An inspiring saga of selfless service

Julio Ribeiro

THERE is a man named Madhav and his surname is Sathe. I have decided to talk about him because our country requires more persons like Madhav Sathe.

He is an anaesthesiologist who assists surgeons in operation theatres. He is concerned about needy people and that is what makes him different.

If one man’s dedication and work for the less fortunate can be replicated by similarly motivated individuals across the country, India will be a different place to live.

His current interest is in children studying in rural schools. He has single-handedly transformed the lives of mainly tribal students, their teachers and parents in the 90-odd villages which constitute the Rajgurunagar area of Khed taluka in Pune district of Maharashtra. More than 43,000 students and 1,200 teachers in the 49 tribal schools, 73 high schools and 468 primary schools run by the zila parishad in and around Rajgurunagar have benefited from his tireless efforts.

Sathe stays in Mumbai with his wife, also a doctor, and a daughter. Five days a week, he is busy with surgeries. At weekends, he is in Rajgurunagar, a three-hour drive. The work he does there marks him out as a man on a mission. The villagers and their children eagerly await his arrival on Saturdays. So do teachers, whom he has motivated with his dedication to selfless service.

When he began his work in Rajgurunagar, my wife and I visited the place at least once every year, if not twice. It has been 25 years since I became the chairman of the Bombay Mothers and Children Welfare Society (BMCWS), of which Sathe has been the secretary for 40 years or more, ever since he graduated from a medical college. I had retired from government service and settled in Mumbai, the city in which I was born. A young colleague from the Indian Police Service brought Sathe to meet me. He asked me to assume the chairmanship of the society, which I did.

At that time, the BMCWS was running two hospitals for the less fortunate and three creches for children with working mothers in Mumbai. Sathe supervised their day-to-day functioning. The two activities outside Mumbai were in Rajgurunagar and Bhilwadi, where the society had set up small rural hospitals. The founders of the BMCWS, Dr Tilak and Dr Mhaskar, had died several years ago. Sathe was managing the affairs of the society and was doing it with sincerity and honesty. His goal was to have a self-sustaining organisation. He required a little help at times from the government and municipal authorities, which the chairman was asked to provide.

The hospital at Rajgurunagar provided Sathe with a springboard for rendering service to the weak and the needy. An opportunity came when Dr Banoobai Coyajee, a Pune-based woman with a formidable reputation for public service, offered him a substantial sum of money to work on a health project in Rajgurunagar. Sathe jumped at the offer. After Dr Banoobai’s money ran out, he approached his doctor friends for funds, which they gave without much ado and which they still provide since they all know of his commitment to social work.

He has immersed himself in the uplift of the villages of Rajgurunagar, primarily by concentrating on the education of the area’s boys and girls. Sathe started by providing computers donated by the Tata Consultancy Services through the good offices of its former Vice-Chairman S Ramadorai and his wife Mala Ramadorai. Simultaneously, e-learning was provided to 600 zila parishad schools over a span of 10 years. It is a boon for teachers and students. The area did not have wifi connectivity. Electric supply was intermittent. But Sathe was not deterred. He got his friends to support his project by financing the installation of solar panels in 425 schools to ensure uninterrupted use of computers.

Before the solar panels were installed, he got his friends to repair, refurbish and paint the dilapidated buildings to make the schools attractive for students and teachers. He had to motivate girls to attend school. The toilets were unusable because of a paucity of water. He got borewells dug with shramdaan by villagers. The teachers felt that Sathe was truly interested in the children’s wellbeing and an improvement in the quality of their lives.

To train the children in the use of computers, he first trained a boy of the local Bhil community and then employed him as the driver of a donated van. The boy toured the villages and taught the tribal youth how to use computers. As many as 355 batches of students, totalling 2,285 boys and girls — of whom 1,393 were Adivasis — in 102 schools were covered under this project.

The BMCWS provided vocational training to 1,077 girls to enable them to supplement the family income after their household chores were completed for the day. Tailoring classes were held for 3,086 women; 328 were trained as dayis (midwives). These were the most popular of the vocational courses on offer.

Playgrounds are being prepared for the youth as and when funds are available. Medical camps are organised at regular intervals. The height and weight of the students are recorded regularly after giving them breakfast. Malnutrition and anaemia are the most commonly detected problems. The breakfast supplements and vitamin tablets are being funded by Sathe’s friends for 1,600 tribal kids. Mid-day meals are provided by the government.

If one man’s dedication and selfless work for the less fortunate can be replicated by similarly motivated individuals across the country, India will be a different place to live. There are many such individuals in Mumbai. A retired DGP of Maharashtra, D Sivanandan, runs Roti Bank, which feeds 1,2000 hungry people in the city every day.

Sathe’s efforts have produced a significant change in the attitude of students, teachers and parents in the villages covered by him. Students have become confident, the teachers keen to explore new teaching concepts and the parents have evinced new-found interest in education. If they witness the impact of education on their child’s future, more parents and teachers will get involved in the education of rural youth. That will definitely ensure ‘Sabka Vikas’ and ‘Sabka Vishwas’, but the number of volunteers for ‘prayas’ has to multiply.

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