Author: Jaya Gautam
Publication: India Post
Date: October 24, 2007
URL: http://indiapost.com/article/communitypost/1288/
Subhash Chandra, of Zee TV fame, visited the
Bay Area on Sunday, Oct 14. The founder and Chairman of Zee Entertainment
Enterprises Limited and the Essel Group of companies, he has interests across
the globe in media, entertainment, packaging, technology-enabled services,
infrastructure development and education.
This visit to the Bay Area was in a lesser
known capacity as the chairman of Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of India. Ekal,
which means one, runs single teacher schools all over remote and rural parts
of India. Alongside business activities, Subhash Chandra has made his mark
as a maven of education in India.
He set up TALEEM (Transnational Alternate
Learning for Emancipation and Empowerment through Multimedia) to provide access
to quality education through distance and open learning. He is the trustee
of Global Vipassana Foundation - a trust to help people raise their spiritual
quotient. He created Brain Trust of India to identify and nurture gifted children
of the country.
He is also the Chairman of the Ekal Vidyalaya
Foundation of India - a movement to eradicate illiteracy from rural and tribal
India. At a lunch event hosted by Rekha & Bipin Shah at their beautiful
Atherton home on a perfect Indian summer day, Subhash Chandra encouraged everyone
to visit the Ekal schools besides making donations.
Answering questions from Indians regarding
the VHP connection with Ekal, he said Ekal is an independent educational organization
and like everyone supports education, VHP too supports education. Bipin Shah
added, "These days secularism has become anti- Hindu." Subsequently,
Ekal held an open house at the Jain Center in Milpitas. Chandra said that
he would first like to thank all the supporters of Ekal. "Volunteers
are a very necessary link.
They are the backbone and the breath (shwas)
of any movement. Ekal handles the poorest of the poor, remote villages with
no access and no electricity. He said that he was surprised how the villagers
still laugh and do not have stress. They feel joy and can dance more than
us."
According to him, the challenges faced by
Ekal include leftist/extremist groups which may not want the adivasis (villagers)
educated. Other special interest groups may also have a negative attitude.
He said that the NE region is a good focus area for Ekal with 1,800 out of
approximately 29,000 schools located there.
The main criteria to evaluate a village/ region
for setting up an Ekal school is that it has less than 1000 people living
there and no government school. The whole process can easily take up to 6
months.
With dedicated volunteer teachers who are
paid a token salary of Rs. 1500 or $37 per month, Ekal schools can be run
on a dollar a day and as said at an earlier event, your daily coffee at Starbucks
could easily support a school, if not two, in India.
The Ekal plan for the next five years is to
move from just primary education to include higher education. They also would
start and maintain better health initiatives. They are also promoting 'svalambhan'
(self reliance) thus liberating people from economic slavery.
Basic help given to the villagers includes
help on what kind of crops/ fertilizer to use including natural animal fertilizer.
No society can eradicate its ills without education- that is what enables
us to differentiate between right and wrong, said Chandra as he concluded
his Bay Area visit. He was off then on the rest of his one-man Ekal marathon-
a 9 cities tour in 10 days to support Ekal USA and its volunteers.