The most interesting piece in the summary is that the DSOBS has set up a fund titled, "Navodaya" to use for a future crisis. Hopefully, this will translate into a long term, consistent initiative to contribute to the betterment of Indian society. Also interesting to note, is that the catalysts for the idea were all older doscos - Lt Gen Adi Sethna (191-K '41), B G Verghese (150-J '44) and Shomie Das (165-H '51).

Will this help Doon shed its image of being an elitist, exclusive and self serving fraternity? We certainly hope so and wish the Navodaya efforts every success.

Summary of the DSOBS Tsunami Relief & Rehabilitation Efforts

Date: 25/07/2005
To All Old Boys' of The Doon School

Gentlemen

In the days immediately after the Tsunami a few old boys enquired as to whether the DSOBS was going to get involved in providing relief to those affected. It was the end of December and many Executive Committee colleagues had already left Delhi with their families. The few of us conferred and decided that the situation warranted our involvement however we were concious that we had no prior experience and little or no idea on where to start. What we were clear about was that our efforts would be channelised through and with the fraternity:

we would appeal to the old boy to participate and donate,

we would approach old boys' for assistance to guide us on what and where relief efforts were needed most,

we would seek old boys' involved in relief efforts on-site so our efforts would be routed through them,

we would source material and means from old boys' if we could find any involved as appropriate, and,

there would be complete transparency in our efforts and that we would endeavor to continuously communicate in order to keep all informed of progress.

Our initial appeal evoked immediate response - amongst the first from Aamir Ali (214K-1939) who wrote in from Switzerland where he apparently now resides. Many offered encouragement, information and advise, a few even volunteered to travel to the affected areas and work on-site with the needy. Material, like clothes, dry food rations and utensils, began to pour in and we eventually had truck loads which were then sent to Tamil Nadu. Our enquiries lead us to identify the immediate and dire need for "Clean Drinking Water" given that the sea water had contaminated existing sources like inland water wells along the coast of Tamil Nadu. Ajay Pratap Singh (214H-1966) called to inform that he had a water treatment plant just outside Ennore which is located along the Tamil Nadu coast and he would arrange to produce, manage and supply clean Drinking Water, at cost, to the needy villages in the vicinity, if we could fund the same. Subsequently, Mani Shankar Aiyar (55T-1958), Member of Parliament and Union Minister, wrote asking for assistance in his constituency, Mayiladuturai, which is located along the coast of Tamil Nadu. Funds had started to come in - eventually 131 old boys donated generously and obviously some shared our efforts with their friends and relatives as donations were received from 29 "Friend's of The Doon School"! Our collections have topped Rs29.50 lacs!

The old boy fraternity was abuzz with the relief efforts. Allow me to recount our contributions;

Truck Loads of Relief Material sent from New Delhi to Tamil Nadu - coordinated by Gurmeet Singh (883T-1982),

We set a goal of 1 million liters of Clean Drinking Water - we used 105 tanker trucks and disbursed 1,074,500 liters of water,

Offering a more permanent solution, 5 Reverse Osmosis Water Treatment Plants have been donated and installed in villages in Tamil Nadu by Gautam Khanna (897K-1982), Pentair Water Systems Ltd.,

A new water well donated by Ajay Pratap Singh (214H-1966) in Vandanemmeli Village in Kancheepuram Dist., Tamil Nadu,

500 Bicycles were sought to be distributed by Mani Shankar Aiyar given that many had lost this means of transportation - these were sourced, at cost, through Sunil Kant Munjal (180K-1973), Hero Cycles, and, A.Vellayan (87T-1968), TI Cycles. Of the 500 total, 300 bicycles were donated by Peter Mukerjea (17H-1971), Star TV India.

Sports Equipment to engage the affected children in their spare time was requested by Mani Shankar Aiyar, and, courtesy friends of The Doon School, "The Indian Women's Association of Singapore", we supplied 289 kits comprising of cricket gear, skipping ropes, badminton gear, carrom boards, etc.. The equipment was sourced from Sanjay Agarwal (143H-1972) in Meerut.

Your support and contributions have facilitated both, Relief, and, Rehabilitation.

A learning from this effort was that as we had no base to start on, our response was about 2-3 weeks later than it could have been. Lt Gen Adi Sethna (191K-1941), B G Verghese (150J-1944) and Shomie Das (165H-1951), to name a few, reminded of our committment to contribute to the betterment and upliftment of our fellow countrymen and to Indian society in particular. Shomie Das also suggested we use this learning to better prepare for future situations and maybe setup a corpus/fund which allows for a quicker response. Leading on, I had, in a previous communication, mentioned the DSOBS Executive Committee intent to do so using residual amounts from this effort as an opening balance and that we had created an account head in the DSOBS books titled, "Navodaya - a new dawn". I am therefore taking the liberty of transferring the residual amount of Rs 256,117.00 as the opening credit balance for "Navodaya".

The Tsunami effort has had an extensive collective participation. However, there a few old boys whom I would like to take this opportunity to particularly applaud and appreciate and ask you to join me in doing so. They include, Alok Bhargava (196J-1974) our Chennai Representative, and Angad Vohra (293J-1968) who is based in Pondicherry and both of whom have been our on-site guardians, Ajay Pratap Singh who personally supervised the disbursement of more than 1 million liters of clean drinking water, Nalin Khanna (563H-1980) who helped with the sports equipment, and, fellow Executive Committee member, Gurmeet Singh. Finally, please permit me the liberty to use these columns to personally, appreciate, applaud and thank, Ranjan Bhalla (386J-1972), who has, "given and not counted the cost, toiled and did not seek any rest, laboured and never sought any reward".

And finally, on behalf of your President, Anoop Bishnoi, our colleagues on the Executive Committee, and myself, thank you. Every dosco, past, present and future, can be rightly proud of this effort.

Best Regards,

Gautam Chadha
Vice President
Doon School Old Boys' Society,
New Delhi, India

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Read the September 24th edition of the Doon School Weekly (PDF). The issue includes an interview with the Director of the British Council of India and an essay on the storm surrounding Sania Mirza's dress code.

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Read the September 17th edition of the Doon School Weekly (PDF). The issue includes an article about a trip to Scindia and two thoughtful poems.

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Bunker Roy (125-J '62) has written a thoughtful article titled "Why the millennium goals won't work" for the International Herald Tribune in which he sharply criticizes the UN's Millenium Development Goals.

Why the millennium goals won't work

By Bunker Roy International Herald Tribune

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2005

TILONIA, India In 1978, when Robert McNamara, then president of the World Bank, and McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation, spend a night at the Barefoot College here in Tilonia, McNamara asked a man whose family lived on much less than a dollar a day what he looked forward to in life. He smiled and said very quietly, "Two square meals a day."


I remember the stunned silence even today and think back to that meeting when I read the United Nations' report on its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2005. For all the high-powered officials who put it together and for all the 25 UN agencies and international donor groups it depends on, it reflects a naïve and gullible attitude about poverty.


The virtual reality in which its authors live, full of action plans, road maps and fact sheets, is frightening. They should listen to someone who has lived and worked for the last 34 years with the rural poor: Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (MDG No. 1) does not need indicators and databases. Only intellectual activists who have no idea how to reach the very poor need that.
So long as governments in the South are powerless to break the hold of corrupt private contractors and larcenous village-level politicians, the poor will never be free from want or free from fear, whatever the UN report envisions. The possible solution? Get every government in the South to work toward a Right to Information Act like India's. Ensure transparency and accountability, with rural communities putting pressure on government from below to disclose how money has been spent. Ask Transparency International. They will help.


If we want to achieve universal primary education (MDG No. 2), Unesco's approach has not worked. With 60 percent of the poorest rural children not going to school in the morning because they have to help with domestic chores, far from a solution, the development report offers only a demonstration of an inability to think out of the box. But there's a common-sense people's solution - have school at night.


Few government teachers sleep in the villages. So train literate but unemployed rural youth as part-time "barefoot" teachers by the thousands, all over the world, to run the night schools.
Are the development report's authors aware that the tremendous work that community-based groups are doing in primary education is not reflected in the official statistics either of Unesco or of governments? This is because their work is still not valued or recognized and never will be, because they are a threat to village officials who represent government and who do not believe in changing the status quo.


There are many innovative ways of empowering women (MDG No. 3) used by community-based groups the world over. In my experience, to the disbelief of urban paper-qualified experts, semiliterate rural women have become solar and water engineers and have begun repairing hand pumps, building rainwater tanks in schools, solar-electrifying villages and feeding data into computers without any technical help from outside.


Speaking of rainwater, it falls on the roofs of schools everywhere. It should be collected, by the billions of gallons, for drinking and flushing toilets. Expensive centralized technology solutions with hand pumps or piping systems must be phased out. This simple solution to meet a basic minimum need will advance not only MDG No. 7, which specifically calls for greater access to safe drinking water, but almost every other MDG as well, either directly or indirectly.


We do not need the World Health Organization in the villages: It's so simple and inexpensive to upgrade the skills of traditional midwives, improve their confidence and build on their knowledge. Where these small community-managed steps have been taken to involve the traditional medicinal systems, child mortality has fallen sharply, maternal health has improved and waterborne diseases have been tackled more effectively (MDG Nos. 4 through 6).


If the primary focus is really ending poverty, the partnerships we need to strengthen are of a sort other than trade (MDG No. 8): partnerships between poor communities so that they learn from one another and share traditional, practical knowledge and skills. Importing expensive, unworkable ideas, equipment and consultants from the North simply destroys the capacity of communities to help themselves.


Any goal that is driven from the top by international donors and governments not accountable to the communities and without financial transparency is doomed to fail. That model encourages colossal falsification of figures, the excessive hiring of private consultants and contractors, conflicts of interest and a massive patronage system.


When poor communities think at the human level, all their goals are interconnected. But under the present top-down model, with the absence of a global grass-roots movement with the communities as equal partners, the goals have been broken up compartmentally into project mode, to suit donors and governments.


That's the ultimate recipe for disaster, and that's why the MDGs will be achieved only on paper.
(Bunker Roy is the founder of the Barefoot College and chairman of the Global Rain Water Harvesting Collective. A complete list of the Millennium Development Goals and the related UN report can be found at www.un.org/millenniumgoals.)

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Read the September 10th edition of the Doon School Weekly (PDF). The issue includes an account of the Chuckerbutty debates, a Round Square project in Chennai and a social service trip to Bhimawala.

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Read the September 3rd edition of the Doon School Weekly (PDF). The issue includes articles about the RSIS Ladakh project and placement details of the batch of 2005.

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