HEROES OF BHARAT

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ONE 1. A poor Andhra boy who came to the US in the 1920s, is credited with the

synthesis of Folic acid, Aureomycin, the first of the tetracycline antibiotics

that have saved millions of lives since its introduction in 1948, and

Methotrexate, which is used to alleviate several types of cancer, including

childhood leukaemia. He was born in Bhimavaram and schooled in Rajamundhry,

both in Andhra Pradesh, Bharat. He thrice flunked matriculation and studied

Ayurveda before switching to the western system of medicine after working as a

night porter at a Boston Hosptal because he was too poor to pay the fees. In

fact, it is said that Aureomycin, presented to the medical world in 1948,

should have won him the Nobel Prize. But Subba Rao died at 53, the same year as

his hero Mahatma Gandhi. Which means that the great scientist's 55th death

anniversary is passing us by without as much

as a decent commemoration. There are many such stories that never see the light

of day. Not all NRI achievers grab the headlines.

2. Dr Rangaswamy Srinivasan, is the little known pioneer of Lasik eye surgery,

who is the only Indian to feature in the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in

the company of greats such as Edison, Ford, Disney, Nobel and the Wright

Brothers. After he engineered the technique to correct shortsightedness that

has enabled millions to get rid of eye glasses, Srinivasan wrote out the patent

to IBM, the corporation he worked for. His reward: A measly $10,000.

 

3. In a recent interview, Dr Praveen Chaudhari, the Director of Brookhaven

National Laboratory, who was also Dr Srinivasan's colleague at IBM, was asked

how it felt to have such achievements go unrecognised by the media and

unrewarded financially in an age when people were patenting age old inventions

and milking millions. "The joy lies in the discovery, not in the reward," he

said.Dr Chaudhari should know. He engineered the rewriteable compact disc(CD),

and like Dr Srinivasan, wrote out the patent for IBM for a fraction of the

billions Big Blue, Sony, Phillips and other corporations got from the

invention. But neither man displays the slightest sign of rancour at IBM's

profits or envy at the fame and fortune of today's NRIs. "Between a billion

dollars and the pleasure of giving perfect eyesight, what do you think I will

choose?" asks Dr Srinivasan.

------ Based on a report in The Times of India November 23, 2003. TWO

Preliminary trials of 'Panchagavya,' made up of five products of cow - - dung,

urine, milk, curd and ghee -- on various crops have shown a positive trend of

enhanced yield and shortened crop duration, a senior scientist at Tamilnadu

Agricultural University said. Dr K Natarajan, a practising physician in

Kodumudi in Erode district, was instrumental in successfully popularising the

concept, Dr E Vadivel, Dean, Horticultural College and Research Institute of

the University said. With organic farming becoming more popular, the Institute

decided to validate the microbial aspects and carried out trials on individual

crops, which had shown a positive trend of enhanced yield and shortened crop

duration, he said. Claiming that yield after the first trial has shown 20 to 25

per cent increase in

Sunflower, Ashvagandha (a medicinal plant), Maize, Paddy, Drumstick and Raddish,

Vadivel said that it was also found that the duration of the crops, like paddy

and sugarcane, was reduced at least by 20 days. Even the recovery percentage in

sugarcane has shown an increase of one per cent, Vadivel claimed. Though

Panchagavya, easy to prepare as all the ingredients were available on the farm

itself, was useful in normal cultivation, it would be more effective in garden

land, horticulture and commercial crops, Vadivel said. Products of 'deshi' cows

were said to have more potent than that of exotic breeds, he said adding dung

and urine of pregnant 'deshi' cows have proved to be more stronger. The

university was making efforts to patent Panchagavya, in coordination with CSIR,

which had already carried out test and patented the use of cow urine, he said.

On the preparation of panchakavya, Vadivel said that ingredients--cow dung

slurry (from gobar gas

plant), fresh cow dung, urine, milk, curd, ghee, sugarcane juice, tender coconut

water, ripe banana and toddy, if available, -- can be added to a wide-mouthed

mud pot, concrete tank or plastic cans, in the recommended proportion. The

container should be kept open in the shade and the contents should be stirred

twice a day-- morning and evening-- and the solution would be ready after the

seventh day, to be used as spray, flow and seed or seedling treatment.

------PTI, January 26, 2004.

THREE February 1, 2004. It was the annual day at the `Seva Bharati Tamilnadu'

state headquarters at purasaiwalkam in Chennai.. The time for release of the

annual report came. Shri. Muthu and Smt. Gita were called to the dais to

receive the first copy from the chief guest of the day. The young couple did

so. Muthu works as a tailor. Gita is a housewife. They have a little girl

child. This family conducts two service activities in their house in the

backward Pulianthope area of North Chennai, Tamilnadu, Bharat, for the past one

year. 15 women (their husbands work as conservancy workers in the Chennai

Municipal Corporation), learn sewing taught free by Gita. 30 school children

whose parents are either head load workers or rikshaw drivers, benefit by the

free tuition clsses that Gita conducts. Muthu has inspired a colleague of his,

Shri. Sekar, to take classes for

children in 8th to10th class. Gita has studided upto class 8 only and Muthu did

not study beyond primary school. "The house in which the Muthu - Gita couple

live is just as big as the dais at the function (10 feet by 10 feet)", points

out Shri. Ravi, organiser of the function. The couple had disposed of the cot,

the only luxury they had, to accommodate the sewing machines in their one-room

house. Based on a write up in VIJAYABHARATAM, Tamil weekly Chennai - 31. FOUR

It was 1946.A young Samskritam scholar used to wait patiently on the banks of a

river on solar or lunar eclipse days or on festive days hoping that somebody

would throw into the river rare and ancient Samskritam manuscripts. It is the

practice among some Hindu families to offer to the `Ganga' ancient scripts

they have inherited if they felt they could no longer keep them or if there is

any illness or difficulty in the house.

If anybody threw any manuscripts the young scholar had men ready to dive into

the river and pick up the manuscripts. The scolar is Prof. K.T.Pandurangi who

became (in 1971) the Head of the Sanskirt Department of Bangalore University,

Karnataka. In his `hunt' for ancient manuscripts for 25 years, Pandurangi

could obtain 2,500 interesting Samskritam manuscripts on palm leaf, plates made

of bamboo and country papers. The collection resulted in the formation of `Sri

Vidyadhisha Sanskrit Manuscripts Library'. Even after becoming a professor he

visits some districts utilising winter and summer vacations to meet the

descendants of ancient scholars to see if he could any valuable manuscripts.

Prof. Pandurangi said, in his anxiety to lay hand on as many manuscripts as

possible, he had even established contact with dealers in waste paper in

important cities and offered them, for Samskritam manuscripts, four times the

price at which they sold old paper. About 5

lakhs of Samskritam, Prakrit and Pali manuscripts are deposited in 215

institutions in India and 1 lakh are deposited in 40 institutions in several

countries around the globe. Based on a report in THE HINDU of April 22, 1971,

included in a book THE WEALTH OF SANSKRIT MANUSCRIPTS IN INDIA AND ABROAD

authored by Prof. K.T. Pandurangi (1997).

FIVE In 1956-57, Chintaman D.Deshmukh resigned as Finance Minister, Government

of India, on a point of principle. However, he agreed to work as Chairman of the

University Grants Commission taking one rupee as a token salary, when he was

entiltled to a monthly pay of Rs. 3,000. Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime

minister, had the highest esteem for him, sent B.K.Nehru as his personal

emissary to ask if Deshmukh would agree to the joint proposal made by the

governments of USA and the United Kingdom to nominate him as the director

General of the International Monetary Fund, prestigious post carrying a salary

of 30,000 dollars plus perquisites. Nehru wanted him to add that it would be

an honour to India if he accepted the post. Deshmukh asked for time to consult

his wife and give his decision. Anybody else would have grabbed the

opportunity, which comes once in a

life-time. The husband and wife (Smt. Durgabai Deshmukh, an internationally

known social worker whose service activities have benefited a large number of

Chennai's needy persons including women and children) discussed the offer and

decided that high salary had no attraction for them since both of them had

resolved to dedicate the rest of their lives to service of their motherland.

This extraordinary reaction to the attractive offer was conveyed to Nehru. In

1962, Durgabai too resigned her post of Chairperson of Central Social Welfare

Board which she had held with distinction for an eventful decade. (From a

biography of Durgabai Deshmukh).

 

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