GUWAHATI/BHOPAL/CHANDIGARH: What do globally-acclaimed chief executives Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, India’s first track and field Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and the late Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat have in common with centenarian Assamese social worker Shakuntala Choudhury, 96-year-old philanthropist Baba Iqbal Singh of Punjab and Vijaykumar Vinayak Dongre, a doctor from Maharashtra who works among leprosy patients?
They are all Padma award winners whose names were announced on Tuesday evening. While Pichai and Nadella hobnob with the world’s power elites and A-listers and Chopra is feted and celebrated wherever he goes, Choudhury, Singh and Dongre are perhaps unknown even in the states they belong to as they work below the gaze of any attention.
But ask those who have worked or benefited from their benevolence and they will swear by these social workers who gave up their own comfort, wealth and families to dedicate themselves to spreading rural education, fighting social prejudices and treating marginalised sections, among others.
And in a leveler of sorts, Choudhury, Singh, Dongre, Pichai, Nadella, Azad et al could rub shoulders at the stately and cavernous halls of Rashtrapati Bhawan whenever the date for the presentation of the Padma awards is fixed.
Shakuntala Choudhury
Shakuntala Choudhury had no reaction when her colleagues at the Kasturba Ashram in Guwahati broke the news that she was among the recipients of the Padma Shri. It has been a while that the 102-year-old has lost her memory. But before that she devoted her life to the welfare and empowerment of women.
“We at the ashram and her family members had shared the news with her yesterday but she did not react. She has no idea that she has been conferred the award,” said a member of the ashram. Born in Guwahati, Choudhury started her career as a school teacher and joined the Kasturba Ashram in 1947. Ever since then, she has been associated with it and served it in various capacities.
Lata Desai
Lata Desai, 75, a pediatrician, had co-founded the Society for Education Welfare and Action along with her late husband in 1980. SEWA Rural is a voluntary organization involved in health and development activities in the rural tribal area of Jhagadia in Bharuch, south Gujarat.
Desai and her husband left their flourishing medical practice in New York to return home to serve to poor and they made Jhagadia their base. Their hospital serves approximately 70,000 outpatients and 12,000 indoor patients every year. Nearly 2,800 deliveries and 5,000 surgeries are conducted every year.
Baba Iqbal Singh
The 96-year-old educationist, social worker and philanthropist, Baba Iqbal Singh retired as the director of agriculture in the Himachal Pradesh government in 1986 and started a school on the foothills of Baru Sahib. Singh also set up the Kalgidhar Trust which anchors his work in rural education, drug de-addiction and women’s empowerment.
“Singh has been doing yeoman’s service in the field of rural education for almost 75 years. Under his guidance the trust is running 129 Akal academies and two universities in north India, besides a charitable hospital and two de-addiction centres. Thousands of underprivileged rural children are given free or subsidised education in schools and many topped the IIT, IIM and NEET exams. Some even becoming IAS and IPS officers,” said Davinder Singh, the secretary of the trust.
Vijay Kumar Dongre
82-year-old Vijay Kumar Dongre, a doctor and social worker, has dedicated his life to working with leprosy patients for the last five decades. He has been working in urban, rural and tribal areas of Maharashtra. Before the Padma Shri, he was awarded the International Gandhi Award for Leprosy 2013 by former President Pranab Mukherjee. He has written 52 booklets on leprosy and given about 10,000 lectures on the disease. In 1981, there were approximately 40 lakh leprosy patients in India but after the effort of Dongre and others this has come down to 83,000.
Basanti Devi
Fondly known as Basanti behen, Basanti Devi is synonymous with women’s empowerment, environment conservation and a progressive mindset. “I can’t express my feelings in words. I am thankful for the honour,” she reacted, clearly overwhelmed.
Having faced the challenges of child marriage, she educated people about the ills of marrying girls before adulthood. She was widowed at the age of 12 in 1980, but she never gave up her zeal to bring about change.
A Class IV dropout, she went door-to-door to explain to parents about the irreversible damage that early marriage can cause a child. She also spearheaded a campaign for afforestation along the Kosi river.
Narendra Prasad Misra
Thirty seven years ago, Narendra Prasad Misra led a team of doctors at the Gandhi Medical College Hamidia Hospital in Bhopal to save thousands of lives affected by the 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy. He never looked back thereafter.
“My father was the dean of the Gandhi Medical College when the killer gas leak happened. I still remember how my father left to save the lives of countless people. He didn’t sleep for at least three nights and led from the front,” recounted his son, Sunil Misra.
After the treatment was over Misra continued his struggle as he presented the case of the gas victims before a court in New York and succeeded in getting them compensation. “Even during both the first and second waves of the Covid pandemic when most doctors were rendering online consultancy to patients, my father kept treating his patients physically at the clinic, mostly free of cost,” Misra said. His father died in September last year.
Prabhaben Shah
91-year-old Prabhaben Shah, fondly called ‘Daman ki Divya,’ has worked for the betterment of the people, conducted awareness programmes and organised a ‘Vastra Bank’ for flood victims in Kutch. Shah has also started canteens for patients and the economically weaker sections in hospitals.
(With Dilip Singh Kshatriya, Sudhir Suryawanshi, Vineet Upadhyay and Sana Shakil)