Forex

We’ve seen it in the movies before… There was Shah Rukh Khan in Swades playing Mohan Bhargav, a scientist working with NASA who undergoes a transformation while visiting an interior Indian village, Charanpur. After leading the yuppie life abroad, he is moved by the poverty and backwardness of this village and decides to stay back and help develop the place. Then there was Kamal Haasan in the Tamil movie Unnal Mudiyum Thambi some years ago playing Udayamurthy, a local do-gooder who mobilises his simple village folk and weans them away from drinking and other evil habits.

Although moviemakers often tell you that their characters are taken from real life, you never really expect to meet anyone like that. So, imagine our surprise when we did come across such a person.

Hearing about Indian Overseas Bank’s involvement with an NGO for the integrated development of Kuthambakkam, a village about 40 km from Chennai on the Chennai-Bangalore highway, we decided to see what it was all about.

Until a few years ago the village was called ‘Kutrampakkam’, meaning a place for crime, primarily due to illicit brewing, despite the land being fertile enough to fetch two bountiful harvests a year. However, today it is considered a model village thanks to the initiative taken by the NGO Trust for Village Self Governance (TVSG) and its founder trustee Rangaswamy Elango.

And, thanks again to a diet of local movies, one expected to see a well-built panchayat chief in white dhoti and shirt ,with an angavastram (shawl) thrown over his shoulder, and barking orders at numerous underlings and fawning henchmen! Our first surprise: Elango is dressed casually in trousers and shirt and gives us a backgrounder on the village and his work there in fluent English. We learn that he had formerly worked as a chemical engineering scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Growing up, Elango had been pained to see the gradual deterioration of his village — most of the men-folk had fallen prey to illicit brewing, and were drinking and beating their wives. Lack of education, unhygienic living conditions and poor job opportunities together sapped the village of any hopes of redemption. The young Elango was determined to help change it for the better. After completing his education, he had a ten-year stint with CSIR before deciding to return to his village.

He recalls how his decision was supported by his family. In fact, ahead of his marriage he had even informed his wife-to-be and her father that he intended to one day give up his job to work for his village. Elango encouraged his wife to get educated and soon she found employment. At this point Elango decided to give up his own career and headed back to the village.

Good intentions were however not enough, as he found out soon enough. Trying to intervene and settle disputes among the villagers and advising misguided young men could only take his work to some distance. Somewhere along the way he felt the need to be empowered adequately to tackle this daunting task. Even as he was mulling options, the Panchayat Raj legislation came as godsend for him. He decided to contest and was elected President of the panchayat in 1996. One of the first measures he initiated was to build toilets in all homes — he felt this would go a long way in the true empowerment and liberation of the women. He mobilised the villagers and institutional help for this work.

The next logical step was to provide housing for all communities, maintain water bodies to provide safe drinking water, provide sanitary facilities, ensure effective disposal of solid waste, recycle water, develop greenery, promote smokeless chulas (stoves), ensure basic education for all and help the youth develop constructively to become responsible citizens.

Over time, Kuthambakkam has changed and is now emerging as a model village — a place that is able to provide some jobs as well as decent living standards.


Elango says he was deeply influenced by Gandhian philosophy. He believes that the country needs production by masses and not mass production. This belief coupled with the zeal to execute things has helped turn the village into a place for entrepreneurship and self-governance.

Several cottage industry units employing village men and women produce a range of products such as first-aid kits, soaps, kerosene stove, and eco-friendly bags.

Based on a barter system, Elango plans to network 10-20 villages comprising around 60,000 people. The objective is to help every family earn about Rs 5,000 a month.

He prefers to call this not poverty alleviation but prosperity generation programme. It will be helpful for both landlords and the landless, he says. About 45 per cent of the villagers are landless poor and close to 65 per cent of them are employed now.

“Now the thrust is to provide sustainable employment for the poor,” he says. Recently ITC evinced interest in sourcing incense sticks for its Mangaldeep brand from the village. Exim bank has offered to support with the construction of a shed for this and Elango is now evaluating options. In a couple of months the village will become hut-free as all the houses will be concrete structures, he says.

Help has also come from Chennai-headquartered Indian Overseas Bank (IOB), which recently launched ‘IOB Sampoorna’ – a comprehensive village development scheme at Kuthambakkam and neighbouring Padur villages. According to IOB Executive Director G. Narayanan, the programme aims to create a sustainable model for overall development including environment upgradation, generation of new revenue streams, enhancing income and improving quality of life.

The bank also announced loans for about 900 families based on a DIR (differential interest rate) scheme of 4 per cent to construct toilets. It also introduced a SmartCard with which customers in the villages could transact without visiting the bank. A biometric identification device ensures security for the transactions.

“Our aim is to cover about 100 villages in two to three years of which about 70 per cent will be in Tamil Nadu and the rest in Orissa,” Narayanan says adding, “we don’t look at profit and loss from this programme but see a customer base that improves on account of dealing with IOB.”

As an added initiative, wives of the IOB’s top management will visit these villages once a month to educate the village women on various issues such as budgeting, etiquette, health and hygiene, he says.

The success of the programme, of course, lies in its sustainability. Now, what would bankers consider as proof of success? A time when they can step back confidently from the scene, they say. If that happens at Kuthambakkam, then the village would truly become a model for other villages across the country.