Commitment to Donate and Work

The sudden and unexpected loss of my life partner two years back changed my life. Almost two years of stay in USA gave me the experience of innovative culture in Silicon Valley and I decided to work for creating such change in the present examination oriented education system in India. My memories of research and development work done in Walchand College during 1970-2000 gave me impetus to bring back that culture.

In my environmental field my guides Dr. B. Subbarao and Dr. G. D. Agarwal were ideal in this respect. However, real venture of starting industry taking help of teachers from all departments was done by Prof. Bhalba Kelkar. Unfortunately his company could not sustain the unhealthy competition and lacked strict financial control. I found that Prof. Bhalba Kelkar is still very active and has written books on Innovation and links between creativity and adhyatma in collaboration with world known scientist Dr. Vijay Bhatkar. After getting green card, I returned to India and contacted him.
Fortunately, there was a silver jubilee function of Retired Teachers Association initiated by my teacher and born innovator Prof. H. U. Kulkarni.

I took this opportunity to declare my desire to  compile the history of  Walchand College of Engineering highlighting the role of retired teachers and non-teaching staff. I wanted to publish the data on www.walchandalumni.com, a website of Association of Past Students of Walchand college which is managed by Dnyandeep Foundation.

Many senior professors like Dr. A. B. Kulkarni, Dr. S. S. Karandikar welcomed the idea. I appealed to all retired teachers to send their biodata via WCE Retired Teachers Whats App group. With persistant folloup, I am getting now the response from them.

For getting the history of Walchand College departments, I thought of searching the college magazines. Fortunately Prof. Bhalvankar gave me lot of magazines which covered major events during 1970-2000. I scanned department news portions from those magazines and publshed them on website under Walchand Heritage Innovation Centre.

To get more clues about how to proceed, we met industrialist Shri Arvind Deshpande who had been a very active president of Association of Past Students.He liked the idea but expressed fear that the past students are not ready to pay even Rs. 5000/ as one time donation and complained that what they would get in return.He commented can you ask for returns from your mother institute. You should give back a small part of what you got from this institute.


Dr. N. k. Sane, senior professor of Walchand College commented that we are unnecessarily getting lot of pension and it should be limited to Rs. 20000/- per month. If it is so, we can correct the mistake of Govt. by donating some amount for real cause.

I still remember the incident happened long back. I had taken a group of students to show Water Treatment Plant at Miraj.In the informal discussion with the staff after the visit, I found majority of people were complaining about the salary and work load. One elderly person, however, was complecent about the work and thanked the authorites giving him opportunity to offer services. I was curious. I asked his name. Mr. Bourges. He replied. I asked. how come you are not complaining? He said that as per their  religion, he is donating 10% of his monthly salary to poor in Miraj and was very happy to see sense of gratitude in their eyes. he said, If salary is increased my share of donation also will increase and it is good in that sense. I bowed to him.

Our meeting in Willingdon College expanded the scope of our proposed innovation project. Principal Dr. Bhaskar Tamhankar told that there are about 30 % of past students, who have started industry or business in Sangli area. We modified the scope to include all Past students and retired teachers from any school or college for building innovative culture in education at all levels.

When we approached established industrialists, they asked what is your contribution?

That thought triggered my consciousness. let us identify only people who are ready to donate Rs. 5000/- not once but commit for annual payment of same amount.

 I was damm sure that nobody would agree to this extravagant membership with no returns. However, to my surprise, I could collect a team of 20 people from different fields who agreed to my proposal.
 I am thinking of spitting the contributions citywise so that the contributors will have sufficient funds for innovative activites in their town / city. I donated Rs. 1 lakh to MTES Pune to take a lead to form a nodal centre for innovation in Maharashtra.

I hope we shall be successful in our efforts. Even though I will be staying in USA, I shall strive hard to make this movement successful.

This is my tribute to Sir Vishvesharayya on this Engineers Day.