'If you want to serve mankind, go and work among the poorest and most neglected' (Ruskin Bond) - This is one and only final truth and there is no alternative to it. Either you'll have a poor pathetic life in these filthy remote villages without electricity, water, lots of problems, and a great vision of uplifting mankind who actually need it or a nice rich life in a developed metro city, and big dreams of uplifting status.
I am no one to comment if either is great, but it's just a trade-off between comfort of our body or our soul and sadly both are mutually exclusive. The ball is always in our court, and we've to move.
Few out of millions dare to follow the soul, and when they use their hard-earned skills to serve millions instead of earn millions, they're called crazy people, as Sri Aurobindo rightly points out - "Perhaps you know what ordinary men say of an extraordinary view, an extraordinary endeavour, an extraordinary ambition. To them it is madness; only, if the madman is successful in his work then he is called no longer a madman, but a great genius. But how many are successful in their life's endeavour? Among a thousand men, there are five or six who are out of the ordinary and out of the five or six one perhaps successful. Not to speak of success, I have not yet even entirely entered my field of work. There is nothing then for you but to consider me mad."
Here are stories of few such mad people who always remained out of public glare and kept doing things that console their soul than comfort to their body.
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Dr Ravindra Koelhe, MD, lives and runs a clinic in Melghat, Maharashtra. His fee is Rs 2 for the first consultation and Rs 1 for the second.
Not only is he a doctor and social worker, Dr Koelhe has also taken the government to court for having failed in its duty to protect the Korku tribals of the region.After completing his MBBS, he worked in Melghat for a year-and-a-half only to realise that he needed more expertise to handle the problems of the tribals. So he went back to medical college for an MD in preventive and social medicine.
"I have now been here for 24 years. In those days there were two public health centres and no roads. Once a week, I used to walk 40 kms from Dharni to Bairagarh to reach my clinic. I used to see at least one tiger every month. Since the last three years I haven't seen a single one," he says remembering his early days as a young doctor. After completing his MBBS from Nagpur University, he decided to work in rural India. An ardent follower of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave, he was also influenced by Ruskin Bond who wrote, 'If you want to serve mankind, go and work among the poorest and most neglected.'He toured the rural areas of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and decided that Gadricholi in Maharashtra was the most backward amongst his travels and decided to work there. His mother discouraged him since it was a Naxalite affected area. She told him that Melghat was equally backward and that he should work here instead.Dr Koelhe has been in Melghat since then. It has been 24 years now.
Melghat means the place where mountains meet. It lies on the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border and is easily one of the most beautiful places in the country, its greenery only broken by the brightly coloured clothes of the Korku tribals who have made these mountains their home.But the region's beauty is overshadowed by its hostile terrain. Its infrastructure is deplorable. The roads are pathetic, the only way one can access its remote villages is in rugged four-wheel jeep.
Melghat's problems are far too many. There is no power for miles, new power lines are discouraged because this a designated tiger reserve. Though the tiger is rarely spotted here, the so-called presence of the tiger has contributed to the total neglect of this region.
The poor tribals live off the land. They cultivate their small patch of fields on the incline of the mountains. There is no irrigation system and no wells because there is no power to pump the water.In this wilderness, Dr Koelhe has stayed on to alleviate the misery of the tribals.
He feels Melghat is a socio-economic problem, which needs to be dealt with holistically. "We as doctors can look after them when they fall sick, but there are other shortcomings that have to be addressed like education, skill enhancement and assured economic activity through out the year.""When I came here the infant mortality rate was close to 200 per 1,000 babies. Now it is 60. In Kerala it is 8 and in rural India 9. We have to bring it down to the national level. That is why I have filed a public interest litigation in the Mumbai high court."Discussing the case, he says, "We have filed our affidavits. Now the government has to reply. They don't file a reply for months together. Who can do anything? We want to sit down and discuss the problem and solution, but they don't want to sit with us. We cannot force them."
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"What we need is awareness. There are 400 schemes to look after the tribals from the womb to the grave, but the tribals don't even know what these schemes are. And those who know are not interested in implementing them," says Dr Koelhe resignedly.The tribals have to be provided with safe drinking water and need well stocked ration shops in every village. "The agricultural board is closed. It has to start again. Irrigation facilities to store water are needed and tribals have to be taught the use of fertilizers and pesticides.""The best thing the government has done here is to open more than 300 schools. In those days there were no teachers. The even better thing that the government did was to introduce Korku text books in 1985. Now primary education is in the Korku language. This has gone a long way in making the tribals literate and given them confidence to attend school."
link : http://mobile.rediff.com/news/slide-show/news/20090817/slide-show-1-extraordinary-indians-ravindra-koelhe
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हो गई है पीर पर्वत-सी पिघलनी चाहिए,
इस हिमालय से कोई गंगा निकलनी चाहिए।
आज यह दीवार, परदों की तरह हिलने लगी,
शर्त लेकिन थी कि ये बुनियाद हिलनी चाहिए।
हर सड़क पर, हर गली में, हर नगर, हर गाँव में,
हाथ लहराते हुए हर लाश चलनी चाहिए।
सिर्फ हंगामा खड़ा करना मेरा मकसद नहीं,
सारी कोशिश है कि ये सूरत बदलनी चाहिए।
मेरे सीने में नहीं तो तेरे सीने में सही,
हो कहीं भी आग, लेकिन आग जलनी चाहिए।
-- दुष्यंत कुमार
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