhere i post all the articles which i think are describing people who have taken the first step and done things their way. this is the least i can do for them.

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