Overcoming Indias humanitarian crises
Transcriber: Jai Simon
Reviewer: omar idmassaoud
First, let me start with the confession.
In 24 years of my career
as a police officer,
I never had a very high opinion
about NGOs.
In fact, when the NGO movement
started in India, all of us,
we had very high hopes for them.
But somehow, for various reasons,
they have not been able to live up
to the expectations of the people.
However, in the last one year,
especially after this lockdown
in March 2020,
my opinion, my lens you can see
towards the NGOs has changed.
I could see the importance of social work,
community service and the organizations,
which can actually go with the government
in a partnership mode
and help people at large,
which is more required
in a difficult situation,
in a crisis situation like COVID,
which we are having today.
I’m going to talk about an organization
like this - India Cares.
This is a digital initiative.
I must also tell that this organization
has also changed the definition of endure
so you can say another change of lens.
Because when we talk about an NGO,
we think of an office, a structure.
Some people who are office bearers,
then maybe a bank account, some money,
SOPs, rules, regulations.
But here you are an organization
which has no office.
It exists only in virtual space.
There’s no money involved, no cash at all.
Nobody is kind of an office spirit.
All are volunteers. I am also one
of them, among 4000 others.
There are no rules, regulations.
And still, you see, that’s
the beauty of the thing is that
everything is on virtual space,
but it’s still functioning
very beautifully
and helping hundreds of people every day
and thousands have gotten
help in the past year.
Now, I’ll tell you an interesting story,
an array in Dubai.
Last year, he got some
help from India Cares.
I forgot exactly
what help was given to him,
but he was very happy with the support.
He wrote a beautiful
thanking note in the mail
and said that he’s very happy.
He was grateful.
And lastly, he said
that when he comes to India next time,
he would like to visit
India Cares headquarters.
Because we were in virtual space only,
we were actually laughing
because we cannot invite this person
since there is no office.
There’s no place where we can actually
invite him and give him a cup of tea.
But this is how this organization
has functioned.
Interestingly, there was no scheme,
no plan, no design to ever start
such an organization.
So how did it start?
I am active on Twitter
and as a police officer,
people also keep asking me for help.
When this lockdown started
in March 2020,
these requests for help started increasing
because the lockdown, as we know,
was very sudden and very strict.
People started asking for Russian,
sometimes for medicines
and many times for passage,
because people in emergency situations
are required to go
from one place to another.
More importantly,
from one state to another state.
When the requests started increasing,
I opened my DMs and said
that rather than tagging me,
you can send me DMs
so I can do whatever I can.
Then I was flooded.
But more importantly and happily so,
I would say about 20 percent of the DMs
were asking to extend help
rather than asking for help.
Say 80 percent of people were asking
for help, as I mentioned,
but many people started sending messages
that they also want to join me
in helping others.
This was very heartening
and unexpected.
Then somebody, one of my friends,
she suggested that why don’t you create
a digital platform
where these people
who are asking for help
and the people who want to help
can come together.
This can be a bridge and we can help
more and more people.
That’s how the idea started.
Last year, we had about
2500 volunteers working.
This year, in the second wave,
the number has gone up to 4000.
Now, these people are scattered
across India.
In almost every state, we have somebody.
And there are also people abroad.
Now, another very interesting thing,
which is not in a regular NGO fashion,
is that 99 percent of the people
working with the organization
have never met each other physically.
So they they know each other,
they work hours together
for the last one year,
they help a lot of people,
they laugh together,
they cry together,
they feel very joyous when some
assignment is completed,
they feel pain
when you fail to help somebody,
somebody whom you are trying to save
but the person unfortunately expires then
the pain spreads across the organization.
But they have never
met each other physically.
That’s another
very interesting part of it.
This experiment of India Cares has also
changed the lens,
or I would say perception
about civil servants.
In our society, there are a lot
of negative ideas about civil servants—
how they function,
and about the performance.
But here in this organization, there are
a number of civil servants from police,
from civil administration,
from Forest Department,
and many other departments— railways also;
who are working side by side, hand-in-hand
with the common people—civilians like
I.T. professionals, students,
housewives, educates,
journalists, and whatnot.
Of course, all of us are working
in a personal capacity.
But the fact is that ultimately
we are civil servants.
So this partnership, of course,
away from the offices, partnership
between civil servants and
the common citizens has also changed
a lot of perceptions,
a lot of lenses in the last year.
I’ll give you one example—
a very touching incident.
I’m just sharing with all of you a
child of about 12 years of age
in Delhi.
In a park, somebody saw the child.
One lady who used to go
to feed dogs there,
she saw one child in the park for two,
three days continuously.
She got alarmed, of course,
why the child is there, when they found
that the parents of the child
had gone to Bihar for some reason.
Meanwhile, this lockdown took place
and they could not come back.
This child and his siblings
were staying in a rented house,
but the house owner threw them out because
he was not getting rent.
Then this child somehow came to this park
and was staying there with dogs
and having food, or whatever
people were giving him.
This information,
through social media, came to us.
Of course, we got alarmed because
it’s a young child staying with dogs
in a park in Delhi.
It was a very difficult situation.
Immediately, with the help
of local police there in Delhi,
we found the whereabouts of the parents.
Then one of my batch mates, he was IG SSB—
Seema Suraksha Bal in Bihar, Sanjay Kumar.
We requested him then Sanjay placed
his parents and sent a team there
that brought them
to a nearby railway station.
Railway officers helped us because
you don’t do it that time.
Not many trains were actually operating.
The railway officers helped getting the
tickets confirmed.
Then this family was brought to Delhi.
At the Delhi railway station,
SSB officers received the family.
They took the parents to the park
and this child was reunited
with the parents.
It was a very emotional moment
not only for the family,
not only for the child,
but even for the officers and
for all of us who were watching
or keeping track of the entire movement.
Now, if you see in this particular story,
everybody came together.
Everybody came together.
The local volunteer, that housewife
who was feeding the child,
one lady named Sneha.
Now, she’s a volunteer with India Cares.
But at that time, she was a volunteer
there working in an independent capacity.
Then SSB railways.
Everybody came together
just with one motto,
one objective: somehow to save the child
and reunite the child with the family.
Now, this was such a beautiful and there
are many more examples like that.
Those incidents when you work being
a senior officer in the government,
when you work with the people
hand in hand, day in and day out,
then a different kind of bond
is created and also
a different kind of image.
When people have a wrong image,
that image is broken
and the lens is changed.
Many of us believe that people
are selfish and self-centered
and they do things only because
of their own interest.
But in voluntary service,
this lens also gets changed.
I’ll give you one example.
Last year in Chennai,
we got a message from my family.
They had a child of two
and a half years old.
He required a medicine which is
very critical for epilepsy in children
This medicine was not available.
It was an important medicine and it was
drying up all over the country.
Stocks were drying up.
So the family was in distress
because the child was having seizures.
So they asked us by a PM,
can we help in that?
We tried, but no lead was fruitful.
Finally, we posted a tweet
if somebody can help this child.
And you won’t believe
a person from Bangalore—
he sent a message
that he had a stock for his own daughter,
who was suffering from the same problem.
He said that he can spare part of it
for this child in Bangalore.
Now, this is not a small thing.
Sparing or parting with the medicine
which you have kept for your own child
is a very big thing.
You need a very large heart for this.
And then, of course,
another issue was that how to send
this medicine from Bangalore to Chennai
at the quickest possible means because
the child in Chennai was having seizures.
I remember Mr. Bheema Shankar
was DCP Bangalore.
He volunteered on his own
without even asking.
He sent a special team.
The team picked up medicine at one thirty
in the night from Bangalore,
travelled all the way to Chennai,
and delivered the medicine to this child
in Chennai on the next day.
This was another thing which
made us believe that when you are
in a crisis situation, when you are
with a voluntary organization,
when you have
a voluntary streak in your heart,
you can actually do things which
are generally not done by us, all of us.
The journey of a volunteer
is also a spiritual journey.
This is something
which I have learned in the last one year.
Our team, the young people particularly,
I have seen them be very happy,
sometimes very sad—
for the pain of others,
for the joy of others.
Supposedly they are helping some patient,
somebody who is in trouble with medicine,
with births, with oxygen,
admissions in the hospital,
and the person survives.
The person is recovered.
The entire team becomes very happy.
Note that nobody knows about the person.
Nobody knows the patient personally,
but being happy of another’s happiness.
And similarly, with all efforts,
you have arranged blood,
you have arranged plasma,
you have arranged the bed, the oxygen.
But somehow the person expires.
This affects all of us.
And people feel very sad
about this loss.
Many times, volunteers call me
and they cry.
Young volunteers—
they feel emotionally attached.
It’s very traumatic for them
to see somebody whom they’ve been helping
for three, four, five days and the person
has expired.
What I feel is that these tears of joy,
or tears of pain
actually cleans your soul.
They make you a better human being.
This is a journey of spirituality.
We believe that service should
make you humble and polite.
Because when you’re helping others,
sometimes it gives a sense of superiority,
a sense of pride that I am
the one who is helping,
or I have done something.
We deliberately and specially tell
the volunteers
not to get into this thing because
this is not good for your own soul.
When you are helping
others, you should feel more humble,
you should feel more polite, and
you should thank the universe.
Thank the God
that it has given you a chance,
an opportunity to sow the fellow
human being and sow others.
This is another learning
which I hope was acquired
in the last one year of my journey
and the journey of volunteers.
At the end, I would like to mention
that a few years ago,
people used to feel that
one needs to be in a position of power,
one needs to be an IAS officer,
IPS or IFS officer,
or you need to have a lot of money
to help others.
But this has changed.
This lens has also changed.
Today, our volunteers,
most of them, are students.
They are common people.
They don’t have much money.
They are not in position of power.
But they are able to help so many people
just by connecting the dots
because they are on social media.
They know where the blood is available.
They know who requires blood.
And just by making a few phone calls,
just by tweeting, retweeting,
they are able to help so many people.
So today, with the digital intervention,
you don’t really need to be very powerful
in the traditional term
or you don’t need to really have
money to help others.
This is a very big thing for all of us
to see that we can help people
even without having those kind of
resources which are required maybe
a few years ago.
Lastly, people keep asking me
about their career choices.
I used to tell them all the traditional,
all the popular careers
which one should go for.
But now I add one more thing
that other than your professional life,
you should also devote some time
to the community service,
to the service of society,
service of the nation.
Because this not only makes you
a better human being,
it also improves
your communication skills,
it gives you better life skills,
it makes you a better leader.
And of course, as I mentioned, it makes
you a better, much better human being.
Thank you.