Greatness of spirit runs in this family from India

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RAMON MAGSAYSAY AWARD
RAMON MAGSAYSAY AWARD : Greatness of spirit runs in this family from India


By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Columnist / Writer
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: September 02, 2008


MANILA, Philippines—Greatness of spirit could run in the family. And whoever said that seedlings cannot thrive in the shadow of the huge parent tree could be proven wrong.
Husband and wife Prakash and Mandakini Amte of India, both doctors, are proof that the greatness of one’s parents could live on, not necessarily by some wonder of genetics, but because noble examples set by one generation can flourish and bear fruit in the next.

The couple earned this year’s Ramon Magsaysay award for Community Leadership, the latest of many honors received in their home country and abroad. Their portraits, for example, have appeared on a Red Cross postage stamp issued by Monaco.

Prakash’s late father, Murlidhar Amte, was also an “RM” awardee (Public Service, 1985). A humanitarian and follower of Mahatma Gandhi, “Baba” (father), died early this year at the age of 96. Books have been written and a film has been made on Murlidhar’s work caring for lepers.

Along with brother Vikas, Prakash grew up in Anandwan in the Indian state of Maharashtra, in an ashram (a spiritual commune) and a rehabilitation center for leprosy patients founded by his father. “We went to school and played with the children of the (leper) community,” Prakash recalls.

After becoming a doctor, Prakash could have chosen a life of ease and plenty. But with his young bride Mandakini by his side, he followed a demanding path similar to what his old man had chosen.

Sense of mission

His sense of mission led him to the remote jungles of Hemalsaka in eastern Maharashtra, home to a gentle tribe known as the Madia Gonds.

When the couple arrived there 34 years ago, literacy among the Madia Gonds was zero and their contact with the outside world was limited. There were no modern services and little government presence in the 150 square meter of dense forest that sheltered the tribe.

The tribesmen coexisted with wild animals and survived by hunting, gathering and shifting cultivation, but they were considered a people forgotten by civilization. They had no written language, their dialect related neither to Hindi, India’s national language, nor to Marathi, which is spoken in Maharashtra.

But what exactly drew Prakash to the place? He was doing postgraduate studies in surgery in Nagpur when he volunteered to run his father’s new project among the Madia Gonds. This was a turning point for him, and Prakash knew it was also a homecoming of sorts.

Prakash told his then girlfriend Mandakini about his plans. Would she come with him to work in the jungle? Mandakini remembers how Prakash popped the question. “If not, he said, it would be okay,” recalls the former beauty queen-turned-doctor. She said yes, she will go with him.

Leap of faith

In 1974, Prakash and Mandakini made a leap in the dark, a leap of faith, and left their medical practice in the city to settle in Hemalsaka.

And once there, they had to start from scratch. There were no creature comforts to speak of. They lived in a doorless hut that offered no privacy. During the cold season they warmed themselves by the fireside. “We minimized our needs,” Prakash says.

Shy and suspicious of outsiders, the Madia Gonds did not warm up to the Amtes instantly. “When we arrived we right away felt the cultural barrier,” Mandakini says.

There were problems of malnutrition, blind faith in false healers and even in the practice of making a human sacrifice. Food production was through “zoom agriculture,” or slash-and-burn.

Prakash and Mandakini began their mission by setting up shop by the roadside. They learned the local dialect. Prakash shed the doctor’s standard white outfit and wore only short pants and an undershirt.

Little by little the couple earned the people’s trust. They nursed to health a badly burned epileptic boy and a man dying of cerebral malaria. The “miracle cures” resulted in more patients coming.

Against abuse

In 1975, the development agency SwissAid gave funds for the construction of a small hospital in Hemalkasa, on a land donated by government. “We did everything (since),” Prakash recalls with laughter. “Cataract operations, fractures, gynecological problems, bear bites. For 30 years we didn’t have a break.”

But health and nutrition were not the only problems. The Amtes discovered how the Madia Gonds could also be vulnerable to exploitation by corrupt forest officers and other outsiders. Hence, the couple had to intervene and mediate in the tribe’s disputes with abusive government officials.

In 1976, a school was built on the same land donated for the hospital. At first the people were reluctant to send their children to school, but it did not take long for them to get convinced.

The couple eventually raised their two sons in Hemalsaka and sent them to the same school with Madia Gond youths, just like how it was when Prakash was growing up with the children of his father’s leprosy patients.

The school did not just offer the basics but also provided training in organic farming. The people were taught how to conserve forest resources, including endangered fauna lest they be hunted to extinction. An animal orphanage was set up to stress the importance of wildlife in the balance of nature.

Electricity finally came to the Madia Gonds in 1995.

Alumni back to serve

Today, the hospital has a 50-bed capacity and treats more than 40,000 patients a year, free of charge. It also serves as a regional center for mother-child welfare and health education. Its “barefoot” volunteer doctors spread out to outlying villages.

The school, meanwhile, currently enrolls around 600 students, and some of its earliest students have become doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers and craftsmen.

Prakash reports that the school now counts “five doctors” among its alumni and that all five, along with 90 percent of the graduates, “have come back to serve in the community.”

Two of these young doctors are his own sons Digant and Aniket.

Digant and his wife Anagha, another doctor, have an adopted daughter named Arati, a Madia Gond whose mother died in childbirth. Arati is now a nurse.

Legacy

Now in their 60s, Prakash and Mandakini also have a grandson, whose pictures they proudly carry around in an album. Some of the photos show a wide-eyed boy frolicking among leopards, bears and snakes in the animal orphanage.

“Maybe it’s just the way we have led our lives,” Prakash says, summing up their works of compassion and the legacy they are leaving behind.

Their 34-year-old endeavor for the uplift of the Madia Gonds has since been known as Lok Biradari Prakalp (People’s Brotherhood Project) or LBP, a name given by Baba Amte.

With help from SwissAid, Oxfam and a Canadian development agency, LBP has forged on, although money and trained medical help are always in short supply. The couple’s cash award that goes with the “RM” will surely go a long way.

(The Amte couple are not the only second-generation RM awardees. Jon Ungphakorn of Thailand, the 2005 RM awardee for Government Service, is the son of 1965 awardee for Public Service Puey Ungphakorn.)





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