The most peculiar thing in the world is in the simple actions or ideas. Most of the persons, actions and objects around us appears to be simple to us but are they? Let's take actions, all of us may agree on what must we ought not to do or what must we ought to do but we have our own limits. Interestingly, We accept it as the limitation set by the tradition of society and the environment around us. But we fail to accept the limitation set by ourselves i.e. how much strength do we carry to overcome such limitations. We are born as similar human beings but there are those, who by their actions and potential break such barriers and we know them as stars. I had an opportunity to meet some of them during an event in Delhi last week. They are common people like you and me but are different in the sense that they posses higher potential to cross the economic and social barriers and they were proven. I am fortunate to share their stories over here:
1. Jaipur Rugs (http://www.jaipurrugsco.com/) : Mr. N. K. Choudhary, the man behind this successful company, is a graduate from some university in Rajsthan. He belongs to a scheduled category and as he shared his experiences, he, his family and his community was treated as untouchables in the earlier part of his life. He had to take his father's shoe shop to begin his career but he saw a business opportunity in the rug business because there were skilled people in the field yet they lack the supply chain etc. to get the remunerations. From the scratch, he took the company to current status.During our interaction, he shared some of his failures as well. He lost all his earning till date twice during his career but he considers these as the part of the business and both of the time he came up with new strategies to take the company to new apogee. He was once frightened by some established businessmen to sell the company but it was his potential to take the risk and move further. His simplistic life and right attitude towards business say a lot about potentiality of rural India and backward to be the successful entrepreneurs if they are given opportunities.
2. Goonj (http://goonj.org/): Anshu Gupta belongs to a family full of Engineers but he is running an NGO called Goonj dedicated to help unprivileged class of society while keeping their integrity and self-pride alive which is missing in most of the social work including the governmental schemes. He considers it a bad practice to distribute free facility to people while they have the capability to earn that. Our interaction with him was full of sentiments and energy as he shared some of the most positive and negatives of the society. Let me give you an example: There is a class of people in the parts of Bihar, WB, Odisha and UP called Musahar (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musahar) whose life is totally dependent on hunting rats across the fields. As you know, rats eat less but take grains to their hole, these people hunt for rats and take grains to survive. They have been deprived of economic and social needs from centuries, Goonj involves such deprived communities across the country for their social and economic upliftment by various campaigns like "cloth for work" (
http://www.goonj.org/Cloth.for.Work.for.web.march.2011.pdf) and "school to school"(
http://goonj.org/S2S.for.web.march.2011.pdf).
3. Aravind Netralaya (http://www.aravind.org/ http://www.youtube.comwatch?v=3cjnNPua7Ag):
Aravind Eye Hospital was founded in 1976, by Dr. G. Venkataswamy.
In an eleven bed hospital manned by 4 medical officers, he saw
the potential for what is today, one of the largest facilities in the
world for eye care. Over the years, this organization has evolved into a
sophisticated system dedicated to compassionate service for sight.
The Aravind Eye Care System now serves as a model, for India,
and the rest of the world. They also invented the new methods of making lens (which are implanted after the operation of
Motiyabind) that is 1000 times more cheaper than the replacement of its earlier version. Here is a quote of Dr. G. Venkataswamy:
"Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must also be the joy
of doing something beautiful. Being of service to God and humanity means
going well beyond the sophistication of the best technology, to the
humble demonstration of courtesy and compassion to each patient."
There are many such success stories resulted from the passionate people across the world.Here is a great innovator and designer who is an electrical engineer as well:
 |
| Handpump's mechanical energy to electrical energy |
Most of those were stories, stories with messages and inspirations and a common man of this country can look himself into these heroes as they belong to all parts of society. We need to expand our limits by continuous practice to lead a meaningful life of ours as well as the society where we are now part of a small chunk of privileged class. Things are around us to be inspired and to be frustrated both, it is up to us to choose one or not to choose at all :)
Signing off
Deepoo Kumar
