श्रीमान नारायण कृष्णन

ये है भारत के असली हीरो श्रीमान नारायण कृष्णन ! एक भारतीय फ़ाइव स्टार होटल में कार्यरत 

युवक जिसे स्विटज़रलैण्ड में शानदार नौकरी का ऑफ़र मिला था, लेकिन उसी दिन मदुराई मन्दिर 

जाते समय इस युवक ने एक भूखे बेसहारा व्यक्ति को अपना ही मल खाते देखा और वह भीतर 

तक हिल गया, पल भर में उसने उस हजारों डालर वाली नौकरी को अलविदा कह दिया और 

मानवता की सेवा में अपना जीवन होम कर देने का फ़ैसला कर लिया। आज की तारीख में कृष्णन 

रोज़ाना सुबह चार बजे उठकर अपने हाथों से खाना बनाते हैं, फ़िर अपनी टीम के साथ वैन में 

सवार होकर मदुरै की सड़कों पर औसतन 200 किमी का चक्कर लगाते हैं तथा जहाँ कहीं भी उन्हें 

सड़क किनारे भूखे, नंगे, पागल, बीमार, अपंग, बेसहारा, बेघर लोग दिखते हैं वे उन्हें खाना खिलाते 

हैं… यह काम वे दिन में दो बार करते हैं। औसतन वे रोज़ाना 400 लोगों को भोजन करवाते हैं, तथा 

समय मिलने पर कई विकलांग और अत्यन्त दीन-हीन अवस्था वाले भिखारियों के बाल काटना और 

उन्हें नहलाने का काम भी कर डालते हैं।

ऐसे लोग है असली हीरो !!

जय हिंद !

1 man. 1 rupee. 1 check dam

The story of  Re 1 and a dam ‘doctor’

Anil Joshi had a clinic here since 1994 and knew most of the gaonwallahs. “Some of my patients were farmers who obtained 100-200 quintals of food grain during harvesting season but after eight years of meager rains, they were in a very bad situation and had to buy food grain to feed their family,” says 39-year-old Joshi. The situation was so bad that patients couldn’t pay his fee either.

As a resident of Mandsaur, (the district HQ) Joshi has seen better days when rains were sufficient and farmers harvested enough to sustain their families. Things had taken a turn for the worse after 1999 as rainfall began to decrease.In 2008, the village faced its worst drought and water scarcity.
Joshi felt building a check dam across the river Somli would help the villagers, as it would raise the ground water table in the area. However, when he shared the idea with his farmer friends they just laughed it off. But Joshi borrowed about a thousand empty cement sacks from a friend and filled them with sand. He himself stood in the middle of the Somli river with a rope tied around his waist and his friends held the rope on either ends. “Though the river was dry, there was always a stretch where water flowed with a strong current. As I stood in the running water, I could gauge its force and realized what a challenging task I had in my hand. The barrier that we planned to put up across the river had to withstand the force of the water,” he recalls. With the help of a few friends, Joshi put all the sand filled sacks across the river in a row. Within fifteen days, it rained and there was water in the check dam. Meanwhile the hand pumps sputtered a memorable gurgle.
“There was a good crop that year after years of drought,” remembers Joshi.

Recharged at many levels, what does Joshi do next? He sells his wife’s jewels and borrows some money to construct another check dam on the Somli river. 
“Even today when I get involved in the house we are constructing, she (his wife ) motivates me to go and build check dams instead and not worry about our house,” Joshi’s voice beaming with pride. 
In 2010 Joshi hits upon the idea of taking one rupee from each villager for constructing a permanent check dam across the Somli river. He felt such a dam would permanently end the drought situation of the village. Joshi was able to collect Rs 36 in just three hours on day 1. The next day’s collection was Rs 120. However, some people began to question him on his motive - collecting money, why? But positive press coverage played a role here. “After the media wrote about the check dams I had built, more people started to support me,” says Joshi. Two teachers, Sundarlal Prajapat and Omprakash Mehta, extended their support in a big way.

Joshi and his dedicated team collected 1 lakh in three months flat and a permanent check dam was built at a cost of Rs 92000. The villagers voluntarily provided their labor.Following the success at Fatehgarh, Joshi has helped to build eleven more check dams on rivers and ‘nullahs’ (smaller channels of water) in eleven villages within a 10 km radius of Fatehgarh.He now aims to plant trees along the 120 km road to Sawaliya Dham to provide shade for the barefoot pilgrims visiting the Krishna temple there.
And build 100 check dams within a few years. “Constructing check dams by collecting one rupee from each person in a drought stricken village has now become my mission and I will make this effort a continuous process,” says Joshi, who is now becoming known more as a water conservationist and less as a medical practitioner.
 
This story was in partnership with www.theweekendleader.com  

Asia's first woman commercial pilot on literacy mission

BYSamia Kapoor, CNN-IBN

New Delhi: After achieving a successful career in the aviation industry, Asia's first woman commercial pilot Captain Indrani Singh has been molding the lives of many children and women, helping them to be self-sufficient and earn a life of respect. She started the NGO, Literacy India, which is helping more than 25 thousand women and children.

Captain Indrani Singh has a dual existence. As a saviour for the ladies, she built a platform to showcase their handmade products and market them in India and abroad. In her other avatar, she has carve a niche for herself in a male-dominated industry by becoming Asia's first woman commercial pilot.

Captain Indrani Singh says, "During my times there was hardly anyone flying and I was very good at flying. I was a natural flier. I didn't know that I will be making history."

In 1996, Captain Singh started Literacy India, an NGO that empowered the economically poor with education and a variety of vocational activities to provide a sustainable livelihood.

Singh says, "This was my personal mission. I started it back in 1996 with 5 kids and today we have reached out to over 25000 women and children."

A pan-India project, Literacy India today operates from 22 centres. The 'Vidyapeeth' project educates 2500 children while 1300 women are making use of the handicraft skills .

Singh says, "The project is 7 years old and its going great guns. People actually came to me and asked how do these women make such good finishing bags."

After impressing Corporate India, Captain Singh is now devoting her time to make children aware about issues like AIDS, child abuse with her upcoming project called 'Gyantantra'.

Captain Indrani Singh has breached the glass ceiling, literally, by becoming Asia's first lady Wing Commander to fly Airbus 300. With this endeavour, she has changed the lives of children and empowered women over the last decade and there's no stopping this pilot as she chases her dreams to see a literate India.............

To know more about Air History of India ..........PLZ look on http://sgopujkar.tripod.com/id3.html

This Jharkhand farmer spent 14 years digging a 'pond'

Dumka, Apr 29 (ANI): Need is the mother of all inventions, says the old proverb. Today's transformed world has evolved new experiences that modify the old adages too: Denial is the new mother of all inventions. And sixty five-year old Shayamal Chaudhary of Jharkhand proved it right by single-handedly digging a pond in his village with fourteen years of dedicated effort.

A farmer from Vishnu Pur of Kurua village, Sukhjora Panchayat, Shyamal Chaudhary, requested the Block Development Officer to have a pond dug that would fulfil the irrigation requirements of the fields. After filing several applications and visiting the officer many a times, a determined Shayamal lost neither courage nor his farming skills. Instead, he took this denial as a challenge and started digging a pond on his own land.fter fourteen years of continuous hard work, he not only created a pond but gifted it to the community that was going through hard times in the absence of irrigation related facilities.

Here is a person who is an inspiration in an agricultural country like India. He also reminds us of Late Dashrath Manjhi, the mountain man who independently brought down a 360-ft long, 25-ft high hill and created a 16-ft wide pass in place of an almost impenetrable space.

His twenty two years of hard work was inspired by his love, his wife, and got him international acclaim. The Government of Bihar not only awarded his efforts but also gave him a state burial out of respect. Dashrath Manjhi has made a place for himself in history. However, with Shyamal Chaudhary, destiny has played the game of irony as he has not been able to even garner the attention of his neighbouring villages, leave alone the state and the country.

Fourteen years of his life were committed to bringing a change in the lives of the farmers for which he demanded nothing. When Shyamal, a Class Eight dropout, started out, many people taunted him. He simply ignored them and remained focussed on his objective. "I never asked for help," says the farmer who started digging the pond in 1997 and completed it in 2011. The pond, 100x100 metres long and 22 feet deep, now benefits numerous villages in the vicinity: Kuruvaa, Petsar, Margadi,Beltikari, Vishnupur and Baiganthara to name a few.

On his nine bigha of land, Chaudhary produces a variety of vegetables and fruits like potatoes, onions, bananas and mangoes. He then started fish farming in the pond. The increased income is enough for the survival of his four daughters and a son. Quite happy with outcome of his efforts, Chaudhary feels that his life is blessed as the farmers now have a year-long solution to their irrigation woes.

Chaudhary asked the government department to help with a retaining wall and a pump set and pipes for irrigation, but all of his demands have fallen on deaf ears. The Officers did not pay heed, despite being aware of his remarkable achievement. Undeterred, he tried to access the Agriculture Minister Satyanand Jha, which has not produced any positive outcome so far.

When, on the one hand, India's farmers are committing suicides, a few like Chaudhary are willing to find a solution.

The Charkha Development Communication network feels that such successful farmers should be encouraged by the government, which at the moment is woefully not the case in Jharkhand. Chaudhary is nevertheless moving ahead, ready to help his fellow farmers, irrespective of the attitude of the state government towards him.

Like Dashrath Manjhi, Chaudhary is living up to his ideals. He not only interacts with the farmers but encourages them to understand their real strength. Shyamal is delighted to see farmers around him respond to his effort. This is his real award. 

                                                                                           By Shailendra Sinha (ANI)

A Visually-Challenged Student

NOTHING IMPOSSIBLE:

Winner: B. Srikanth, a visually-challenged student, who secured admission in MIT.
A staunch believer in hard work and perseverance, this 17-year-old with his excellent command over English might seem like any other teenage. But, for B. Srikanth, a visually-challenged student, nothing in life came easily. Not even the admission into Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a full fee waiver.

Hailing from Machilipatnam, this son of a farmer completed his schooling from Devnar School for Blind. When he approached an Intermediate college to pursue his plus two in sciences, he was told he couldn’t do that. However, with the help of his mentors from school, he managed to enrol himself in M.P.C in Royal Junior College and finished his Intermediate with an impressive 92.5 per cent.

The success in Intermediate didn’t come easily. “There was no Braille in Intermediate. My teacher Swarnalatha helped me a lot by recording the entire syllabus onto audio tapes,” he says. “I took home tuition only for mathematics as it is not easy to learn this with the help of tapes,” he adds.

“Nothing in this life is impossible,” says this die-hard optimist, “We are not ‘disabled’; we are ‘challenged’. So we have to take this as a challenge and fight back,” he says.

Srikanth’s zeal to learn and reach for the stars was noticed by Ravi Kondapalli, an NRI at a conference ‘Ignite the genius within you,’ held in Indian School of Business. “I had expressed my dream of studying in the USA to Mr.Ravi and he took up the challenge to fulfil my dream,” says Srikanth. With the help of local support from Valmiki Foundation, a city-based NGO, his applications were sent to the top notch universities in the United States. Soon, his application was accepted by MIT which not only gave him admission but also waived the entire fee amount of over 56,000 US dollars.

Srikanth hopes to set his own software firm to employ skilled rural youth. “The biggest hurdle for us rural youngsters is the lack of proper education,” he says. “Primary education is a constitutional right but we are unable to give value to that right,” he adds.

Courtesy :: DVL Padma Priya

TBI Inspirations: Raghu – When Determination Conquers Disability

India is the country with the largest population of beggars in the world – some of them young, some of them handicapped and many of them aged. But a physical disability or age is not necessarily a barrier for people to find work for themselves. Raghu is an example to follow for all of them.

Having lost his legs in his childhood due to polio, and living in a slum area of Ahmedabad with very limited future prospects, Raghu had all the reasons to live an average life of a huge majority of Indians. Instead, he chose to live life differently.

http://www.thebetterindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Raghu-500x427.jpg

Tulsi Project:

Tulsi Project was one of the first initiatives from Raghu, intended to spread love, peace and harmony in the society, something which the Tulsi (Basil) plant symbolizes in the Indian culture. Whenever Raghu came to know about a dispute in any family, he would simply go there and gift them a Tulsi plant. The attempt was to show people a way to resolve the family differences in a peaceful manner and spread love instead of hatred. The project received overwhelming response from not only the receivers of the Tulsi plants but also from philanthropists who extended their hands to support Raghu in his initiative. To date, Raghu has distributed more than 600 Tulsi plants in various houses in Ahmedabad.

“Tyaag Nu Tiffin” (Food of Sacrifice):

Last year, Raghu took up another initiative – Tyaag nu Tiffin – for those among the lesser privileged who are not capable enough to feed themselves. The idea of Tyaag nu Tiffin took birth when Raghu witnessed one such poor old couple and decided to do something for them. The idea played around his mind for about a month but financial constraints held him back. However, he persisted in his efforts, and once Raghu received the seed funding for the initiative, there was no turning back. He quickly made a team of five individuals (one of them handicapped as well) who devoted some time from their everyday lives to deliver hand-cooked meals to some of the most underprivileged people on streets.

Once the word spread about the initiative, monetary and non-monetary help started pouring in from all the sections of the society – NGOs to individuals to NRIs. However, at times, when there is shortage of funds, he himself contributes in order to make sure that the objective is not missed. To date, Raghu distributes about 14 tiffins daily to the needy people.

Inspiration to Abdul Kalam:

Raghu has also attracted a lot of attention from famous personalities, most notably, honorable former President APJ Abdul Kalam. While Raghu was completely amazed by the simplicity of the Missile Man of India, the honorable former President was also very inspired by the story of the courageous young man and more than that by his dream of seeing every women and children of India – HAPPY.

In addition to his own initiative, Raghu also devotes his time and efforts to various other institutions and initiatives like GramShree, MovedByLove, Manav Sadhna, ESI, Yuva Unstoppable, Sabarmati School and so on. His ambition to spread his thoughts as much as possible and do his little to motivate people in their lives is what drives him.

Going ahead, Raghu wants to spread as much love as possible in the society which is more important for him than the project itself. “If I expand the reach of the project, then there will only be project and no love. I do not want that”. His priority is to spend enough time with each and every individual touched by his project and make sure that the beneficiary not only receives food but also well deserved love and sympathy.

For himself and others like him, he proved that one is disabled only till one does not use his/her abilities.

Reference - thebetterindia.com

The Real Hero (The Indian Express- An Initiated by CNN IBN)