In conversation with Dr. B. S. Ajaikumar, doctorpreneur, radiation and medical oncologist, thought leader, and philanthropist on the ways and means of serving the larger cause of the community at large
Dr. B. S. Ajaikumar hardly needs an introduction. The harbinger of value-based cancer care in India, it was his pioneering effort that has today ignited a focused effort to bring cancer to the level of a chronic disease. However, his pathbreaking strides as a committed social entrepreneur and philanthropist never reach the mainstream of media attention, thanks to his unassuming and inimitably matter-of-fact ways of going about his work with characteristic detachment without ever broadcasting it.
The International Human Development and Upliftment Academy (IHDUA), the organization incepted by Dr. Ajaikumar, recently unveiled the Model village at Chikkhundi village, as also a Women's Leadership Project and Skill development Training Institute at Gundlupet Taluk, besides inaugurating an IHDUA office at Gundulpet.
As an integral part of the Model Village project, the Chikkhundi village of Horeyala Gram Panchayat in Gundulpet Taluk will be adopted and made a model village in six years by enriching it with various facilities and initiatives including Universal healthcare, better infrastructure like roads, solar electricity, Integrated Farming, Bio Gas, Tree Plantation, and regenerative water resources.
The Women Leadership Project will incept a one-of-a-kind leadership school providing tech-based training to women from self-help groups, to help them become the change architects of the 21st century for the community at large. Dr. Ajai is more than sure the success of this program will trigger a cascading effect in terms of a similar roll out of leadership programs for women across the country.
Convincing him of the need to talk about his plans and priorities was tough no doubt, but it was well worth the effort given that we need many more leaders like him to collectively steering a movement soaring high on activism and accountability.
Excerpts from the freewheeling conversation:
You have always stressed upon the need for lasting solutions, be it in your mainstream sphere of cancer care or your offbeat pursuits into the philanthropy space. How do you define lasting solutions in the context of social development?
Before I talk of solutions, let me first put the problem in perspective. In the normal scheme of things, we don’t let our conscience and conviction guide us in what we do and believe in. We must consciously and consistently express our individuality and unleash the potential of our true selves.
In India, we have an affluent elitist tribe, a mere 1% of the population, unabashedly ruling the roost across sectors and spheres. In sharp contrast, a vast majority of our people continue to fight for survival and sustenance. This glaring divide is the greatest impediment to our collective progress and prosperity.
We need a conscious effort to rebuild our nation in a strategic manner to reap the rewards of a sustainable transformation rather than be content with the low hanging fruits of fleeting outcomes. Our activism needs to be magnanimously philanthropic, not merely charitable. This effort alone will lead to lasting solutions.
What in your reckoning are the sticky problems plaguing India?
As a practising oncologist both in US and India, I have long pondered over the umpteen ills, evils, pretences, and prejudices that plague Indian society at large. Even after four decades of earnest observation and deep introspection, I yet feel I know so little about them, such are their multifarious mutations across the nation.
I have extensively travelled across diverse geographies of different terrains, milieus and backdrops – from the highly advanced cities of the West to the most deprived rural areas of India. Having sensed the confounding diversity of India from close quarters, I have come to the conclusion that India is essentially two countries within a country. One country belongs to the 350 million people comprising the affluent and middle classes who are going up the economic ladder in typically urban settings marked by good education, better career prospects, and a robust healthcare system. The other country is inhabited by 900 million deprived souls living in villages and smaller towns, struggling for survival at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, seriously constrained by poor infrastructure, poor education standards and a dismal healthcare system. Needless to say, only extraordinary children are able to wriggle out of the confines of this vicious trap and pursue greener pastures of opportunities.
The fundamental questions that plague the sensitive mind is: “Why India, given its phenomenal wealth of human resources, has not been able to unleash its economic progress and transform into an advanced country. Why is it that the gap between India’s Haves and the Have-nots is despairingly widening by the day? Why does the West still consider us as an emerging market, and why do they label us as a third world country?
So, what you are implying is that we need to break the shackles ourselves…
Exactly! Something binds us, chokes us, and prevents us from unlocking and unleashing our potential. Of course, there are isolated instances where people have succeeded in India, but by global standards, the numbers are small especially when compared to the untapped potential of the entire nation. Just imagine the possibilities if all children of 1.2 billion people are given equal access to education and health, if talented people are encouraged to stay back in India and offered a conducive environment to blossom as leaders in diverse fields including research and development, entrepreneurs, business, academia, and even politics. In a relatively short span, we could advance towards becoming an advanced country. The Chinese example is before us. In 1990’s China was similar to India in terms of economic status. In 20 plus years, China has become a superpower challenging the most advanced countries in the world in all aspects.
Did India miss the bus of opportunity? History says Yes. But there’s no point grieving over past blunders and woes. Let us envision a bright future and deeply introspect on how we can develop visionary leaders from the lower socio-economic groups, and what we need to do to level the playing field for them.
Does India lack the thought leadership needed to move from problems to solutions?
Undoubtedly yes. We need many thought leader-practitioners, leaders with vision and conviction, not leaders with merely populist ideas. We should take pride in our own capabilities as much as in our rich heritage, instead of looking towards the West to lead us. The goal is to become a truly advanced country, and we certainly have rich resources, the most important being human talent. What we need is an ecosystem to nurture our values and talents, while celebrating failures as well. If we do well on the health, education, and skill development fronts, we will become the advanced country that we deserve to become.
It is not impossible for children from the lower strata to move up the proverbial ladder. It only merits a massive effort to bring about a sustainable transformation that will establish equality and parity for the population spread across the length and breadth of the country. We all know the Indian talent is abundant. Our intellectual capacity is revered globally. People of Indian origin are at the helm of major multinational corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Mastercard, IBM, Twitter, and Adobe. Our entrepreneurships have made their mark across the globe, particularly in the US and UK. In the medical, educational field, and finance fields, Indians have achieved exemplary success and fulfilment.
How did the idea of incepting IHUDA germinate in your mind?
Our work in healthcare, particularly in rural India, led us on other paths by default. In 1988 I started an organization called International Human Development and Upliftment Academy (IHDUA) to see how we could improve the economic condition of women. The genesis of this idea was a project we did on downstaging cervical cancer. We conducted a house-to-house survey of 150,000 women, where we found that most of them were working an unbelievable eighteen hours a day. More poignantly, they were living a hand-to-mouth existence and eating only leftovers. Most of those in the reproductive age were anaemic. It was clear that we needed to improve their economic condition before they could focus on health. As a pilot project under IHDUA, we started a women’s empowerment programme. It was based on the self-help group (SHG) model. Over the last decade, this initiative of ours has helped the SHG members to not only take large loans at low interest rates to develop businesses, but has also eliminated local lending at high interest rates. The per capita income of this segment has increased manifold. This has helped the local population considerably by increasing prosperity levels, and IHDUA can become a model for the development of Indian villages.
IHDUA is a non-profit, grassroots organization that designs programs to address community-identified development needs. Wherever possible, we implement our initiatives using a local workforce to promote community ownership of both solutions and outcomes. We connect the target communities with the wider world by creating opportunities for like-minded individuals and organizations to participate through donation and volunteer programs.
Were your rural education initiatives an offshoot of your health awareness strides?
Yes, one thing led to another. In 1994, we started a school in a remote rural area called Mullur near Mysuru, an area where we have been holding health camps for the past twenty-five years. The school had its genesis in the lack of basic amenities for the local population. Prominent locals told me that such health camps were fine but what they really wanted was education for their children. We immediately swung into action and I started a school in Mullur, an area that did not even have electricity at the time. The school, Vinayaka Gyanashaala, where we have now brought in computers, is thriving. The pass percentage for the school-leaving exam (SSLC) is almost 100. Students have gone on to become scientists, software engineers and other professionals. Thus the families can now afford quality healthcare. Both these experiments, in livelihoods and education, have shown that purposeful investment towards improving the prosperity and education of underprivileged sections can bring about more focus on health, both at the individual and the society levels. All these aspects—economic condition, basic education and primary healthcare - are interrelated. They are the nub of the matter, the focus areas to bring prosperity to rural India. Looking ahead, I would like to focus on education and economic well-being along with healthcare, India needs activism with accountability.
Are you happy with the IHUDA strides till date?
Success, more so in the social development sphere, is invariably a moving target. While one IDHUA cannot change the entire scenario, it can surely attempt to design and deliver a pilot project for talent development and leadership training and do its bit in paving the way forward. Post our pilot project, thousands of women from the 63 villages in Gundlupet taluk transformed their livelihood through an economic sustainability that was strengthened over a period of two decades. Today, these women are able to ensure good nutrition, good health, and good education to their children. In fact, their prosperity has forced the middle-class people in the cities to not only take note but gather actionable insights in the guiding light of their experience.
Over the last two decades, IHDUA has brought to fruition various developmental works in Chikkundi village, and now we will strive to make this village a model village not only for Karnataka, but also for India. Although women comprise more than 50 percent of the country's population, their representation in leadership roles including the political arena is extremely constricted. Our Leadership training program will facilitate their inclusion in the mainstream of leadership action and positions. Being more accountable and more diligent, women leaders can transform the political arena and hence more women need to contest elections.
The world of today is replete with a lot of negativism, which only breeds more negativism. Hence, the kind of enterprise that IHDUA is intent on incepting is indeed the need of the hour: Teflon-coated from the outside to steer clear of the negativity and self-defeating mechanisms of the world, and a focused factory from the inside to achieve all earmarked goals in a sustainable manner. It is time we citizens of India rise above our odds to steer a stellar movement aimed at nurturing and nourishing the cocoon of our priceless individuality without getting bogged down by the societal pressures that numb our intellect and intuition. We all know casteism and social discrimination is the worst evil thrust upon us from time immemorial. Yet, we knowingly or unknowingly uphold the status quo; worse, even our silence becomes a wilful endorsement of these absurd social and political diktats.
What’s next for IHUDA?
I would only say, we will continue to seek credible answers to complex questions including the following:
How do we fix the major problem of flawed project implementations and unethical, unequal distribution of allowances among end-user beneficiaries?
How and why should a mere one percent of the population control the rest of the country?
How to make Government accountable and outcome-driven?
How to make philanthropy rise above charity?