Health benefactor
This 74-year-old Padma Shri awardee’s determination in the face of adversity has resulted in a hospital for the poor near Kolkata.
Subhasini Mistry’s world came crashing down at the age of 23 years in 1967 when her husband, a vegetable vendor, died of gastroenteritis due to lack of medical care. As he suffered in pain, Mistry ran from pillar to post for help in Hanspukur, near Kolkata, but to no avail. Death took her husband out of his misery, but left Mistry, a housewife, at a crossroads. And thus began her long struggle.
With four children to raise, Mistry, however, found a new mission in life: to build a hospital for the poor. “After my husband passed away, I promised myself that I will build a hospital for the poor, so that no one else has to go through what I did. People should get medicines and treatment on time,” she says. To earn a livelihood after her husband’s death, Mistry moved to Dhapa in eastern Kolkata in the early 1970s and set up a roadside vegetable stall. Soon, she started earning around Rs 500 a month. “I opened a savings account in the post office and deposited money whenever I could… sometimes Rs 50, sometimes Rs 200,” she recalls.
She saved for almost two decades, during which time she worked as a maid, vegetable vendor, construction site worker, etc. In 1992, Mistry, with her savings, bought one acre of land in Hanspukur for Rs 10,000 and requested the villagers to donate money for the hospital. Soon, a thatched shed came up, serving as a dispensary. She even requested some doctors to attend to patients, and soon they had six physicians. “They would work for free and visit the hospital every now and then,” she recalls. But they still needed funds to build a pakka hospital, so Mistry and her son Ajoy, who studied to become a doctor himself, knocked on the doors of then local member of Parliament, Malini Bhattacharya, who helped them raise funds.
Humanity Hospital finally saw the light of the day in 1996. Today, the two-floor hospital, spread across 9,000 sq feet, has 45 beds. Treatment is provided to the poor for less than `10 and surgeries are performed for less than Rs 5,000. They are now planning to build another floor to accommodate more patients. A group of trustees—including doctors, citizens and serving IPS officers—have helped the cause of the hospital, which now has specific departments such as gynaecology, cardiology, ENT, urology, oncology, diabetology and surgery. But the credit goes to the woman who started it all. It’s no wonder then that Mistry was awarded the Padma Shri, the country’s fourth-highest civilian award, this year.
Educational evangelist
This Shillong-based crusader is working to provide educational opportunities to underprivileged children.
As per the latest Census of 2011, as many as 7.8 million Indian children are forced to earn a livelihood even while attending school, while 84 million children don’t go to school at all. Working in shops, as ragpickers or employed in petty jobs, these children usually belong to families that land up in big cities in search of a livelihood. And before they know, their childhood is lost in oblivion. This is what Shillong-based activist Shima Modak aims to rectify. Even as a child growing up, Modak says she felt for such children. “All I could do at that time was share my tiffin with them,” she says. In 2010, she founded an NGO, Spark, wanting to provide educational opportunities to marginalised children. Today, Modak runs five educational centres with a staff strength of 16 teachers, each educating over 450 such children across Shillong. “Despite RTE (Right to Education Act), such children face immense discrimination. If we take a ragpicker child and put him/her in a class with other students, they complain of the smell coming from him/her or the way he/she is dressed,” the 35-year-old says.
Modak faces several challenges still. With the only sources of money being her own savings and some donations, Modak struggles to fund her venture. “I don’t have the funds to undertake any activities for these children. I have to make do with whatever I have and can accumulate. Sometimes other schools or organisations pitch in with some help, but that’s it. It gets difficult at times to look at those eyes brimming with hope when your hands are empty,” she says. The attitude of the parents of such children is another hurdle. “Many times, they are reluctant to send their children to school even for a few hours. They want them to be employed so that they can contribute to the family’s income,” says Modak.
The linguistic barrier is another deterrent. Khasi is the official language of the state, but Modak, who is originally from West Bengal, doesn’t speak it. “It’s difficult to reach out to a lot of people because I am not from here originally. People refuse to trust me, as they don’t consider me one of them,” she says. Despite these deterrents, however, Modak has not lost courage. And today, she is a beacon of hope for children who continue to live without an identity.
Determined innovator
With a device that helps detect seizures, this Bengaluru citizen is well on her way to help children with epilepsy live better lives.
Bengaluru-based Rajlakshmi Borthakur’s world turned upside down in 2011 when she found out that her six-month-old son, Tejas, suffered from epilepsy. “Tejas was six months old when his epilepsy was diagnosed. His seizures would not stop and he would have to be taken to the hospital each time,” the 40-year-old says. Things took a turn for the worse when Tejas’ neurologist informed her that he would never get better. Not willing to let her son suffer for the rest of his life, she decided to take things in her own hands. What ensued was years of hardcore research, ranging from neurology and Internet of Things to cellular functioning and artificial intelligence. Her hard work paid off in 2015 when she came up with the concept of a smart glove that could take cells from the palm of one’s hand to help detect seizures in advance. A hurdle, however, blocked her way. Borthakur—who had worked as a digital and content strategist, programmer, writer, trainer, among others, at companies such as Infosys, Sapience and E&Y during a 19-year-long career in the IT industry—had no experience in creating software. “I didn’t know how to interface the design, so I went to an expert and asked him to do it for me,” she says.
Soon, a prototype of the device, which she named Tjay after her son, was up and running. The smart glove senses a person’s electric signals and keeps track of their health vitals such as heart rate and pulse. This information is transmitted to a connected mobile device through Bluetooth, providing adequate warning of an epilepsy attack. Later in 2015, Borthakur put together a team and formed a company called Terrablue XT to commercially build the device, which is still in its testing phase. She plans to put Tjay (which won the 2015 Innovate Digital India challenge) out for sale by the middle of this year. “We have received 250 pre-orders for the product, which is priced at Rs 25,000,” she says.
Talking about her decision to make the device available for others, Borthakur says, “When I started, it was just for Tejas. I had never imagined starting my own firm… But when you go to the ICU, you see other children suffering too.” Borthakur believes that if treated in time, 70% children can make massive improvement. Now six years old, her son Tejas, too, is much better. “I don’t expect him to be a rocket scientist… he is just an innocent child. He is extremely popular… I am happy to see him like that,” she says.
Serial entrepreneur
Her ventures have enabled 3,000 women in the drought-prone region of Osmanabad to be financially independent.
Married to a farmer in a rural household in Osmanabad, Maharashtra, life would have been routine for Kamal Kumbhar had it not been abject poverty that forced her to look for a livelihood in 1998. But little did she know that her decision to step outside the four walls of the house would create turbulence in her marriage. Many questions were darted at her. “They (husband and in-laws) would ask me where I was the entire time (when I would be out looking for a job). They said I was just roaming around pretending to work,” recalls 37-year-old Kumbhar, who, not able to take it anymore, ended her marriage the same year, but continued to live in Osmanabad. Soon, she started a bangle business. “I would walk to five villages to sell bangles when I first started. It was very difficult,” says Kumbhar. Not finding the business lucrative, she started Kamal Poultry and Ekta Sakhi Producer Company, a poultry-cum-hatchery business, later the same year with a capital of `2,000, which was all that her personal savings were.
That business metamorphosed into a micro-enterprise venture by 2007. A serial entrepreneur, Kumbhar today owns six different businesses ranging from hatcheries to micro-finance outfits. And in 2017, she even won the CII Foundation Woman Exemplar Award in the micro-enterprise category. Kumbhar’s tenacity has brought her a long way. Today, she is not just financially independent, she has also been instrumental in making many other women like her self-sufficient by providing them employment and the training needed to run a micro-enterprise—she has encouraged around 3,000 women in the drought-prone region of Osmanabad to successfully run poultry farms, doubling their household incomes. “Earlier, I thought only about myself. But when I started interacting with other women, I realised that there is a need to shift focus from myself to others as they also needed help,” she says.
Kumbhar believes it’s very important for women, especially in rural areas, to become economically independent. “If you earn, it becomes easier to live with dignity, even within a household,” she says. Revealing her success mantra, Kumbhar says, “One shouldn’t be bogged down by the challenges at hand. You need to keep moving ahead and do something new. To achieve financial stability, one has to diversify into more than one business,” she says.
Green warrior
From Mathurkham village of Jharkhand, this ‘Lady Tarzan’ has helped conserve around 50 hectares of forest land.
Jharkhand has always found itself on the crossroads of development and conservation. The dense sal forest surrounding Maturkham village in Purbi Singhbhum district is an example of this strife. It was mercilessly plundered for almost two decades by the forest mafia for its precious timber and rare fauna. Then, in the 1980s, Naxalites set up base in the forests. What ensued was a long-drawn battle between the two, resulting in a lot of bloodshed. But amid all this, nobody paid any attention to loss of the precious flora and fauna. Enter Jamuna Tudu. From Odisha originally, Tudu came to Jharkhand in 1998 after her marriage. A lover of nature, she noticed the harm being inflicted on the forest and decided to do something about it. After a lot of coaxing and discussion, she got the support of the village women. “We would go out to recce the forest three times a day to make sure there was no illegal felling of trees,” the 37-year-old says. But the men of the village weren’t convinced. “They would ridicule us and undermine our work,” she says. This didn’t impede her though and she went on to form the Van Suraksha Samiti with a group of five women in 1998. Today, the group, which consists of 50 active foot soldiers, has successfully saved and conserved around 50 hectares of forest land.
But in a region infested with Naxalites, how difficult is it to pursue their cause? “They have never interfered in our work. In fact, they fear us,” says Tudu, who runs awareness campaigns through various forest committees in Kolhan division, Jharkhand. Around 150 committees formed by Tudu, comprising more than 6,000 members, have joined her movement to save the forests. Her efforts in a region as volatile as Jharkhand speak volumes about her deep love for nature. It all started, she says, when she was a child. “There was a vast expanse of vacant land surrounding our house in Odisha. My father would plant saplings of trees and other plants, and teach us about their importance. That’s when I fell in love with nature,” says Tudu, who is also working actively for the development of the people of the region, inspiring young Naxalites to give up arms. “A lot of young Naxalites have surrendered. We told them of the opportunities they could avail… they are now pursuing jobs,” says Tudu, adding, “Some have left the region in search of jobs, while others have been employed as private security personnel.”
She has also been instrumental in getting schools built for women and even getting a proper road constructed for better connectivity to the nearest town. Tudu, however, says she finds herself most at peace when she is with nature, something that has earned her the sobriquet of ‘Lady Tarzan’.