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EducationWorld November 04 | EducationWorld

India Untouched — The forgotten face of rural poverty by Abraham M. George; EastWest Books; Price: Rs.295; 400 pp People of Indian origin settled abroad or NRIs (non-resident Indians) as they are popularly described, writing about India or their experiences of India, render the country of their origin a great service. First the very fact that they buckle down to the task of penning a tome shows they care. Second, since they tend to be less fearful about treading on the hyper-sensitive toes of the nation’s petty but powerful politicians, they usually tell it like it is. But celebrated NRI writers tend to be innocent of the nuances of economics particularly business and project management, ignorance of which has been post-independence India’s biggest bugbear. A successful businessman’s perspective and insight is the distinguishing characteristic of India Untouched — The forgotten face of rural poverty. It sets this valuable work apart from other treatises analysing — or attempting to analyse — the curious conundrum of how and why high-potential, resource-rich India gifted with the youngest and most enterprising population in the world is among the poorest, most oppressed and wretchedest nations on God’s good Earth. Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram)-born Abraham M. George began his career as a commissioned officer in the Indian Army before a hearing disability forced him to take an early discharge and migrate to the United States where his mother was a research scientist in NASA. In a modest, perhaps too-brief autobiographical first chapter, George reveals that after acquiring a doctorate in development finance and economics from New York University, he began working with Chemical Bank, now part of the J.P. Morgan Chase Bank. Two years later, he went solo to “offer computerised systems to large multinational corporations to enable them deal with their financial risks”. And when personal computers revolutionised the IT business, he tailored his business to this new development “with great success”. “As I began to make money, I dreamt of the day when I would save enough to pursue work for the poor,” he writes. This ambition was realised in 1995 when he sold the company which he built “from the ground up to a large multinational firm, thereby concluding another chapter of my life”. In that year he returned to India to promote the George Foundation, “a non-profit charitable trust that would work towards the goal of addressing some of the most persistent problems in Indian society, especially with regard to the poor”. Out of this caring, compassionate resolve was born the noble, on-going, and by all accounts highly successful, initiatives of the George Foundation which are not as well known as they should be. They are: Shanti Bhavan — “a world-class boarding institution for children from the poorest homes and for those belonging mostly to the lowest castes, mainly the ‘untouchables’” on the outskirts of Bangalore; an awareness and advocacy campaign to abate the incidence of lead poisoning which was “affecting over 100 million children in India’s cities”; the establishment of a rural hospital and community

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