S.R.Rao On a fateful day in May 1995, Suryadevra Ramachandra Rao of the Indian Administrative Service took over as the new Municipal Commissioner of Surat in Gujarat, India, a city known for its diamond industry. He did not really want that job, because he knew what awaited him there. What he did there, however, remains…
Category: True Story
031. Elisabeth Mann Borgese: The Mother of the Ocean
Elisabeth Mann Borgese She trained as a concert pianist, became a professor of political science, but spent the greater part of her life working for the peaceful and sustainable use of the ocean. Elisabeth Mann Borgese was born in Munich in 1918 as the fifth of six children. Her father was Thomas Mann, the great…
030. S.R. Sankaran: People’s bureaucrat
S.R.Sankaran Can you imagine a very large number of people from all walks of life joining the funeral procession of a retired bureaucrat? That happened in Hyderabad, when S.R. Sankaran, a former officer of the Indian Administrative Service passed away on October 7, 2010. That was a rare tribute to the memory of a civil…
029. Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla: Fighting together for justice
(Photo by Terry Allan) The two women first met as employees at a stationery factory in 1986 where they founded an independent union to fight for better labour conditions and wages (traditionally male-dominated unions would not accept them). In 1989, they led a 750 km march to New Delhi, presented a petition to the Prime…
027. Nammalvar: Crusader for organic farming
Nammalvar On December 30, 2013, Govindasamy Nammalvar died at the age of 75. He was then on a peaceful march in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, India. He was leading a campaign against the methane exploration project for which the State government had granted a licence to an American multinational company. Not many in India…
025. Thimmakka: Planting trees on a public road
Thimmakka and her trees There is something special about the 385 towering avenue trees on a four km stretch of a public road from Kudur and Hulikal in Karnataka, South India. All of them were planted and cared for by an elderly couple, Thimmakka and Chikkanna. Thimmakka was born in 1910 or so in the…
024. Lois Marie Gibbs: Homemaker turned renowned activist
Lois Marie Gibbs Toxic dump under homes In 1978, she was a 27-year-old homemaker with two children, living near Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York. She had no experience in environmental or social work – until she became concerned when her children began experiencing unexplained illnesses. She began investigating the cause, became an activist and…
023. Chipko: Hug the trees, save the forest
Gaura Devi who led the women in Renni Village Women prevent the felling of trees On March 26, 1974, a group of men arrived stealthily in the forest next to Renni Village in the Garhwal District of Himalayas in India. They had been sent by a contractor to begin cutting down 2500 trees in the…
022. Ray Anderson: Doing well while doing good
Ray C. Anderson Ray C. Anderson (1934-2011) was the CEO of Interface, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer. In 1994, at the height of his success with Interface – a company he had built with enormous dedication – he was challenged with a question that would define the rest of his life: “What is your…
020. Joanna Macy: A wild love for the world
Joanna Macy Born in 1929, Joanna Macy is an environmental activist, author, and a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. In the mid-sixties, Joanna moved with her husband Francis to post-colonial India, where he ran the US Peace Corps. There, she cared for Tibetan refugees, joining the young, newly exiled Dalai Lama….