Untold Stories - 3

This time, I thought I would mention about a lady, whom I met over 4 years ago. She is no Govt. official, no celebrity, not a freedom fighter either, but a simple house hold woman who wished to do her bit to the society.

I visited Missionaries of charity located near Clock tower, Secunderabad that time. There I saw a motherly treatment given by the sisters to the underpreviliged children. Most of the children were orphans. A few among them were handicapped, mentally retarded, paralyzed. I wondered for a minute what was wrong with them to be born that way. One child wasn't able to speak or walk or to that matter even think. The child just sat all the time in a small chair, without even a word, which moved me very much. I thought I could help her. But, I didn't know what to do.

The sister over there showed me their campus. I was very very surprised when she introduced me to a lady who is the tuition teacher over there. The special thing about this lady is that she has been visiting the organization every day since years. I had a very brief chat with her.

She said that she comes there every day except Sunday. I asked what's so special about Sunday.. with an expectation that she would be answering that she is busy or she wanted to spend at least one day completely with her family. But I was simply shocked when she said "I wanted to come even on Sunday but then since the kids will be taken to Church and then in the evening they will go here and there to play. So .. since they are not available anyway, I don't come."

She teaches almost all subjects up-to class 8. I asked her how she remembers all she studied till now. Her reply was "see.. did we forget our ABC now also? In a similar fashion, I don't forget the other laws as well".

I was eager to know how she manages both her family as well as the organization. Isn't it difficult - I asked. She responded back saying "It needs a litttttttle planning. With that, its very easy. Every additional mark these children score makes me come back everyday. See .. this girl whom I'm teaching to, right now... ask her how much she got in Maths?" I asked and she said "85". Wowwww.

The lady continued.. "We do a lott of things to our children. I feel why not we do the same thing to these kids also?" Now I had no wonder how she's managing things. It's because she felt that teaching these children is also her responsibility.

The lady when leaving home told the sister that it's exams time for an 8th standard kid and she needs some help in Maths. Hence, she would be coming back the next day morning and clarifying her doubts. Guess whats the next day was??? Its a Sunday. :-)

Untold Stories - 2

My respect and love towards Bengali's (okay, Didi is an exception for following the coalition dharma word by word, letter by letter :P) has reached saturation after reading about PC Mahalanobis.
In a country of >1 bn people, statistics and surveys matter a lot to ensure planned development and formulating correct policies for economic growth. Without these metrics, which policies to formulate, what to do etc. will only be too confusing and adhoc. For all this to be done, there needs to be a system in place and the person who raised the pillars for such a system in India is Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis.

Mahalanobis graduated in Physics at Presidency College, Calcutta in 1912 and then finished Tripos at King's college, Cambridge. Then, he has returned back to Calcutta and started analyzing university exam results and some metrological problems. In 1922, when Bengal was hit by bad floods, he turned his attention on analysis on the past 50 years' rains and floods. Based on this analysis, he suggested a low cost plan to drain flood water contrasting with the views of many experts, but when implemented was found fruitful and workable. His surveys on crop cutting for agricultural production are still relevant because of their design. He succeeded in proving that sometimes survey results do exhibit a pattern similar to complete enumeration.
After Independence in 1947, there was a clear need for establishing a fundamentally pure statistical system for ensuring socio-economic development of India. Professor Mahalanobis was appointed the Honorary Statistical Advisor. Later this resulted in forming an independent National Sample Survey Organization(NSSO) in 1970. Now, I think, you would recollect the ad's coming on televisions these days requesting the public to co-operate with NSSO members coming to their houses. And that is this same organization. As a member of the Planning Commission, he contributed greatly to India's five year plans that resulted in faster Industrialization. Impressed by his models, then Prime Minister's of China and Vietnam have sent their country's statisticians to get trained under him.
Mahalanobis had a four step strategy - the statisticians should first analyze and extract results of properly designed surveys. The results should be used for selecting suitable development schemes. During implementation, the work being done has to be evaluated if it's meeting it's preset goals. Finally, corrections are to be done wherever the works are not meeting the goals. This same strategy of implementing schemes is relevant even today.
As a respect to this great man, the Government of India decided to celebrate his birthday, 29th of June, as Statistics Day. If you heard of a premier Institute in Calcutta - Indian Statistical Institute, Mahalanobis is the founder of it. He established this in 1931.

Untold Stories - 1

I've been thinking for a while about what my next post should be about. And then I got this idea about creating awareness about people, movements in history etc. which have brought in a significant change to Indians and India. As part of it, I thought I should write about some untold Indian stories which most of us do not know about and bring some limelight to them. With this post, let me talk about Dr. Verghese Kurien, the milkman of India.

Dr. Kurien, also known as the Father of white revolution of India, is the man who is the backbone behind the success of our country's largest dairy development program. Born in Kerala, he went to US to finish his Masters, returned back to India and joined Dairy Department of the Govt. of India. As part of this, he was posted as an Engineer in a milk factory at a city called Anand in Gujarat. This is the time when a lot of farmers were facing a survival battle with a private giant in that field. Enthused by the challenge, Dr. Kurien left his job to join Shri Tribhuvandas Patel to set up a milk processing plant. At a time where people with hundreds of cattle can only succeed in the business, he chose to gather farmers even with one or two cattle to create a model where these small people can get profitable however small their produces were.The model allows them to be the owners of the dairy, elect representatives themselves to manage societies and employ professionals to operate the dairy. Impressed by this technique, then Prime Minister of India Lal Bahadur Shastri created a special board which would replicate the same methodology throughout the country. Dr. Kurien was chosen to be the chairman of the board. With his hard work and great execution he brought smiles to 30 Lakh farmers from 16,000 villages in Gujarat producing 90 lakh litres of milk every day. And this organization is none other than the famous Anand Milk Union Limited, AMUL :-)