After working for few years as Member Secretary, he realized that mere legislations are not enough and India should have technology innovation in environmental engineering. He resigned from CPHERI and with the help of his student Dr. S. K. Gupta, established EnviroTech Instruments company which manufactured air pollution monitoring and control equipment which were indigenous substitutes to imported products.
He lived a simple common man’s life. He always wrote letters on postcard. He treated train as his house and was comfortable to travel by second class. He did not find it awkward to take a bath in the toilet of the train. Nobody could have recognized him as a professor at IIT.
He came to Sangli to demonstrate the working of these instruments. Our College and EPRF purchased monitoring sets from that company.
Though he was aloof from friendly relation during my Ph.D. work, after completing my PhD, he became very friendly with all my family members also. He often came to Sangli with his aunt and treated everyone in our family with affection and great respect. Along with him we Ganapati temple, Haripur, sugar factories, he liked the grapes here. We had lot of discussions about how we can grow activities of Environmental Protection Research Foundation. He insisted in arranging people awareness and training programs.
He took me to Daman for showing anaerobic digestors installed by his student Singh for treating distillery spent wash. I found there that many small distilleries were leaving the waste directly in the sea making the sea water dark black. . Through his contacts, we conducted one seminar at Bardoli near Surat in Gujrat and I had gone to Div also for consultation regarding distillery waste treatment. The travel from Mumbai to Div was 12 hours journey by private bus. I could see that area and got view of Karachi wich was only 20 km from Div sea coast.
Daman and Div are central territories and CPHERI was having direct control over Environmental works there.
He used to tell about his student Anil Agrawal’s social awareness and training programs , Dr. S. K. Gupta and his air pollution instrument company, I. C. Agarwal and many others. His life till then was full of student memories.
Dr. Bharat Patankar was leading agitation to prevent illegal sand dredging in Yerla river in Sangli We arranged seminar at EPRF and invited Dr. Agrawal as chief guest. He came with Dr. R. H. Siddiki and gave support to the activity.
We visited Ugar Sugar Works and Sangli Shetakari Sugar factories. At Ugar Sugar works we had covered anaerobic lagoon by floating plastic membrahe for recovering biogas which was used in boiler as supplimentary fuel. He stayed in our house as a family member and not in college guesthouse.
Despite all this, he always felt the pain of loneliness. He had adopted the son of one of his relatives and kept him at home for education. All his education was done by Agarwal. But after finishing his education, the boy went back to his parents and Dr. Agrawal became sad.
He decided to stay at Chitrakut, where Shri. Nanaji Deshmukh had established Ramleela ashram. He also got associated with Tarun Bharat Sangh in Madhya Pradesh and started working for developing water sources by constructing johads and opposing mining activities. He changed his dress and wore dhoti and shawl.and started growing beard. He became a real devotee of Ramlaila temple. He used to read religious hymns in temple in the morning and worked for social activities and school education in the afternoon.
After many years, I got letter from him concerning his family problem.. His sister's daughter was in love with a boy named Kulkarni. But her parents did not approve of the inter-cast marriage, whereas the girl insisted on helping them. The girl was living in Pune and the boy was working in the Middle East and his parents were living in Kankavali, Kokan area. Dr. G. D. Agrawal had decided to take a lead in her marriage with person of her choice. As he was unmarried, he requested us to become host for the marriage ceremony to be held in Kanakavali in Kokan.
We were happy that he put trust on us and gave us his family status. My wife and myself, both went to Kankavali by ST bus. Early in the morning when bus reached Kankavali, we saw Dr. Agrawal waiting for us at the ST stand. The girl's mother and her friends as well as Agrawal's other family members had come for the marriage. We acted as her parents in the ceremony. Dr. Agrawal gave presents to all as per tradition. What surprised us was that Agrawal maintained fast and did not take even water for two days till the girl was given send off. He insisted to observe fast though he was serving food and eatables to all us while fasting. I still remember the scene of Dr. Agrawal during that function.
Agrawal, thus was tough on the outside and hard with himself but very gentle at heart. He has shown the world what self-sacrifice is through his own actions.
To be continued - Dr. S. V. Ranade, Dnyandeep, Sangli
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