Jewels of India: Amrish Patel Education and Employment can show the way..!! Running petrol pump agencies in the interior of Maharastra, the Patel brothers-amrish, Mukesh & Bhupesh simultaneously forayed into the fields of social work and politics. Their initial goal of providing education of international education to locals, however, remained unchanged. - By Hiren Mehta
While half of Mumbaikars do not get adequate drinking water, a taluka center on the outskirts of Maharastra and Madhya Pradesh, 400 kms from Mumbai, gets water in their houses-130 liter per head. This Taluka Center is a village called Shirpur in Dhule district. Though surrounded by tribals with zilch development, Shirpur itself presents a contrasting picture with concrete roads and a water filtration Plant. Unlike other cities, gutter water does not overflow, as there is an underground sewage system. With a state of the art hospital, the town has a textile mill that employs nearly 6000 employees. There is a wellequipped Municipal gymkhana like one you find in private clubs. There is a huge Amusement Park with biggest laser show in town. Besides, there are any number of parks and gardens, since growing a plant on any vacant land is an unwritten law in Shirpur, lest any unauthorized structure springs on it. With a population of 70,000, you find more trees than people in Shirpur. Only neem trees number over 1 lac. Also, there are 25000 students against the total population of 70,000. About 200-250 kms away from towns like Surat, Nasik, Indore, Aurangabad, Ankleshwar etc, Shirpur situated on National Highway is not only a growing commerce hub, it has of late made its mark as an educational center as well. And the credit for this goes to a Gujarati family. Hailing from six villages comprising Karamsad-Saujitra, this patel family settled down in Shirpur. The patriarch of the family Amrishbhai Patel first became the co-opt member of Nagarpalika at the insistence of locals. Later he contested elections and became the President. In the following years, Amrishbhai fought Assembly elections from shirpurr, won and was lat appointed Maharastra s Minister fo education. Today he is the Congress member in the state Vidhan Parishad while his younger brother Bhupesh served the Nagarpalika as President. The family runs two Trusts that have set up in shirpur and surrounding villages, 69 schools and 13 colleges including for Engineering, Management, Pharmacy and Textile. Spread in and around Shirpur, these institutes offer education to as many as 32000 students.
Cut to Mumbai In the field of education, Shri Vile Parle Kedavani Mandal (SVKM) is a leading educational institute. About 4000 students are studying in various institutes running under SVKM. The Mandal also has a deemed university named NMIMS. Apart from Mumbai, this University has campuses in Bangaluru, Hyderabad, Shirpur and Chandigarh. At all these centers new courses are regularly introduced. The University has also undertaken exchange programme of faculty-student-curriculum with other institutes in India and abroad. Emphasis is placed on research on each subject and therefore many R & Ds are coming up. Besides education of students, even faculty s evaluation too is accorded equal importance. What matters is quality of education, underscores Amrishbhai Patel. He says the kind of education needed today should be aimed at making students self-reliant, helping them keep pace with times. Not only should the students be taught to dream but also trained on how to fulfill these dreams. Besides Shirpur-based Patel family-run Rasiklal C Patel Education Trust and Shirpur Education Society, Amrishbhai is also the President of SVKM. When you get to hear him talk about education, you feel that he must be highly qualified. But while talking to chitralekha in his typical earthy Patel style, Amrishbhai candidly concedes that he has not had much of formal education. May be education was not as important those days, or I failed to understand its importance he reasons, adding, I did not get any guidance in this direction also. It gradually began to dawn on me that even if you want to work for development of a village, what you need first is education. People will realize the importance of development only if they are literate. The Patel family is originally from Nadiad, though Amrishbhai has had experience of staying at various places like Surat, Indore, Ujjain, Ahmedabad, Shirpur, Bhiwandi, Mumbai etc. His grandfather was a Railway contractor and also had a Burma Shell Petrol Agency. Amrishbhai s father Rasikbhai stayed for some time in Indore and then came to Shirpur where too his family had an agency. Those days Shirpur was just a small village. Under the circumstances his younger brothers
Mukesh and Bhupesh were brought up in Ujjain whereas Amrishbhai studied in Ahmedabad. Later, Amrishbhai left studies and came to Shirpur to join his father s business. During his spare time, he would make people around him aware about the importance of water conservation and hygiene. This is how he slowly got into social work. Around the beginning of seventies, he was made the co-opt member of Shirpur Nagarpalika of at the insistence of people. Having remained member for 18 years, he contested the Nagar Palika elections and became its president. Amrishbhai says Shirpur is an important business center situated on the National Highway. Though situated on the middle of an important route connecting 5-6 cities, Shirpur did not witness the kind of growth it deserved to see. The scarcity of water was a perennial problem in this place on the borders of Maharastra and Madhya Pradesh. Amrishbhai made a submissionn to the then Minister for Rural Development Yogendra Makawana and got approval for the project of laying a 13-km long water pipeline from Tapi. In barely a year, the project was implemented and water began to flow in each and every household of the village. Those days, Shirpur was the only Taluka which did not have to depend on external source of water (tanker free) The hygiene issue followed the water crisis. Amrishbhai first did away with the old fashioned toilet system and had the work commenced on underground sewage system. Also, he had the Shirpur Palika hospital restored. Today it is an example of how a Municipal hospital should be. Equipped with all latest facilities, even major surgeries are undertaken at the hospital. Doctors from Dhule and Mumbai offer their services here. If the Nagarpalika has been doing all these works, it would need money. But Shirpur Palika was broke on the brink of bankruptcy. Many members were not even paying taxes. Amrishbhai explained to them that they needed to pay taxes in exchange for proper services. In no time, tax collection reached 100%. Also, about 3000 houses were made pucca and rent incomes from them zoomed to Rs 60 lacs. Because of these works, Amrishbhai s reputation became stronger in this village peopled by 99 per cent Maharastrians, so much so that he kept winning the election after elections with increasing margins.
Amrishbhai says that in any area water is a must if you want to grow plants there. For addressing the water crisis, he laid the water pipeline from Tapi and for water saving, he adopted the water conservation and ensured greenery all around. For increasing the water levels in agricultural fields, all expenses are borne from the profit of Priyadarshini Textile mill belonging to him. Most of 6000 labourers of this mill are locals only. There is a separate cell to employ widows, abandoned and poor women. Although scarcely educated, Amrishbhai has imbibed the values of education, and this explains his having founded as many as 80 educational institutes in schools/colleges. Many Mumbai institutes do not possess the facilities these institutes can boast of. In four Ashram schools of Shirpur, besides Maharastra, students from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh also study. Way back in the seventies, Amrishbhai s development work in Shirpur coincided with his brother s departure for Mumbai. But he took auto dealership instead of a petrol pump. It was Mukesh Patel who had started the air-conditioned Bus service to ease the Mumabi traffic problems. Unfortunately the project did not get the expected response. Mukesh Patel is no stranger to Mumbaikars. It was the robust looking Mukeshbhai who had organized the first ever Vishwa Gujarati Parishad in Mumbai. Later he plunged in politics and became a Rajya Sabha member on the Shiv Sena ticket. Around that time, he also became the President of SVKM, but in 2002 he died at a young age following a massive heart attack. After his younger brother s death, Amrishbhai took charge of SVKM which has grown into a big tree today. Having served as the education minister of Maharastra and set up numerous educational institutes, what are Amrishbhai s views on the present educational system? In response, Amrishbhai says that ours is a very rudimentary level of education. With changing times, level of education too needs to undergo change. We must undertake study on how much we are lagging behind other countries in terms of education system but we do it after a long gap of 12-15 years. On one hand we keep bragging about 62% literacy level
but the ground reality is that rural students in class IV do not know how to write their names correctly Amrishbhai says ruefully. In order to bring about these changes in the system, he has already started making efforts towards setting up an autonomous university under the aegis of SVKM which can set its own syllabus and can focus more on research. He says that in collaboration with foreign universities, he has already started a new course under which our faculties would visit foreign universities for studies so that their exposure can be beneficial to students back home. In Amrishbhai s opinion, our biggest problem is to ensure employment for our growing population. After a decade our population will surpass 1.5 crore. We may educate them but what about their employment? Its solution is possible only if we can set up employment hub along with education. India s development is possible only if this is possible. Patel Brothers Unplugged The Patel Brothers grandmother Samaju ba happens to be Sardar Vallabhbhai s niece (Vallabhbhai s younger brother Kashi s daughter) Amrishbhai Patel s aunty Hansabahen was elected to Madhya Pradesh- Ujjain Assembly. In short, the Patel family has deep rooted relation with politics. At a very young age, Amrish and Bhupesh Patel were fond of Atalji s oratory skills, though Amrishbhai later joined the Congress Amrishbhai is convinced that Indian culture is the best in the world, though money splurged on religion irks him. Though not agnostic, he does not attend any religious discourse. He says that God is there but one need not indulge in exhibitionism at religious places. Subscribing to the adage-reap as you sow-amrishbhai says daughters of our three brothers had a close shave in an aircraft accident. What more can he ask for?