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The DOSCO response to the tsunami disaster is a reflection of the long tradition of public service, often hidden under layers of affected indifference.
This was my first reaction when I read with pride and admiration Gautam Chadha's initial mail on how DOSCOS were setting about bringing water to the Andamans. "Pride", because it showed how the spark of public consciousness lit when we were school boys in the late nineteen thirties was still burning bright; and "admiration" for the modern DOSCOS who were bringing succor to those who need it most using modern management and technology which is now at their command.
The DOSCO relief measures need to be highlighted - not merely for public consumption and earning goodwill, but more importantly for the DOSCO fraternity whose activities are highlighted in the Rosebowl too regularly only at "get-togethers". Many of we grandfatherly Old Boys are happy to be associated in recounting the early days when this spark of public consciousness was lighted.
1935 when the School was founded, was also the year when the Govt. of India Act was passed by the British Parliament. Mr. Foot and his team set about bringing up the boys to become the leaders of free India - possibly a strange vision for Englishmen during the hey days of the Raj. They helped instill a sense of Public Duty as a part of Public School education. It took many forms but possibly the most revolutionary was for boys in B Form Biology classes engaged in making compost under Mr. Hunter-Boyd. Ashok Raje Gaekward carrying gobar or cow-dung with me remarked that he had no objection to doing it but God help him if some of the courtiers of the Maharaja of Baroda reported this to His Highness !!
The class of 1938 was the first to work in Tunwalla village. This project carried on for many years. Even earlier some of us were teaching "servant's children" to read and write. The expeditions for relief in Midnapore, Contai and possibly also in Noakhali were after my days at school but some of my classmates attended as "young" old boys.
Our generation came out of school prepared to lend a hand - no work was too menial. We also learnt to appreciate what others did for us and still remember the special thanks we gave to the cooks of Kashmir House at every Golden Night dinners. All this has helped me through out my life.
I hope this will start a series of recollections which may interest others.
Two years ago, TalentBurst Inc. co-founders Brad Talwar, Deep Deshpande and Baljit Gill were all working for the same large software management company - they all wanted out.
Six months later, the three men zeroed out their bank accounts, and scraped together $50,000 to establish TalentBurst, a software-consulting firm that focuses on both onshore and offshore development. The Natick, Mass.-based company, which has a development center in Gurgaon, India, has now grown to 40 employees and is planning its first United States expansion to Dallas and Chicago.
According to Talwar, the impetus to start the company was fairly simple. "We wanted to build a company that perfected the mistakes in the industry," he said.
Trouble areas that TalentBurst initially focused on included employee management, client management and project deliverables.
The co-founders believed they could provide services better and cheaper because of their offshore/onshore approach and the lower overhead of a smaller firm.
"We are not overpriced consultants," said Talwar. "We don't have the high overhead and we don't have the profit requirements of Wall Street firms."
According to him, TalentBurst is half the price of their larger competitors such as IBM, Accenture, Webpro International and Infosys Technologies Ltd.
"Our mission is good value," he said. "We are essentially the Honda Accord of consulting."
In addition, TalentBurst's mission is to help corporations that want to manage data. In the last six months, Talwar said that TalentBurst has started to work increasingly with companies in the Northeast that are looking for partners in Web technology, Web development and storage area networking.
Companies don't have the bandwidth necessary in house to execute these functions, said Talwar.
TalentBurst currently has 12 customers in the United States including The Home Depot, Continental Airlines Inc., Best Buy, Pfizer Inc. and Aventis. The company also has one project in India.
Talwar said he is aware of the touchy matter of developing potential U.S. jobs overseas. "Taking U.S. jobs away is a sensitive issue," he said. "We go to a client and we pitch to them about using the offshore option, but we don't push our clients."
TalentBurst's current U.S. expansion was prompted by the number of larger clients it has in both cities. Talwar said that he anticipates further growth for TalentBurst, aiming to have nearly 80 employees by the end of 2005 and possible additional locations in New York and Los Angeles.
"It depends on where the client base is," he said. "Being small and nimble allows us to do that."
While Talwar said that though the company has generated revenues from day one, it did take a while for TalentBurst to break even. This year he said that revenues are expected to be over $5 million.
Talwar attributed the success of the company to the combined experience of its co-founders.
While only 29, Talwar has been working in the software industry since he came to the United States from Lucknow in 1996 for a job with a software-management company. His cousin, Gill, came to the United States in 1999 from New Delhi to work for the same company. His high school friend, Deshpande, came in 1994 from New Delhi for an undergraduate degree at Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio.
In 1999, Desphande joined Talwar and Gill.
Talwar is currently TalentBurst's vice president of business development; Deshpande is the vice president of operations; and Gill is the vice president of resourcing.
The company has no chief executive officer and Talwar is quick to emphasize that the three men function collectively as an office of the president.
"We make collective decisions," said Talwar, who added that both the founders of Google and of Yahoo structured their companies in the same way.
"One of us will eventually emerge as the CEO or possibly we'll hire a professional to take us to the next level," he said. "For now, three brains are greater than one."
To get to that next level, Tarwal said TalentBurst would consider using a bank's line of credit.
The company is not interested in outside investors, he added, but would not ruling anything out down the line.
"In five years we could be primed for an acquisition," he said. "We need to be in the industry at least five years. Anything else is a flash in the pan."
He is 29, studied at Doon School and Delhi University and did his MBA from Australia. He speaks English with an accent and looks like one of those bespectacled bookworms often seen in toppers lists in student magazines.
His grandfather was the late Maharaja Bahadur Kamakhya Narayan Singh, the ruler of the erstwhile state of Padma. His grandmother Reva Singh is still known as Rani.
Meet Saurabh Narayan Singh, Congress candidate for the assembly election from Hazaribagh in tribal-dominated Jharkhand. He is fighting Bharatiya Janata Party veteran and state Agriculture Minister Dev Dayal Kuswaha.
No matter what the outcome, Saurabh has made a mark in Hazaribagh. He is a new hero for youngsters. Some female students of the Vinoba Bhave University invite him to address the students during his campaign. "He is so innocent and well-mannered. He is educated. He deserves to win," is what one hears about him.
His drawback is that though he was born in Hazaribagh, he is not familiar with the local dialect. He speaks broken Hindi and uses English words in his speeches, which many do not understand.
Ehtasham Khan spoke to the unlikely neta, who was surrounded by hundreds of supporters and workers at his mansion, the Raja Bangla, on the eve of elections in Hazaribagh.
What were you doing before you joined politics?
I was working with Citicorp in Delhi. Then I got an offer from Citibank to join their Hong Kong operations. But I didn't take it up and decided to contest this election.
Why did chose politics?
Throughout my life I have come across people regretting that politics do not offer them choices. People are not happy with the current lot of politicians. So I have come to pump in some fresh air in the political system. There is a common feeling that educated people should come into politics. Otherwise politics will not improve. We need new people with bright new ideas. Young people should get motivated in politics.
Why would anybody vote for you?
Because people want change. People are unhappy with the present situation, the politics and politicians. They want a new face. They want someone who can bring about change and do something new. I am here to bring that change.
How are you going to bring that change?
The biggest problem today is corruption. It is not just at the top but also at the grassroots. This is something I will work on. I will try to bring in more transparency in the system.
How difficult is it for newcomers and beginners to get into active politics and contest elections?
Definitely it is difficult. But then nothing is easy. One has to fight.
What are the problems?
Problems are everywhere -- you may be having problems in your job, I used to have problems in my job when I was working. Similarly there are problems in politics too. Sometimes people don't take you seriously.
You were working in an air-conditioned environment. Now you are in Jharkhand, which is quite backward -- there are mafias, extremists and criminals. How do you adjust?
Criminalisation of politics is a big challenge. It exists because good people stay out of politics. Once people like you and me start coming into politics, these criminals will take backstage. I am optimistic. The situation will improve and things will change. I am here to make a difference.
You look like a multinational company executive. How do you present yourself to the public? People say you look like an innocent kid. Not the typical kurta-dhoti politician.
(Laughs) No, no, I look like a normal politician. It doesn't matter how you look. What matters is what you are.
Does your royal family background help?
I don't think so. It just helps in the introduction.
Which are the key areas you are going to work in?
First, as I told you, is corruption. I want to give a transparent system. Second, I want to bring in projects and try to implement them to create jobs here. There are lots of delays in government projects because of lack of personal motivation. That also prevents good projects from coming in. That is something I am really going to work on. Most politicians have their own agenda and they push it on to the people. These ideas and agendas may not be acceptable to the people. So I will let the idea grow from the people and see how it could be beneficial to the maximum number of people and get it implemented.
It has educated no fewer than 18 prime ministers, 19 princes and kings, not to mention a Catholic saint. But now Eton College can boast another distinction that helped to spread its values across the world.
New research reveals that 11 viceroys and five governors-general of India were Old Etonians, whose experiences on the school's legendary playing fields played a key role in the way Britain ruled the "jewel in the crown" of its empire.
Andrew Robinson, an Eton history master, has been studying the school's links with India.
He says that while there is much for the school to be proud of in the Raj's 200-year history, he does not shy away from its less glorious moments.
"When we look at the Raj it would be wrong to hide the warts," he said yesterday. "I remind the boys of a quotation at the Oxford Union in 1857 [the year of the Indian mutiny]: 'When every last rebel sepoy has been hanged, when every last rebel has been shot, then we may talk of mercy.'
"There is also a diary entry from 1858 by a young man who had been at Eton, who wrote: 'What fun it is to shoot mutineers. It's almost like shooting partridges.' "
Mr Robinson, who is mounting a public exhibition at the school (April 20- Sept 30 in the Brewhouse Gallery, admission free) about its links with India, said that today's Etonians were baffled by a statement by Lord Birkenhead, the secretary of state for India from 1924-28, that "it is frankly ridiculous to consider the Indians governing their own country".
But he added: "We look at the good intentions as well, the notion of district commissioners, governors who intended the best for the people they were ruling; the idea that they had a civilising mission."
George Curzon, viceroy from 1898 to 1905, was a brilliant student at Eton. As Viceroy, Lord Curzon would hold June 4 dinners - a traditional school function - in Simla, the British summer capital. The one in 1901 had 14 Old Etonians. It does seem that he and others felt that they could trust the Eton network to run the sprawling sub-continent.
Mr Robinson has been gathering documents, photographs, memorabilia and film footage - from old boys or their families, from the vast school collection and from museums and galleries - to recall a remarkable roll call of Old Etonians over the centuries. Curzon's pith helmet, lent by his family, is in the exhibition. There are artefacts relating to George Canning, the nineteenth century governor-general who was blamed for leniency, right up to Lord Linlithgow, a viceroy in the late 1930s.
The exhibition features an interview with Gaj Singh II, Maharajah of Jodhpur, who attended the school in the 1960s. There is a memorial at Eton to Princes Victor and Frederick, Maharajah Duleep Singh's two sons who were at Eton in the 1870s.
There is memorabilia from Peter Lawrence, an Eton teacher who taught at The Doon School, one of the best known public schools in India in the 1930s and 1940s, when its first headmaster was A E Foot, also an Etonian.
Even today, Etonians are encouraged to go to India - but these days to teach during their gap years so as "to put something back".
Mr Robinson himself has just left for India with two Eton boys on a visit to Mayo College, Ajmer, one of the schools with which Eton runs an exchange programme.
Mani Shankar Aiyar has set his eyes on the new kid on the block: Sania Mirza. The Petroleum Minister wants the state-run oil companies to take her under their wings so that the new tennis sensation can settle in her game.
Inspired by an editorial in a financial daily, Aiyar wants that the outstanding star of the Australian Open should be freed of her financial worries so that she is able to concentrate on her tennis.
He has lobbied that the oil companies take lead in this game and has asked his secretary S.C. Tripathi to convene the CEOs and push the sponsorship forward as quickly as possible.
“The returns to us in terms of overseas publicity would be considerable especially in view of the increasing interest which not only ONGC Videsh Ltd but almost all other PSUs as taking in securing positions abroad,” he adds.
The Hyderabad girl may face a tough time rooting for OVL or Indian Oil Corp in tennis-devoid Sudan, Libya, Vietnam, Myanmar, Algeria, Iran, Iraq or for that matter snow-capped Sakhalin.
Oil and gas firms do not expect an ace out of Mirza in promoting gas pipes through Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkmenistan or crude lines from Egypt, Turkey or Kazakhstan.
FOR a school, it’s plush. A sprawling building spread over four acres, a swimming pool that is 20-metre long, no less than 70 bathrooms, Saint Gobain glasses and granite flooring. The setting, which would make any star hotel proud, would be the site of an educational institution that is being raised for slum children. And them alone.
An initiative of industrialist Dr Gurpreet Singh, chairman of Continental Devices India, former head, National Open School and Board Member of Doon School, ‘‘Sikhya-The School of Learning’’ at Sector 46, would be the first elite school for slum children in the city. No prospectus, no registration, no interactive sessions — the enrolments would start just as the session gets rolling. And of course, no fee.
A day-boarding, the school will be managed and run by Gurunanak Vidya Bhandar Trust which supports more than 300 schools in the country. Talking to Newsline, Sonia Channi, the principal of the school said in the beginning, 350 slum children would be enrolled with the help of various city NGOs, in classes I to V. ‘‘The school would have five academic days. Saturdays would be devoted to hobby classes. The discipline would be later turned into a vocational course,’’ said Sonia. Free breakfast and lunch would be offered to check high dropout rate and absenteeism.
She added the school would adopt a multi-disciplinary approach wherein after Class X, the students would have an option to either continue in the academics or take up a vocational course. Efforts are being made to get vocational courses certified by City and Guilds, UK, said Sonia. ‘‘The teachers would undergo training in phonetics and English communicative skills and a professionally qualified social worker would visit the students and parents at regular intervals.’’ There would be no parent-teacher meetings.
A book club, to which students of other schools would be able to donate old books, is also in the offing.
The students will be required to participate in debates, declamations and other extra-curricular activities at the community level.
The building, Sonia said, is handicapped-friendly too.
I seek to share with you the results of your efforts to assist those affected by the Tsunami, as on date. We have shipped over 400,000 liters of clean drinking water to affected persons along the Tamilnadu coast. This is an ongoing effort influenced by fund resources, availability of tankers, and, information of need as advised by the District Magistrates in the area and the Indian Red Cross.
On-site coordination is being handled by Ajay Pratap Singh (214H-1966) and his colleagues.
Our collections have exceeded Rs.1.40 million (fourteen lacs) contributed by 92 old boys' and 24 "friends of the Doon School". A complete list of contributors is published on your website, www.dsobs.org, and is updated daily. Also on the home page of the website is a photograph of a water tanker displaying a banner of the school logo and the DSOBS name.
On request received from Mani Shanker Aiyer (55T-1958), Cabinet Minister in the Government of India and Member of Parliament from Mayiladuturai, Tamilnadu (located in the North Nagapattinam District and amongst the worst-affected mainland constituency), Ranjan Bhalla (368J-1972) Executive Committee member of the DSOBS, flew down to Chennai to meet with him and his colleagues from the constituency to identify areas of assistance. Accompanying Ranjan was Gautam Khanna (897K-1982), Managing Director of Pentair Water Systems Ltd. who has expressed interest to install water treatment plants which would supply clean drinking water. The outcome has been that Pentair will work together with Mani Shanker Aiyer's team to survey the area and ascertain the feasibility of installing water treatment plants as appropriate which will offer long term relief to the residents of the impacted villages.
While in Chennai, Ranjan Bhalla also made contact with A.Vellayan (87T-1968) whose organization, the Murugappa Group of companies has factories along the Tamilnadu coast, and has introduced Pentair Water Systems to study the feasibility of installing a water treatment plant in one of the towns where the Murugappa Group has existing resources. This would be useful as, subsequent to installation, they can manage and maintain the plant.
A truck load of relief material including clothes and dry rations has been dispatched by rail to Chennai for distribution to the needy.
Our efforts to ship water to the Andaman Islands had to be aborted due lack of tanker space to carry the water and change of priorities as advised by the Government's National Disaster Management Cell officials.
Thank you for your support. Your messages of acknowledgement and encouragement, contributions and support, truly reflect the DOSCO spirit which has always inculcated a sense of public service.
May I request you please share this "update" with as many old boys' with whom you have contact - we have some 1500 email addresses on record (out of a total of more than 4000 old boys') and would appreciate your assistance to substantially increase this number so we can share information effectively and cost efficiently. Old boys' can register online on your website, www.dsobs.org.
Best regards,
Gautam Chadha
Vice President
Doon School Old Boys' Society,
New Delhi, India
It was heart warming to read the 2nd DSOBS report on the Dosco Tsunami Relief effort. The quantum and quality of assistance rendered is impressive. More than that was the very fact of giving, and giving collectively as a community of Old Boys of a very privileged institution.
When I was in School (1936-44) we used to visit Tunwala, a small village some four miles away from Dehra Dun. One of our activities I do recall was instructing and helping dig compost pits to promote sanitation and the production of organic manure. We also held adult education classes.
I’m not sure how much Tunwala benefited from this innocent do-gooding, but it certainly did leave an impression on many young minds that we were highly fortunate to be who and where we were and that we could, by sharing, attempt to bring some comfort and joy to others.
For time to time the School also mounted relief expeditions during the holidays.. The first, as I recall, was to Midnapore in Bengal in 1941 or 1942, to distribute medicines and blankets to those devastated by a terrible cyclone. In 1944, another expedition was despatched to provide relief to Kosi flood affected villagers in Darbhanga, near the Nepal border.
These efforts were a scaled-up extension of regular STA (spare time activity) in School, largely devoted to cleaning up the estate or, at that time, building the Rose Bowl. Arthur Foot, the first Headmaster, always spoke of the dignity of labour and the philosophy of dirty hands. He would say that the boys at School belonged to an elite but would quickly differentiate that from elitism, with its connotations of arrogance, greed and exclusivity.
And then there were the morning Assembly prayers.
One of them went
"Teach us good Lord,
To serve Thee as Thou deservest.
To give, and not to count the cost;
To fight, and not to heed the wound;
To toil, and not to look for rest;
To labour, and not to look for any reward
Save that of knowing that we do Thy will."
We left School, some with First Divisions, others with Thirds. But if we remembered Tunwala, STA and “to give and not to count the cost”, we all went away truly educated and better men, able to share our learning, talents and such wealth that might come our way with those less fortunate than ourselves.
So when the Tsunami came, the Doon School Old Boys were there – with tens of thousands of others of our countrymen, to reach out to those who had been ravaged by the waves. We need to rebuild in a manner that converts the disaster into an opportunity for better living and better livelihoods.
The December 26 tsunami was a natural visitation. What of the many more and no less savage manmade tsunamis that affect our nation – poverty, gross discrimination, communal and caste hatreds, the gender divide? What can we do to rehabilitate the many more and daily victims of these avoidable social and economic tragedies with which we have learnt to live with too much resignation and too little outrage? Rehabilitation means to invest with dignity. What a rich word! Doscos, like others, surely must give richly to accomplish that task not merely by what we donate occasionally but by what we do every day.
At 40, Rajiv Gandhi (259-K'60) was India's youngest Prime Minster . He came to power soon after his mother's assasination with a technological, modernistic vision for India . Unfortunately, his dreams for India were cut short when he was assasinated in 1991. Still, in his short time in politics primarily as prime minister and as leader of the opposition, he was able to do India proud.
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