Vijayakumar

Narayanamurthy of Infosys is officially designated as the Chief Mentor of the organisation. I wonder, if it is possible to have mentoring as an official role. But, personally, it is one of the nicest roles in any organisation, I feel. I have also benefited from mentoring by a few people. Right from school days, there are some people who have helped shape my thinking(not much!) and general outlook to life.

One such person is Mr.T.Vijay Kumar, the CEO of the Society for Eradication of Rural Poverty in Andhra Pradesh. He was the Managing Director of Girijan Cooperative Corporation, when he recruited young professionals to work in adivasi areas in 1991. I was one of them. (I was young then. Professional? Hmm...)
Our late night meetings in his office describing our experience in those remote adivasi villages and dealing with the government machinery were the highlight of those three years. In spite of difficulties and frustrations from the work in the villages, we come out of all those meetings full of optimism and energy. He was a great mentor.

Read an interview with him recently in a magazine called "Transforming India". I liked the following sentence very much, more because it is quite applicable to our work in Gudalur as well. So, here it is for everyone to muse.

"Poverty eradication requires building strong institutions of the poor. It is necessary to know how to build these institutions and also understand the fact that these institutions are dynamic and as they evolve with the kind of issues that arise, the kind of hand-holding support they require also changes.

Prior to us, there were institutions promoted by NGOs, but our approach shows the tremendous potential that the poor have. Initially, we had a more direct role through our dedicated staff, a somewhat retail role, whereas now the responsibility for supporting the SHGs and federation is slowly being taken over by the Federations themselves. It is something which is professed by everybody, whether NGOs or the government, everybody says that this has to be done, but nobody has done it on this scale."

'Trust the Poor' is his slogan in his current assignment. I am sure, he is mentoring many more people in SERP as well now.