THE ODYSSEY OF COMMUNITY

SERVICE: A PERSONAL REFLECTION

By DR. PRAKASH AMTE
2008 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee
Presented at the 50th Ramon Magsaysay Awards Lecture Series
1 September 2008, Manila, Philippines

It is indeed a rare honour and delight to be a part of this august gathering as an awardee
today, when the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation completes fifty years of invaluable
service and contribution to promotion of humanist culture. The irrepressible urge and the
concern for civilisation has always been the motivating force that the Foundation
showcases today. Ecstasy is mine to be a petal of the Asian rose that was planted fifty years
back by the beautiful, visionary mind, Ramon Magsaysay. I take this opportunity to
congratulate the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation for the long and successful innings. Their
unflinching support (in cash) has strengthened our hands to do the kind of work we have
been doing.
As the West looks upon Asia as a force to reckon with, it is our proud privilege to remind
ourselves of the legacy that shaped our life and civilisation, which is on the brink of
perishing. Whether it is war or violence, environmental decay or political anarchy,
collective greed or religious fanaticism, the odyssey of civilisation has frightening
dimensions. It is easier to talk about these issues over a cup of coffee or a glass of beer in
air-conditioned conference halls and even offer solutions with unassailable equanimity and
forget everything with the sinking of the sun in the evening. Action is not the responsibility
of the great academicians. To be frank, the deafening cry, Preserve or perish is a warning
to reckon with more urgently. Todays gathering is an exception and unique in senses more
than one. It is the coming together of people who rooted themselves in their chosen field
of work for years and never felt the need to talk about it. For a person like me, nothing can
be more difficult than being called upon to say to you what I have done. For me, things are
easier done than said. My moorings lie in this domestic culture I was brought up in.

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The Descent
I come from a family that believed in action more than in words. My beloved father, the
late Baba Amte, himself a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee, has been my inspiration all along.
Action, destructive or constructive, presupposes a fearless mind. My father (who was called
a fearless man by Mahatma Gandhi later) played with adventures all his life. Adventure
was not a fashion but a passion, a way of life for him. Vikas, my brother, and I were brought
up in this culture. The first home to remember was a hut with thatched roof on the outskirts
of the village of Warora. Obviously, we had no friends to talk to or play with. Exploring
the surrounding forest was our only fun and it cost nothing. Unlike other fathers, Baba
exposed us to dangers from early childhood. We had lessons in the dignity of labour at an
early age. My father and mother worked hard; did all the menial jobs gladly ever since they
decided to serve the leprosy patients. As kids we were silent observers of their acts of
compassion. As we grew up we shared the work, daily domestic chores, without being
asked. Having turned his back on ancestral property (Baba was the son of a landlord)
financial crunch left no other choice but simplicity, whether in dress or diet. Thus,
fearlessness, simplicity, compassion and love of labour became our second nature. I believe
that you can choose only the first thing and the rest follow automatically.
The Beginning
Lok Biradari Prakalp (Peoples Brotherhood Project) is an offshoot of Maharogi Sewa
Samiti, Warora, a trust founded by my father, better known to the world as Baba Amte. We
were completely unaware of the fact that a chance visit to the dense forest of Bhamragad
in Gadchirolli district of Maharastra in the early seventies along with Baba would ever
crystalize into a centre for intergrated development like this. It was set up in 1974.
My elder brother Vikas and I were in our early twenties then and Baba was nearly sixty.
We had just appeared for our final examination in medicine and were waiting for our
results, dreaming of careers as aspiring doctors. We were on a holiday and yet to decide
what we would be doing in future. One fine morning, during the month of December, Baba
thought of taking the members of the family for a picnic to this place, Bhamragad. We had
never heard of this place before. Probably his intention behind the picnic was to expose
both his sons to the lives and culture of the tribal people in this region. Two hundred and
fifty kilometers away from Anandwan, our home, was quite a distance then in the absence
of sturdy vehicles and roads. The stretch of last eighty kilometres showed no signs of a
road or of any feet ever having travelled there. That was Babas idea of a picnic!
Baba had surveyed the land and selected a spot from where a river ran at a distance of two
and a half kilometres. The location was picturesque. The confluence of three rivers
provided the backdrop to Bhamaragad, lending it the charm of an unravished bride.

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Teakwood barred the entry of sunlight. The streams girdled around it like a python. We
watched everything anxiously. Small figures popped up from behind the trees, dressed in
colourful feathers and beads of stones. We camped there underneath a tree and during the
next two days explored the area by visiting different tribal villages, trying to interact with
the local people and get acquainted with their lives and culture. However, we could not
communicate with the people. They were very scared and reluctant to talk to us, and in fact
would run away and hide in the nearby forest as soon as we entered their villages. We could
only observe them from a distance. They had no clothes on, except for a small piece of
cloth to cover the private parts. Most of them were undernourished and the children had
potbellies. We were stunned. It was a different world altogether. The response was the
same in every village we visited. The thought that some people can live in this condition
in the same country from where we came sent tremors down the spine. The night before
we left the area, we assembled by the fireside, the winter being very severe, and discussed
our experiences during the last two days. Babas restlessness surfaced in no time and he
shared his views on this dream project with us. After having worked for the leprosy patients
for some years he now wanted someone to accept the challenge to start a project for this
community and try to give them basic amenities like healthcare, education and teach them
farming. Seeing Babas enthusiasm at that advanced age, I immediately volunteered to join
him as soon as he started the work there. That, in due course of time proved to be the
turning point of my life.
We went back to Anandwan. We had cleared the finals. Soon we joined Nagpur Medical
College as interns. After a few days, Baba reminded me of my commitment and asked me
to apply to the Government of Maharashtra for a piece of land in Bhamragad region to start
a project for the Madia Gond tribe. We had to put up with delay in the administrative
procedure, typical of the bureaucracy. After three years we finally acquired the land in
December 1973.
I always tell people that I am obliged to the Government of India for the delay. A very
interesting and equally important thing happened in my life during that period. I got
acquainted for the first time to Dr. Mandakini in 1972. She was doing her post graduation
in anesthesia in the same college. We fell in love and soon got married in December 1972.
Mandakini willingly agreed to join me in running the project for the tribal people in a
remote area. Had the government sanctioned the demand for land earlier, I would have
missed the chance of meeting my partner and perhaps would have remained a bachelor
forever. The reasons are not far to guess. This area remained cut-off from the rest of the
world during the better part of the year, due to a number of rivers criss-crossing the route.
There were neither roads nor electricity; telephone or any other means of entertainment
were unheard of. We did not even have a house to stay in. No sensible and loving parents
of any prospective bride would have allowed their daughter to marry me. The joke apart, I

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must say that she has stood by me in every venture.

In late 1973, when I was busy with my post graduation in general surgery, the project was
launched. In March 1974, when I realised that Lok Biradari Prakalp, was badly in need of
a doctor, I decided to leave my education halfway and took charge of the project and
Mandakini joined me soon thereafter, not
before resigning her job as a lecturer in Anaesthesia in Nagpur Medical College. Baba was
very happy to see both of us joining the project and happily went back to Anandwan. There
were four more voluntary workers and a few cured leprosy patients to help us clear the
forestland in order to build our houses there. I must say that every venture of our family
has been an attempt to fulfil an inner urge. There wasnt much of planning in advance. We
never mulled over unknown problems. An impulse took us to the woods and we went on
working and sorting out problems as they emerged. In our world there never was room for
calculations in advance, of profit or loss. We busied ourselves with work and allowed the
thoughts to pass by or left them for the rest of the world, as you may say.
When we joined the project, they had already constructed two temporary tin shedsone
to store food grains and another served as community kitchenand a small thatched hut
for us to live in. On the practical plane there were a lot of hardships to face but we were
mentally prepared for all of them. Come what may, we will stay here, we told each other.
We had already prepared ourselves for all kinds of difficulties. What we had not anticipated
was the lack of cooperation from the local tribal people. Initially, nobody turned up to give
us a chance to serve them. We waited for them in a hut, the sort of clinic. They had never
heard of anything about modern medicine. All they depended on was a village priest (a
witch doctor) in almost every village, and he was the only source of relief for them for
every health problem. We had to coax and cajole them to bring patients to our clinic. We
combed villages on foot. The first priority then was to learn the local language (Madia
dialect). Without that, communication was next to impossible.
Our ventures with the first patients were an education for us. I still remember our first
critical case of burns from a nearby village. A ten-year-old boy had been suffering from
epilepsy and slept close to the fire in order to protect himself from the biting cold. He had
no clothes on. He started getting fits in the middle of the night and fell into the fire and was
badly burnt. With their local tribal medicines, the wounds could hardly be healed but
caused infection instead and there were maggots in the wounds. We expressed our
willingness to treat him. The boys parents had lost all hopes of his survival. However, they
agreed to bring the boy to our open-air clinic. Till that date, the local people had never
taken any antibiotics and to their surprise, our medicines, coupled with clean, sterile
dressings, cured him within a month. For us, more important than the cure, was winning
their faith.
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The second successfully cured patient was a victim of cerebral malaria, a medical
emergency. He was carried on a makeshift bamboo stretcher, from a place as far as twentyfive kilometres, all of his carriers walking barefoot all the way. He was unconscious when
they brought him to us and had already started getting convulsions. At that time, we had
no facilities for any investigations and it was difficult to diagnose the problem. All we
could depend upon were the symptoms. There was no time to waste, nor anybody else to
consult. It was the test of our knowledge and skill. After a brief discussion, we agreed on
a probable diagnosis of cerebral malaria and started an anti-malarial treatment along with
other life saving measures. Fortunately for us, the patient regained consciousness on the
third day and later went back to his village walking, carrying his bamboo stretcher on his
own shoulders.
This augured well for the project. Tribal patients started trickling in with a variety of health
problems such as malaria, diarrhoea, dehydration, severe anaemia, tuberculosis,
pneumonia, bone fractures, complicated cases of maternity, vitamin-deficiency disorders
etc. It was quite challenging for us to treat all these ailments without any investigation
facilities and very little personal experience in treating such ailments. What added to the
problem was the peoples ignorance. They had seen medicine tablets for the first time in
their lives and would gulp the whole weekly dose at a time, sometimes along with the paper
in which they were packed or wrapped in. They were careless with these or tampered with
them. We started maintaining the records ourselves. These amount to thousands in huge
piles now.
Winning the peoples faith by curing as many as possible was our topmost agenda. Luckily,
most of the patients were cured. However, some of them could not be cured or saved in
spite of our sincere efforts. Patients from such villages stopped coming to our clinic. We
really felt guilty about it. But as the success
rate maintained an upward curve in due time, the number of patients increased. When a
serious patient was admitted to our clinic, we would not rest at night and attend to him
throughout the night in the candlelight. Besides diagnosis, sterilization of equipment,
treating multiple fractures and serious injuries from bear bites posed real problems.
Though Mandakini was a qualified anaesthetist and I had left my post-graduation in general
surgery halfway, patients with all kinds of ailments started approaching us and expected to
be treated with success. Referring a patient to any specialist or a well-equipped hospital
was out of the question, due to lack of communication, transport facilities, and funds.
Moreover, people had no clothes to wear and did not understand any of the languages
spoken outside their world. We had no alternative but to treat them ourselves by referring
to various books on medicines. We tried whatever equipment we had and treated them
locally as much as possible. We started treating cases of fractures, dental extraction, ENT
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problems, conducting deliveries, performing emergency surgeries and even performing

cataract operations. We had noticed that blind patients were being deprived of food as there
was already a scarcity of food and they had to die a slow death by starvation. The law of
survival of the fittest worked here. Our first case of cataract surgery was a success and
more patients started coming in for surgery.
Then there was the case of a complicated maternity. A woman on her way to our hospital
had severe labour pains. With a long way to walk and before they reached the clinic, she
had delivered the baby halfway. Only an arm of the baby had come out while rest was still
stuck inside. We had to ask the relatives to choose between the mother and the baby, as it
was impossible to save both of them. They opted for the mother and the baby had to be
sacrificed in order to save her. Fortunately, the relatives of the patient showed enough
understanding of our helplessness. I am now happy to say that the same lady came to us
the next year, this time well in advance of her due date of delivery and went back home
with a healthy baby.
Our Journey with the Tribal Communities Growth
Today, we have a full-fledged and well-equipped hospital treating more than 40,000
patients every year, free of cost. Patients from more than 1,000 villages spread across three
states Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhatisgarhan area of around 200 square
kilometers visit us. The hospital remains open for twenty-four hours treating all emergency
cases. We are also assisted by our son and daughter- in-law, both of whom are doctors.
After twelve years since the inception of the project, my friends and relatives became
curious about our work and some of them visited the project and the surgeons amongst
them offered their services to help the tribal patients. As such the annual surgical camp was
started and about 50 surgeons and anesthetists from the Rotary Club of Nagpur visit
Hemalkasa every year and perform all kinds of operations in our hospital for free. Except
for heart and brain surgeries, they perform all other operations. The number of operations
they perform in only two days is about 150 but we do not have so many beds, hence the
patients have to stay outside the building, in the open ground. Since we take all the preoperative care and sterilise all the instruments and the dressing materials, there has not been
a single case of post-operative infection in the last twenty years.
After having gained complete trust in us and our treatment during the first two years, people
now started sharing with us other problems such as exploitation by government officials
and forest contractors. In order to help them, we brought the people from different villages
together and wrote a joint complaint letter to concerned authorities. Fortunately, the
officers took prompt action and suspended the corrupt officers. This served as a lesson to
new officers who took charge subsequently. Exploitation was reduced to a considerable
extent. These were temporary solutions. Something had to be done to prevent the problems
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from arising. Only education would offer a permanent solution, we thought.

Lok Biradari Prakalp started a residential school in 1976 for the tribal children, and along
with formal education we tried to create among them awareness about their rights. Our
volunteers went from village to village to convince the parents to send the children to the
residential school. Since this was a totally
new concept, they were reluctant to send their children. We had to convince them
considerably, and initially we could get only twenty-five students from ten surrounding
villagesand that too with a great difficulty. In the course of time almost half of them ran
away. If a student disappeared in the evening, we had to send a volunteer to his village on
a bicycle to see that he or she had reached home safely. After two years the parents and the
children liked the atmosphere of the school and the dropout rate was reduced considerably.
From a modest enrolment of about twenty-five students and two teachers in 1976, it has
now blossomed into a full-fledged residential school with six hundred and forty students
and seventeen teachers. Three members of the current teaching staff are former students of
the school itself. The school imparts to its students, formal education along with vocational
training, like bamboo and metal craft, tailoring, farming, horticulture and also computer
education. It also instils awareness about their rights and a sense of pride about their
culture. My own sons and daughter were educated in the same school and they were the
only non-tribal children to be educated there. Almost 90% of the students that graduated
from the school have returned to serve their own community. Some have gone ahead to
become teachers in other schools, others have set up shops in their neighbourhood, some
have become policemen, forest guards and some have returned to Lok Biradari Prakalp as
volunteers. A more noteworthy achievement of the school is reflected in the fact that five
students have gone ahead to become medical practitioners in addition to a dentist, a
veterinary doctor and two lawyers. There is no field that they have not excelled in. In the
field of sports, the tribal boys are at their best in athletics; as many as twenty to twenty five
students participate at state level and around two to three at national level competitions
each year. Mind you, they have no formal coaching or training of any sort except
encouragement from their teachers.
Initially, these tribal people used to practice shifting cultivation, due to which both
productivity and production levels were low. Food was scarce and malnutrition rampant.
Hunting was extensive but yielded very little since the animal population had already
decimated. In an effort to wean the tribal people from hunting, we began carrying out crop
demonstrations in those villages from where our students came. Seeds of high yielding
varieties of paddy and some vegetables were distributed among the villagers. They are now
slowly adopting new, improved agricultural practices and techniques.

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Traditionally, the tribal people had their own councils of elders to settle their own disputes.
But after the police appeared on the scene, they started approaching policemen for this
purpose. This gave the police department an opportunity to exploit the poor, uneducated
tribal people. Since 1980, we have been successfully conducting an informal court called
Lok Adalat (Peoples Court) at Lok Biradari Prakalp itself, where people with disputes of
all varieties, except murder, come for amicable settlements, and the disputes are resolved
in perfect concord with their tradition and custom.
Drinking water was always a problem in the area and almost the entire population in the
area depended on river or stream water; at times they had to fetch water from a distance of
two to three kilometers. It also posed a health problem. Then we requested the government
to provide for bore-wells in all the villages. Since the maintenance of hand pumps was
difficult for them, we offered our services and in next few years the hand pumps were
regularly maintained by us personally in 80 villages. Later on we trained senior schoolboys
who took over the repairs of the hand pumps.
Hunting was the chief source of food among the tribal people. In fact when we arrived in
1973, the forest was eerily silent. Not a bird could be heard, not a monkey could be seen
swinging from trees. The tribal people in their quest for food had hunted down almost all
that could be eaten, from birds to snakes, literally. In addition, blind faith coupled with
superstitions like witchcraft meant that animal sacrifice was necessary to please the gods
and to protect oneself against spirits. Some animals were killed and their carcasses were
hung in doorways or on the outskirts in order to ward off evil spirits. Judging the gravity
of the situation, we started a wildlife orphanage by convincing the tribal people to spare at
least the hunted animals young ones. We would ask for the babies and give them food
grains in exchange for the orphaned animals. The orphanage now has a great variety of
animals. Some of them, like the giant squirrel, belong to endangered species. The
orphanage is aptly named Amtes Animal Ark since animals confirmed as enemies live
together, like the leopard and the dog or the hyena and dog, etc. It is a unique menagerie
of animals, birds, snakes and reptiles, from domestic pets to wild animals. Tribal people,
who once feasted upon them, have now begun appreciating their beauty. Tribal students in
the Lok Birdari Prakalp school take care of more than fifty animals that are housed in the
orphanage. Now hunting has almost stopped and it is heartening to see the growth of the
population, be it birds, beasts or other wild animals.
Those Who Supported Us
The growth of the project set up in 1974 with three small huts, serving as both residence
and hospital, was made possible because of active support from our parent institution,
Anandwan, our lifeline. Baba, my mother Sadhanatai, and Dr. Vikas along with a number
of workers from Anandwan had taken all pains to regularly provide the project with all the
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necessary food items, medicines, as well as material and labour for the construction and
development of the project. Swiss-Aid stepped in to help in 1976. With their generous help,
Lok Biradari Prakalp could construct residential quarters, a hospital building and the school
buildings. Later, Oxfam and Action Aid offered to meet the recurring expenses of the
project for nine consecutive years (1978-1987). Dr. Jagannath Wani from Maharashtra
Seva Samiti Organization (MSSO) of Canada came forward to build residential quarters
for doctors, girls hostel and an additional school building with twelve classrooms. Mr. Gul
Asnani from the USA helped us through Rotary Internationals matching grant of
medicines for the hospital for five years. The numerous visitors, friends and well wishers
have helped the project by donating generously.
Mr. Guy and Dr. Greet Barthelemy, who had worked with Dr. Schweitzer in the early
fifties, visited the project in 1992. They were moved to see the similarity of conditions at
Hemalkasa and those in Africa where Dr. Schweitzer worked. And when he received the
Nobel Prize in 1954, the Prince of Monaco released a postal stamp in his appreciation. This
French couple went back and appealed to the Prince of Monaco to publish a postal stamp
to honour us, and he agreed to their suggestion and published the stamp in our name in
1995. This helped win more friends from both abroad and home.
I must say the project would not have flourished without the dedicated support from all my
colleagues who resigned their jobs and joined this project. Amongst them are Vilas
Manohar from Pune, Gopal Phadnis from Nagpur, Panchals from Marathwada and Jagan
from Nanded. We could clear all the snags with the active support from our dedicated
ground crew.
A Final Note
How do I perceive the world? Friends, there is no dearth of the young wasting their time,
money and energy in hedonistic orgies; there is no dearth of recklessly ambitious young
careerists shut up in their cells of personal excellence such as engineers, doctors, scientists,
I.T. professionals and the like. In todays knowledge-based society marked by cut-throat
competition everyone is busy getting ahead of someone. What is missing in this madding
crowd is brotherhood, a sprit of fraternity, a sense of belonging. As wealth accumulates
men decay, said Bernard Shaw and rightly so. We must do something to prove him wrong
before it is too late. And it is not difficult. We need only the will, a strong will, a force from
within and the courage to translate it into action. I am far from being a pessimist. I have
faith in my fathers creed, Care and Share, Charity destroys, work builds. It guided us
at every stage. I have abiding faith in the youth of the world, too. The future of the world
rests in their hands. We need a few more dedicated workers with honesty of purpose to
build a human community where people live in harmony and peace. The first step in this
direction is to build bridges between the haves and the havenots, in every sphere. Be a
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leveller to scale new heights of unadulterated joy, which is yours if you care.
Thank you.

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