What role does Rotary play in India, a country of extremes – the super rich and the very poor?
It plays a tremendous role in terms of improving a lot of people who are less fortunate than us. Rotarians are business people, professional people. There are doctors, lawyers, architects, clergy members, university professors, administrators; people from every walk of life are represented in Rotary. In some Rotary clubs you have some of the wealthiest individuals in the community and in other Rotary clubs you have middle class individuals as members. Of course, I am speaking as an outsider so perhaps I have a jaded view of it but in India Rotary helps provide a safety net for those who do not have access to clean water, adequate medical care and other things.
For example, in Vapi in Gujarat, the Rotarians sponsor a hospital and I have toured it once…they do such an amazing work. The Rotary Club of Mumbai mid-town has a project to provide a complete clean water system for the community that is 90 km away from the city. This is a community where women and girls had to walk great distances to bring a few litres of water back home for each and every day. Now that they have the access to clean water, they get more time to care for their families, more time for education and there are great benefits to community and that is just one worry that they don’t have. That is an example of what Rotary can do in a country of great contrasts.
Do more of the privileged need to get involved in social work to correct the imbalance as Indians are not too well known for their generosity in charity?
Well, I don’t know about the statement that Indians are not known for their generosity or charity, but I must admit that my perspective on Indians’ generosity is filtered through my views on Rotary. Most of the Indians who I know are all Rotarians and they are extremely generous. For example, there is a Rotarian in Bangalore named Dakoju Ravishankar and he is the President of his Rotary club and he has given more than Rs 1 billion to the Rotary foundation this year. He has given something like 75 per cent of his wealth to support the work of the Rotary foundation.
hen we have the example of Mrs Birla of the Aditya Birla group who has contributed almost Rs 80 crore for polio eradication. Last Saturday night we were honouring two Rotarians, a father and a son who have given substantial amounts to the Rotary foundation. One of them contributed $2,50,000 and the other $5,00,000 and it is being utilised for funding the illumination project at the museum. So maybe, it is true that Indians as a whole are not generous but the ones I know are generous.
What do you feel are the five biggest issues that ail our country and the best ways to resolve them?
Well, I don’t think it is appropriate for me, as an outsider, to say what ails India. The Indian Rotarians or Indian people need to make those determinations and how to address that. I will support the Rotarians here in this country but I will not say that these are the five greatest issues of the nation. I do know the Rotarians here are working very hard with respect to health issues and eradication of polio. There is an effort across India to support the efforts to provide water, sanitation and hygiene training in schools. The international leader of the Rotary is an Indian Rotarian.
One of the members from Hyderabad just went on to make sure there are enough school desks. These pictures of thousands of school desks put together on a field are going to be donated to the schools and that is the beauty of this organisation. The only corporate project we have is the eradication of polio. All of the other projects are determined by the local Rotarians and we fund them through our Rotary foundation and support them. Those of us in developed countries provide support but now the Rotarians in India are contributing more to support those efforts than they are spending on the projects here in this country.
The Mumbai Rotary Club provides safe drinking water to Aurangabad and Jalna districts and it also runs four municipal schools. We have a project called – ‘Bhavishya Yaan’ and we are in the process of adopting six municipal schools. We work for cancer, we have eye hospitals, three other general medical centres. We also helped the Asiatic Library in the renovation and the preservation of old books. Now, Asiatic Library is completely changed if somebody goes and sees it. So, the need of every place is identified by their own Rotarians.
With India now officially a polio-free country, what is next?
What is next is to complete the eradication in the three endemic countries where it exists. Nigeria is still endemic but there hasn’t been a polio case since August 2016. So, if we can get to August 2019, it will be three years and we should be able to certify Nigeria as polio-free. There are still cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan particularly along the borders between the countries and there have been a few cases elsewhere. That is where the main focus is now and definitely it is a very difficult area to deal with because of the insurgencies there. Our focus is on eradicating polio and to have the environment samples coming back clean so that we can say polio is eradicated from the face of the earth.
Is there a concerted effort to nurture younger generations of Rotarians?
If we are only dealing with senior Rotarians, eventually those senior Rotarians won’t be around any longer. For any organisation to sustain, it has to have a younger generation. So, we must continue to network with younger business or professional people, encouraging them to pay their civic rent and work together in this network that enhances their status not only in the community but also does good for those less fortunate.
