|
Mumbai: Prakash and Mandakini Amte, a doctor couple whose work in remote tribal hamlets in eastern Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district spans a good three decades have been named for this year's Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership.
The award recognises the couple's part in "enhancing the capacity of Madia Gonds to adapt positively in today's India, through healing and teaching and other compassionate interventions".
The Amtes began working with Madia Gonds inhabiting dense forests along the state's borders with Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh 34 years ago when the region had no amenities worth the name. Members of the tribe, spread over a thousand isolated hamlets, were largely dependant on hunting and shifting cultivation. Government officials were reluctant to take their schemes to the Gonds but the Amtes made a conscious choice.
Today, the couple run a 50-bed hospital in Hemalkasa, Gadchiroli district. Four doctors at the facility treat 40,000 patients a year free-of-charge.
Vocational school
The "barefoot doctors" bring first aid to outlying villages. Over 500 students attend a school run by the Amtes which also offers vocational courses. The couple's two sons have had there education at the school. Among its graduates are the first doctors, lawyers, teachers and policemen from among the Madia Gonds.
More than 90 per cent of the students come returned to serve in the community. The Amte children are no exception.
The couple's social work is no accident. Prakash is the son of the late Baba Amte, the noted Gandhian who founded a rehabilitation centre for leprosy patients in Anandwan at Warora village in Chandrapur district.
The senior Amte himself was the recipient of the Magsaysay Award in 1985. "We are very happy to receive this award but I wish my father was alive to see it," Prakash told Gulf News on the phone from his Hemalkasa home.
"We have been working here for the last 35 years. It has been a team effort and we shall accept the award on everyone's behalf."
Prakash believes the award will make a difference to him and his wife, and the tribal people. "We have been working with primitive tribes who need help. With this award, the outside world will take an interest in them and ultimately it will aid in their upliftment," he says.
Prakash was doing his post-graduate surgical studies in Nagpur when he volunteered to take over a new project launched by his father among the Madia Gonds in 1974. He and his wife abandoned their urban practices and moved to remote Hemalkasa.
In 1975, Swisaid provided funds to build a small hospital where the couple performed surgery and treated malaria, tuberculosis, dysentery, burns and animal bites among other cases. To conform to tribal sensibilities, they placed most of the hospital's facilities out-of-doors, beneath the trees. Simplicity and respect guide the Amtes' work with the Gonds.
The tribals have also been introduced to horticulture and the need to preserve the natural balance in their areas.
|
