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- [00:00]
A
The purpose of life that I have been chasing from early years, I feel I have achieved a little bit of that or quite a bit of it, and I'm a happy man.
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B
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. Dr. Abraham George is the founder of Shanti Bhavan and the George foundation, dedicated to transforming the lives of India's most disadvantaged children. A former captain in the Indian army, he moved to the United states, earned an MBA and PhD at NYU, and built a successful career in international finance before turning to philanthropy. His work at Shanti Bhavan featured in the Netflix series Daughters of Destiny and continues to break barriers of poverty and caste, offering a new future to generations of children. In this conversation, we explore his journey from Kerala to global leadership in social change.
- [01:09]
C
I'm interested to know about your own beginnings. Can you tell me a bit about where you're from and what that was like, you know, your community and your family?
- [01:21]
A
All right. I was born in southern India in a town called Trivandrum, which is at the very tip of India. The bottom, it is surrounded by two, three oceans, actually. Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. So I had my early childhood there. I went to school and then I joined the military, as you know, training for becoming an officer. And India has one elite school called the National Defense Academy, which was an offshoot of Sandhurst in England after the British rule. So I went through training from the age of 14 to 17 there and then another one year in a place called Dehradun, which is in the north east side, where I specialized in the army training for becoming an army officer and then another six months to be an artillery officer. So you get go through four and a half, five years of training before you become an officer in the Indian military.
- [02:29]
C
And that's very early to start when you think about at 14. But what were your dreams? Maybe earlier as a boy, before this life of the military.
- [02:39]
A
Right. It was not something that I would have planned. I happened to see the, the military parading in front of my grandfather's house. There's a parade ground and I thought it was exciting to see them marching, you know, so synchronized and, and the salutes and everything else. And I, I got excited and I told my parents, you know, I like to join the military. That's what happened. Nothing else? No. No other motivation.
- [03:14]
C
And so you again went off to school. Was this a choice how do you make that choice? Was that your parents saying, we want you to go off to this place that's so well known for the military, it's just like Sandhurst. Or was this a choice that you were drawn to?
- [03:30]
A
You know, Indian parents tend to send their children or would like their children to go to engineering or medical profession, because that's where they can make a living. India in the 1960s, when I was growing up, 50s and 60s, it was very, very poor. The famine was all over India, and it had just gained independence in 1947. So a lot of things were very much in turmoil. And being a military officer was considered very prestigious, especially going to this academy that I was talking about. So my parents, seeing that I was a fairly smart guy, young guy, they thought, okay, let him go. And that's how I ended up there.
- [04:20]
C
Now, I know that one of the things about the military, at least in the United States, and I'm sure it's different from India and every other country, it has its own unique characteristics. But my father was also field artillery. But I remember my family talking about how the differences between people's backgrounds when they enter the military and then we're together became more visible to them. My mother was from Oklahoma. That was the life she knew on the army base. My father was from a small farm in Michigan. That was the life he knew that community. And then when you got together with others, it was a different way of seeing the world. Was that true for you as well?
- [05:01]
A
Yes, very much so. I was from the southernmost part of India, and most of the south was insulated from invasions from the north. You know, the Persians, Alexander the Great, and so many rulers invaded northern India and even the Persians and converted a lot of Hindus into Islam. But south was not touched. So for someone from the south, wanting to join the military was not very commonplace. And we were not that much well respected because we are not supposed to be warriors. You know, the northern fellows were the ones who fought wars, but the officers training is somewhat different. And there, if you do well, you know, you get finally recognized. And I was pretty much wanting to do to get into artillery because I hated walking too much in the infantry. I didn't want to be locked up in a tank. So my choice was the artillery so we could ride around on a jeep. So that's how I ended up. And you have to do very well to get your own choice for which arm that you will be selected for.
- [06:29]
C
I can't imagine what it must have been like to be that young and then Bunking. I don't know if you describe it that way, with people from all over a vast country with very different cultures embedded within the military.
- [06:44]
A
Exactly.
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C
Including many different languages. So you've got a lot of different things happening there and then you don't just stay there. So you were deployed, I know, fairly soon after that to, well, a very complicated region because of the time. So for people who don't know that history, could you share a little bit about what that was like in your early deployment?
- [07:11]
A
Right. You know, in 1962, the Chinese invaded India and India was in some ways defeated in that war. It was unexpected. They attacked in the northeast and in the west in the Himalayan region. But for whatever reason, maybe the Chinese couldn't maintain their logistical requirements for holding the land. They withdrew and the Indian military advanced. And I had just got commissioned as an officer and when the war ended and India was trying to establish defensive positions along the border and I was sent to an altitude of 14,000ft above sea level, they call it the highest battleground anywhere in the world at that time.
- [08:08]
C
And you were from sea level?
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A
Yes.
- [08:11]
C
Where you grew up. So.
- [08:13]
A
Right, I am at sea level. That's right. And I went off the minus degree temperatures and, you know, shortage of oxygen and all of those things. And I was barely 18 and I was sent up to the hills, this place called Sela, which is a valley through which the Chinese had invaded in the northeast. I was sent up there to establish gun positions in case the Chinese again attack. Imagine, 18 year old going with 3, 400 soldiers trying to dig into the Himalayas and put the guns out there. Well, I was pretty determined guy and I did that. But unfortunately, the 11th month of my deployment there an accident, an accident, I was blown up. A dynamite accident where, you know, we were blowing up the, the rocks with detonators and fuse wires and the fuse wires were get running short and I cut the length of the fuse wires, finally came down to 2 inches and there was only 5, 10 seconds to light and then turn around and jump. And I didn't want to give that job to the soldiers because it wouldn't be, you know, safe if they got killed. It would be bad. So I, as an officer, I was the only officer there in that area and I took on that job and I didn't detect when it got lit, but last second I did notice, I turned around, but it was just a little too late. I was sort of thrown away and I was carried to the hospital where they had to remove a lot of rock pieces from My body and things like that. And that was also a turning point in my life because there was absolutely no reason why I should have been saved. If I was a fraction of a second late, I would have been killed. I had 10 time to reflect. There must be a good reason why I survived. And that is the beginning of my story.
- [10:33]
C
Well, and that's. That's a really short version of something that must have been quite a period of. Of recovery and reflection. So the first thought that occurs to me is at 14,000ft. It's not as if there's a hospital in every corner. Where did they take you?
- [10:50]
A
Had to be brought down, actually, brought down to 8,000ft. There was a field hospital there. Right.
- [10:56]
C
And then how long was your recovery?
- [10:59]
A
I was in the hospital for three, four days only. Then I was sent home for a month or so to recover. And then when I was getting well, I was posted to the other side. Where the Pakistan border. India had a couple of wars with Pakistan and I was sent to the. To the border. And by then I had gained a reputation for being somewhat of a daredevil or something. And I got a couple of promotions. And in two years I became a captain and adjutant of a regiment, which was very unusual. The youngest captain in the Indian military at that time. So I had some good days. But my story is somewhat different. And that is that all along from that day I was blown up to the time I left the army three years later. It took me some time to get out. I was thinking about the idea of social service. I didn't think that the military was my calling. I happened to read couple of books. One by Albert Schweitzer, who won the Nobel Prize. And, you know, he traveled all the way to Equatorial Africa. And in Gabon he established a hospital, a small clinic, which is now a big hospital. Living among the animals and everything else. I thought it was such an exciting life to be there. And again I was. I want to do something like that, you know, I was barely 20 at that time. No, no, I was 18 at that time. Then I read another book, and that was about. I think it's called History of the Western Civilization by. Oh, my God, I missed his name. He'll come back to me. One of the lines in that book is, there is nothing right about war. It is about who is left. So it caught my interest right and left. And I understood that I couldn't be spending the rest of my life training to kill others. This was not something I wanted to do. I know it's a noble Profession, you have to defend your country against invasions. But I just didn't want to do the killing part. So I decided that I'll leave. And three years later I got out.
- [13:54]
C
It sounds like the books had a big impact on you, but that doesn't usually happen unless it's sort of like planting seeds, unless the ground itself is fertile. So I'm wondering in philanthropy, which is something we'll discuss, and it's been a big part of your life since often people will talk about early experiences, either with family or something like that, where they saw philanthropy in practice, or in this case, where you're talking about these books, where they saw some kind of social good at work, maybe as children. Do you remember any of that being a factor? So that when you then read these books and had these experiences, you thought, oh, I can see myself in that story.
- [14:36]
A
Yes, as an incident happened when in the church that we used to attend, there was a lot of infighting and two fractions in the church. And one of them broke away and wanted to establish their own church. And so the bishop, along with couple of priests, turned up at my. My parents home and asked for some money to build a new church. My father said, no, I don't like you fighting. I'm not going to fund it. So then the bishop said, you know, God will punish you. At that, my father got very annoyed. He said, who are you to speak for God? You take your robes off and go and work among the poor. And I was standing there listening to this conversation, and I was fairly young and it had a huge impact on me. I understood that my father, though he was going to church and the bishop being the most important figure, he was not willing to listen to these kinds of things, and service was very important to him. Though I must admit my parents didn't have the kind of money to help any social causes at that time. But they were always talking to me about doing service.
- [16:11]
C
So that word, that concept was there. And then of course, you made it your own when you had this moment of change. So you left the military and then, I know you embarked on a business career. But how did that start? Because you went to the United States. Well, why that journey?
- [16:31]
A
Okay, that's another part of the story. That's the second part of my life. I was, you know, those days it was easier to get a visa to come to America for studies. Not like today.
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C
What year was that that you came over first? I'm sorry, what year was it that you went to?
- [16:49]
A
1968. 1968. And luckily my mother was in Huntsville, Alabama. She was working for the NASA space agency. She just that she's no more. She would have been 105 today. She is the second woman in India who got a PhD in physics.
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C
Oh, wow.
- [17:18]
A
Second woman. And she was taken in by National Bureau of standards in Washington D.C. to do research there. And then NASA it was. Remember, that was the Kennedy days, you know. And so she was working there and she sponsored me so I could come. And I lived for one year in Alabama, Talladega, Alabama, in 1968.
- [17:45]
C
Have you heard of Talladega? Wow, that's. What was it like then?
- [17:52]
A
Oh, Talladega is, you know, built a race course. You know, Talladega 500. You know, it's a small little place. And I went to University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, and I attended part time in a Southern Baptist school called Samford University. Someone coming from India in the first year, you end up in University Alabama and Samford University. It's an experience by itself. And that was the time when George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, was standing in front of the University of Alabama and blocking black students from entering. I don't know whether you know that history.
- [18:38]
C
Is that the year that he said segregation now? Segregation forever?
- [18:42]
A
Yeah, something like that. At that time. At that time, before he was shot, you know? Yes, way before he was shot. So I was there in the midst of it. And I tell you, that was one good experience I had. I learned firsthand what segregation was because I never felt it. I had never been a victim of racial prejudice. And secondly, I understood how religion and race and discrimination all sort of combined Southern Baptist school and everything else. So it was a good education for me. After a year and three months, I went off to New York, never came back.
- [19:34]
C
So I have to ask you one thing before we move on, and that is that I know you spent a lot of your, the later stages of your career working on things related to cast, which is something I hope we will discuss today. But you didn't reference it already in your life at home when you were growing up or in the military. And it must have been present and was certainly was present in Alabama. So the. What was your awareness of that early on and then. And then as you started to make this professional journey in the U.S. good question.
- [20:14]
A
While you are in India, you hear about the discrimination of the blacks. And we understood that as a discrimination based on color, mostly color and facial features and things like that, African descent. While in India, the caste system goes back to thousands of years, at least 1500 years, where the society got created based on the responsibilities given to different segments of people. There was a priestly class who were to worship and conduct the prayers in temples. They are the highest. Then comes the warriors who are supposed to fight. Then comes the merchants who do all the trade. And then finally the people who do media labor. But then suddenly they found that they needed people to clean up the latrines. There was no modern sewage or anything. It's all outside. Clean up dirty things, take the carcass of animal, dead animals and things like that, and you need it. So they created what they call a casteless part of the society. And they were called the untouchables. They were not allowed to even enter your house, touch anything. You have to stand 100ft away from, you know, upper upper caste people and bend down almost to the floor and say, I am here. Untouchable is here. That's how you greet the master. That state of affairs, I didn't see that because by the time I grew up that custom had changed. But I could see where they were living. And the lowest caste, the fourth category, as I said, they were also very badly treated. And my grandfather, who happened to be a landlord, so he sort of fell into the upper caste, even though he's not a Brahmin as a priest, but, but he was still money ban. And he didn't treat anyone bad, but he wouldn't allow them to come inside the house and so on. So I had observed all this. And when I was in the military, I was traveling all over India. And during those trips I've been to villages and other places and I saw rampant the discrimination. North was worse than the south even today. So I was fully aware that these people were treated extremely poorly. And when I came to America and I wanted to do social service.
- [23:18]
C
The.
- [23:19]
A
Most powerful force that was impacting me was the injustice of the caste system. And I was thinking about how to create an impact on somehow breaking the caste in a small way. It's such a big country, I can't do anything much. And during my doctoral work, PhD in NYU, I took up economic development as one of the areas and finance as another. And I was always asking and discussing with my professors, what is the best way to do this thing. When I go back one day, I came to the conclusion in my discussion and my professors obviously had a role in it. They said the best way is from the bottom up, not from the top. Don't wait for the government to break the caste system. Don't wait for handouts to the poor. Don't wait for quotas to the poor people. In America also we have the quota system. Don't wait for that. You have to bring up from the bottom. And the secret to that is take children from the poorest of the poor, offer them the same opportunity of an excellent education upbringing that the rich would have, and they should succeed. And they will multiply their effect by their siblings and through others. If you do large enough numbers, then the caste system will automatically break because these young people who have been well trained, they will go on to work in large companies. They will travel around the world. And so when I came to India, back from after 25 years of career in business in New York actually, and I was speaking about this idea to people in India, I was trying to create a board. And the board of directors that I was forming were very, very prominent people. Admiral of the Indian Navy, the CEO, chairman of the largest insurance company, and so on. And none of them believed that poor children, children from poor families can succeed. They said there is something intrinsic that they do not have that ability. And I refused to accept that. I said, if you bring them up well, correctly and give the best education, they too will succeed. Well, I had no proof other than saying that. And I knew I had to wait a long time to see the result. But the result is already out after another, you know, 18, 20 years. The children who are graduated from Shanti Bhavan, the school I established, and they, you know, we support them through college too. Some of them go on to masters, some of them go on to even doctoral programs. We have one girl in clinical psychology in New York doing a PhD and so I proved the first point that they can do just as well as anyone else. Most of our graduates are working in multinational companies. Microsoft, Cisco, ExxonMobil, name anything. In fact, these companies want our kids in recruitment process. They love the kids because the way we bring them up, with social skills and humility and many other values, they came from the poorest society and they don't have to be arrogant. And that appeals to people, especially American companies which are operating there. And they would like to have, you know, an opportunity given to children from these types of homes. And don't mistake me, our kids get 95 percentile in SAT, 95 to 99 percentile. They are in Princeton, they are in Stamford, Duke, Middlebury, Dartmouth, University of Chicago. That's where they got admission. So it is possible children from the poorest of the society can achieve great success if you bring them up well and Offer them the opportunity to succeed.
- [27:56]
C
I do want to ask you more about that, in particular in reference to what we were talking about before with Cast, because part of this is about poverty and you've worked a lot on that issue, but also part of it is other forms of discrimination that you are encountering, frankly, among your board members. So.
- [28:12]
A
Right.
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C
So I have several questions, but let me just start with a simple one, which is how did you get your board to come around to your way of thinking? Or did you.
- [28:21]
A
They're nice people. They're nice, but it is just that they are set in their ways to think like that. But they said at the end, it's your money, you do the way you want, we will help you.
- [28:38]
C
Do they eventually start to see it?
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A
We don't agree with you, but you do your way. So I didn't convince anyone.
- [28:47]
C
But I guess the proof is in what happened. So the next generation of board members have the evidence. There's nothing to write, nothing to prove.
- [28:57]
A
Nobody questions today.
- [28:58]
C
No one questions today now, but going back a little bit. So for those who don't know, you obviously went through school, you went onto Wall Street, I guess then you were, I think, with, was it Sunrise Microsystems. So you had a whole bunch of different business practices that enabled you to then found this, the George foundation, and eventually, of course, the. The organization that we're talking about. Shanti Bhavan. So, as you just said right there with the board, it's your money. You can do what you want. What was it like to be. To have to wait? You were a person who already had the vision, it sounds like much earlier, but you were also, you know, you had to work and make a living, but I guess earn the resources in order to undertake this social action. What was it like to have to. To wait?
- [29:52]
A
Well, I didn't work for the last 30 years. I never earned anything in the last 30 years. I was living off the money I earned in my business career. After working for two, three years in JP Morgan and things like that, I started my own company that grew from the basement to several countries. We became a market leader in the field of international financial systems. I was also working for Credit Suisse as a managing director in one of the divisions, one of the departments we formed. So I had a couple of jobs and I had made a reasonable amount of money, not in today's terms. Today everybody makes in billions. I suppose.
- [30:41]
C
Some, some do.
- [30:45]
A
But any. Anyway, I decided that I cannot wait any longer. You know, I. I was in my late 40s, you know, and I had made a promise to myself that I will move on to social service. So I did cold turkey. I sold everything. I got everything. I sold my company. I sold 20, 30 consulting assignments. I had. I. And came to India.
- [31:20]
C
What did people around you, what did the people around you say when you did this?
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A
A lot of them said, I'm crazy. I'm not very sensible. But my family didn't really. My mother didn't object. My mother was a matriarch of the family and she had a commanding role in the household. And. And she said, if that's what you want to do, do it. And so I came. And for the first 13, 14 years, I didn't bother to ask anyone for money. I started building things and doing things until 2007 came about 2007. Eight, my investments in real estate and stocks all took a nosedive, huge nose dive. And I wiped out, I would say 50, 60% of my wealth. And so here I was spending so much money in India and I had to maintain my household in the United States. And my wife had a job as a cpa. And so she said she will take care of the US Expenses. You go and do your stuff. And would you believe, 25 years we live separately. I would come for two months every year, she would come for one month every year to India. That's how we did this part of the work. And only in the last five, six years she has been together with me after retirement. But anyway, that's her part of the story. Maybe one day she'll speak to you. But. But I felt that I needed to get started. That was 30 years ago. And ever since, I have not looked back. I lost money, huge amount. So my son, I have two boys. The elder son, Ajit, he joined the foundation to raise money fundraising. And he has been very, very successful only because he's convinced that this is the right thing to do in life. And he abandoned everything else he was doing. And for the last, say, 18 years, he has been working full time raising money in the United States. By the way, US is where most, most of our donations come from. Some from Europe and a small portion from India. Between all of that, we recovered. Today we are better off than ever before. Even before I start fundraising. And we have established a second Shanti Bhavan and doubling our size. And my hope is that before my time is over, we'll have a third Shanti Bhavan and others take it up. You know the idea and they do their own thing. I honestly believe the caste system can be broken through These children.
- [34:41]
C
In terms of the recruitment of the children to Shanti Bhavan, to the now two and soon three schools, how are you identifying these children? How are you bringing them in? Because there's pressure within the community for them to, I'm sure to stay, to, to marry, especially for the girls to marry at a very young age. So how do you convince the community to let them come in? How do you find them in the first place and then welcome them in?
- [35:08]
A
That's a very good question. Initially I didn't know exactly what to do. We went around villages and said there is a school we are opening which is for only for the poorest of the poor. You must be earning less than $2 a day for the family. That was the criteria, not based on cash or anything like that. And we found that a great majority of them were single mothers. The husbands have left and Bono somewhere and many of them had four, five kids and they couldn't support and they said, okay, we'll, we'll give you one. And we were asking for age of four. We were not there to take them in terms of, you know, separating them, but they have to live with us. I realized that I cannot change their mindset and everything unless I have the ability to groom them in, in our school. If they go back, they go back to the same values by which they live in the villages. You know, lying, cheating, stealing, setting the woman on fire, sexual abuse. The child is seeing sexual activity at home because they are living in one small crammed up room and husband, wife or man and woman, they're all there. So not possible to change them. And drinking is rampant. You know, it's something they do all the time, whether they have money or not. So I had to take them into the school at the age of four and they can visit the child every three months. It's every six months they go home for a month vacation and the end of the year they go for two months vacation. So three months they are home and that's all that possible. And this model has worked immensely well. I am able to groom the children to be suited for the today's society, the broader, you know, the, the society in which they must, they will grow up, you know, to be working for multinational companies and so on. They have to be having values that are universally, globally shared values of truth, being honest and transparency and you know, everything we talk about. So I'm able to do that for which I have to be here 24 hours a day. And that's a secret. And you and the second Part of the secret is you have to love them just as your own. If you do those two things, you can, can groom them.
- [38:03]
C
Now as, as the kids go through and they start young, I guess, like with any school, a K through 12 kind of environment. Correct.
- [38:11]
A
So they go to college. Yeah.
- [38:13]
C
As they go through and then they go off to college and whether it's in like, as you say, Princeton or IIT or whatever it is, they're, they are, they have agency, they have their own independence in life.
- [38:25]
A
Right.
- [38:25]
C
But now you're starting to see them as adults. Are you seeing them also in the same way that you and your son have internalized these values and are practicing them in your own individual ways? Are some of the graduates doing the same thing for the places where they came from?
- [38:46]
A
I noticed that in college they are still under our supervision. They cannot violate the basic principles that we have said. But there will be romances and, you know, a few things like that which we have to accept. They are grown up in their 20s, so apart from that, and obviously they can't get themselves into trouble, you know, in those relationships and they have to perform, they have to do well. If they don't do well enough, we won't support them. So they are under some pressure. They are staying in hostels that we arrange for them and they have to follow the rules of the hostels. So those things we make sure. But once they finish that and we help them get the first job, after that we have no role to play. Your life, you have to make your life. And what I notice is that, yeah, they may make some mistakes, but they haven't abandoned the values by which we have brought them up.
- [39:53]
C
And so are they also interested in investing in the places where they came from or do they tend to just go off on their own?
- [39:59]
A
They do, they do. But we tell them in the initial five, six years, don't even think about helping Shanti Bhavan or helping someone outside your family. You put your parents in a decent home, buy them clothing, put them on medical insurance, pay off the debt, get your sisters married, pay the dowry. You know, all the stuff they have to do, they have to do it and then save some money for their graduate studies or having their own motorbike or having their own little house. So they are struggling with all these pressures on them. So after that, and by then you have risen up the ladder, but then you have the ability to reach out and help someone else. And our, our, I wouldn't say dictate, but I would say we would constantly tell Them that you have a moral obligation, a moral obligation to help others. Just the same way as you have been helped by strangers who, strangers have given you money to run the school. Forget about me. Others who have come in recent years, so you have that obligation. So you have to go beyond your own so called blood relations. And we talk about that. I said you marry, you are not marrying someone who is blood related, you are marrying somebody else. So don't talk about blood and all that. And we tell them in your lifetime you have, whatever number of years you have, you must help 100 others the same way as you have been helped. And if you do that, the multiplicative effect of all our children doing that and they in turn helping others will be so significant that since these kids have broken the caste barriers for themselves, nobody knows which caste they come. They live fairly well. And I feel that in 50 years or more the caste system would be completely put behind. It has not happened in 1500 years. It hasn't happened with government dishing out money, nothing has worked. And education, proper bringing and opportunity, these are the key words that I believe will break this caste system.
- [42:32]
C
Now you just said a moment ago that you're doing this 24 hours a day. Do you have a whole team? I'm sure you have a whole team you've assembled to assist you in this, both at the schools, but also just with the organization itself. Where is this moving now? As you look forward, what do you imagine this looks like 10 years from now, 20 years from now?
- [42:54]
A
Shanti Bhavan Right now we have some 120, 120, 130 staff members. The challenge is that is my biggest job. Children are not very difficult. You can bring them up, you can guide them. And you love them, they love you. And you can go on staff is a different story. You have to get them to embrace the values by which this institution was built. You have to make them understand that this is their moral duty too. Whatever number of years you work here, you should leave knowing that you have done something to humanity, for humanity. So I spent a lot of time talking to the staff. Being a, you know, someone they can look up to, you know, those type of things. And it's a family that I've created, it's not an institution that I've created. And the, the affection, the care between each other is what makes this organization run. And now I have spent 30 years, I don't know how many more years I have where, you know, So I have already started a couple of years ago, a Transition program. I put my son, who has been 18 years Ajit, to take over from me is already a long way into it. Everybody accepts it because he's caught up the drive for it. He really believes in all of this. He was born in America, he's an American, but he understands that his dad has done something that he should carry forward. And so that part is fine. But he needs a whole bunch of people to help him. Having been born in America and grown early years there, he's not culturally sufficiently tuned in and now he's become much better. I had the benefit of having been born in India, so I knew what it is like. But he's learning very, very fast and he has won the admiration and support of all the others. The trick is I have to find enough good people, well meaning people. And I'm looking at staff, their children who had exposure to what we are doing, younger staff members who want to stay around. They are the ones who will have to join my son and that after my son's time, someone else outside the family will take over and go forward. That the transition I'm looking at planning for the next 100 years.
- [46:07]
C
This sounds like too easy of a question, but I mean it sincerely. What gives you the greatest pride in this work?
- [46:15]
A
The greatest pride obviously comes from the fact that the children are blossoming. Children are doing well. They are breaking the society's, you know, discrimination and evil practices. They are able to live a good life. And the second part is they're lovely children. The amount of affection I get, I can't describe to you. You know, when I see them, you know, even those who are in college or working, you know, they love with which they, they come to me, they see me as their dad because I differentiate. I said don't think of you as a father. Father is your biological. I am your dad only. And so that's using this different difference. I am very fortunate. I have the love of hundreds of them. And so in that sense the greatest joy comes from that. There is nothing else that can replace that. Money is important for doing what we are doing and we need a lot more money. But the purpose of life that I have been chasing from early years, I feel I have achieved a little bit of that or quite a bit of it. And I'm a happy man because of that. It doesn't mean that I don't have troubles. I have always some, some trouble or the other and I don't want to get into all the troubles. But they are, you know, bureaucracy, the government intervention, a Whole bunch of stuff, you know, people trying to get money out of you. You had to fight all these things. But that's part of, you know, the business that you do. You can't be bought, you can't be upset with that. And you hire the right lawyers, you hire the right accountant, you know, you get it done. But I spend 95% of my time in making sure the staff is focused, the children are happy. You can tell by just looking at them whether they're happy children or not. If I know that they are happy and they're doing well, I'm always looking at their performance. If they are not doing well, I put them on special coaching. There are some children, 5% of the population, who have learning difficulties. We try to overcome them and it could be retention problem, it could be understanding, unable to understand concepts. It could be attention disorder, it could be anger, all the psychological problems that we talk about. But we are in a remote village. The psychologists don't want to come here and work amongst us. And we have Learned in these 30 years that there are three aspects to it. One is, of course, psychiatry, the medicine. Second is counseling. And third is environment. I am relying on environment as a way to overcome all these problems. Environment means giving attention, love, handholding, and I find that it has helped me improve, I would say more than 50% of that small population that is having difficulty. Occasionally I have to take them to the psychiatrist for some medication. Occasionally I have to have some psychological counseling for the kid. But for most part, it is the environment that we are have created that helps the child recover or improve.
- [50:33]
B
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about Shanti bhavan@shanti bhavanchildren.org Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the global leader in AI powered fundraising intelligence solutions for the nonprofit sector. Our producer is Jack Frost and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe wherever you like to listen. Check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise. And come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost.
- [51:12]
C
Thanks for joining me.