August 2nd, 2011
Today Tanuj Maggon, Anand S., Achyuta and I had a meeting with Mr. Ajay Agarwal, one of the co-founders of Satyam Seva Sansthan. We had the plan to learn more about the NGO and get insights into how they wanted to serve the society. We also wanted to get a clear picture of how we could assist them in any possible way.
More details about Satyam Seva Sansthan:
There are total 7 co-founders and all of them are working people including service-men and bankers. They have formed a trust but the work has not started yet officially. Mr. Agarwal owns a business of manufacturing surgical and medical equipments and he provides his services to hospitals with custom-built products. The office is located in Jhajjar Chungi Chowk, Rohtak.
As this was our first interaction with any NGO, we had some apprehensions before meeting him. But Mr. Agarwal is a very humble and kind person. He gave us a big smile the moment he saw us. We started with discussing about his mission and his NGO. He answered all of our questions and cleared our doubts.
He himself has some plans which he wants to execute in the near future. He is thinking of organizing some medical camps for the needy people in Rohtak. These camps will be used for performing minor surgeries, blood tests and other pathological tests of the patients. For that purpose, he may arrange a team of doctors and medical practitioners to stay at some place for a few days. The required medical and surgical equipment will be supplied by his own shop.
He is also thinking of helping charitable hospitals by providing them free ambulances periodically. Earlier, he had organized a camp with some NGO but his experience was bitter. He found out that the NGO was more interested in getting funds and famous people for its camp than serving humanity.
The main problem that is stopping him from initiating further work is lack of time. Currently, his business is in expansion mode and that’s why there is a lot of workload these days. Moreover, all other members of the trust are working people living at different places which does not allow them to conduct meetings.
Some New Suggestions:
He suggested us to visit the Medical College of Rohtak. He told us that a lot of issues such as sanitation, mismanagement and lack of professionalism in workers are prevalent there. Some NGOs are providing support to the college but they do not care to know whether their funds are being used properly or not. He also threw light on the condition of the Primary Health Centres in our country. There are many occasions when the technicians do not even know how to operate the machines.
Finally Mr. Agarwal told us that he would not be able to give time to the NGO for at least 1-2 months due to his business and other commitments. But whenever possible, he would be contacting us. So we have decided that we would follow his suggestion and have some visits to the Medical College. Once we find out some possibilities of improvement after detailed observations, we would take further steps.
It was really an amazing experience knowing about the other side of the society in which we live and tend to ignore because of the so-called development.
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