Entry 3 - "Do Some Good in India"

Satya, Ahimsa, Seva and Tyaga: Truth, Non-Violence, Service, Sacrifice

The Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM) was begun in 1984, out of the vision of its founder, Dr Balusubramanian, a young medical doctor in Mysore, India. Named for the famous Indian philosopher and eductor of the nineteenth century, Narendra Nath Datta who took on the name and title Swami Vivekananda, the SVYM is an NGO dedicated to social improvement and sustainable development in India.  The vision of the organization is to help build a new civil society in India, particularly by working through grass-roots, community-based activities, as well as through doing advocacy work at government levels in the areas of health, education and community development. Its vision draws from the works of Swami Vivekananda, and is built on the principles of Satya, Ahimsa, Seva and Tyaga: truth, non-violence, service, sacrifice.  Dr Balu (as he is known) is still actively involved in many aspects of the work he has founded, but it has grown and now has an Executive Director, branches around India, and in particular some specific branches here in Mysore.

One branch is its Leadership programmes, and it is under these auspices that the Vivekananda Institute for Indian Studies (VIIS) operates from the Leadership campus, one building that will soon be two buildings, plus a hostel a few hundred metres down the road.  We have come to India so that the students can study and learn through VIIS in formal academic study, but also in experiential learning opportunities, including field trips to archaeological and historical sites, but also in entering in to some of the programmes that SVYM has begun and runs, including shelters for abused women, orphanages, hospitals, and schools, to name a few.  The scope of the work of SVYM is broad, its mandate large, and the needs in India are many.

Last Friday an extensive field trip into the country took us to two schools and two hospitals, one with an Ayurvedic health centre attached.  Both hospitals were established and are run under the auspices of SVYM, with caring and committed staff who probably could be working elsewhere, and for more money.  The primary clientele are the tribal people of the area, who are similar to Canada’s First Nations people: forced by development and progress to come out the forests, as they are no longer able to support themselves in traditional hunting and harvesting ways, they are struggling to adapt to changing ways.  They are doing some farming, and developing some artisanship in various areas.  When I asked one doctor about the dominant cases in the emergency area, I was thinking road accidents or workplace injuries; he said no, wild animal attacks: tigers, leopards, wild elephants, sloth bears, snake bites.  He seemed a very caring man.

The hospital was small, with two regular wards, a labour and delivery area, intensive care, and other essentials, totalling about 90 beds.  Patients coming in were weighed and measured, but not with the clinical precision of North America; hand-drawn markings on the door jamb (akin to the ones most parents have put in their children’s bedrooms in North America) was the standard for height, and a basic bathroom scale such as we might buy at Wal-Mart or Zellers served as the standard for weight.  Some nurse training was also taking place, and again, the people seemed very caring, but completely lacking in the kinds of equipment we would take for granted.  I was surprised to see the rubber gloves used in the examination room being dipped in a basin of antiseptic, and then hung outside on the clothesline to dry.  Patients’ bedsheets were laundered in the traditional Indian fashion, beaten against a rock, and then were draped on the bushes and shrubs around the hospital to dry.

The Ayurvedic Health Centre was attached to the hospital in the village of Kenchanahalli, inside the National Forest Preserve of India.  This hospital has only ten beds, and the Aurvedic Centre opposite offered yoga, steam cleansing, counselling, and a variety of natural medicines and treatments.

An interesting story emerged concerning the school in Hosahalli.  When space ran out in the traditional school building, they built some extra classrooms around it; unsure if they would be permanent or not, they built what looked to my mind like brick gazebos, large octagonal buildings with huge open glass-less windows on seven sides and a door on the eighth.  Attendance went up! And the organizers realized that this allowed the children to be closer to their natural, outdoors habitat than putting them in regular classrooms.  Immediately further classrooms were built, all open, no desks, allowing children to come and go as they please.  Education is doing well in Hosahalli, and children are learning, coming more than they are going.

Here in Mysore, a branch of the grass-roots advocacy office has volunteers providing care and education for terminally and chronically ill patients, who would otherwise fall through the cracks.  Basic medical services are provided by volunteer doctors, nurses and other para-medical personnel.  As they look to expand their scope of operations into social and spiritual aspects of care, I have been asked to serve as a “consultant” with this group in the areas of social and spiritual care; I am being consulted with regard to a small survey they want to have completed by the over ninety people in their care currently, and soon will lead a workshop for the volunteers on end of life issues.  I am in regular conversation both with the palliative lead organizer, and a volunteer doctor. 

I went around with the palliative care volunteers last week, and palliative here has its broadest meaning of providing ease or comfort, and those who are visited are not just the terminally ill, but the chronically ill and incapable.  We visited one man who had fallen four floors at a construction site – where there are no safety standards; it is not at all uncommon to see women wearing saris and sandals carrying cement in large saucers on their heads, and moving it across or even up construction sites with no safety equipment, and no rails around dangerous heights – and was left paralyzed below the waist; his primary care comes from his granddaughter, who is learning from the volunteers how to better care for her grandfather.  We visited a woman who had a catheter changed by volunteers; about a month overdue, she had not gone to the hospital because she could not afford the 30 Rupee fare each way (a total of slightly more than one dollar).  And we saw children standing beside channels of open sewage, and garbage being burned, or used for housing material.  One doesn’t enough know where to begin in such circumstances.

When I left for India two weeks ago, Joanna told me to “do some good in India”.  I see much good being done by wonderful, caring, committed people with SVYM, and am glad our students have an opportunity to learn by lecture as well as by experience some of this work that will slowly but surely change the face of India.  And in a very, very small way, as consultant and teacher, I am glad to contribute what I can on the basis of my expertise, and hope that by doing so I will, in fact, do some good in India.