The Akshaya Patra Foundation (An NGO upholding Quality, Honesty, Transparency & Accountability)

Years ago, one day in Mayapur, a village near Calcutta, a group of poor children were fighting desperately with street dogs for leftovers of food. Fortunately for the boys, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, happened to see this ordinary yet heart-breaking incident from a far away window. His Divine Grace decided at once not only to feed those poor children but also to see to it that no man within a radius of ten miles from any of ISKCON Centers would ever go hungry. Soon that noble resolution transformed into the process of serving free food at all ISKCON Centers. Years later, in 2000, some of his devoted followers endeavoured to take  this philanthropic action of their Guru a step forward and thus come into existence what we today know as The Akshaya Patra Foundation.

As the World Hunger Day (28th May) draws near, it’s time we took a serious look at one of the world’s best NGOs operating in India fighting to reduce hunger and malnutrition amongst children. While the government of India runs the Mid-Day Meal Scheme which feeds 120 million students every day across the nation, The Akshaya Patra Foundation, a Bangalore based non-profit organisation is its largest NGO partner providing meals to 1.4 million students spread across 24 locations in 10 states in India, covering 10,770 Government schools and Government-aided schools. It must be noted that Akshaya Patra began providing cooked, nutritious meals on its own initiative for 1,500 school children in Bangalore as far back as 2000, while the Government of India started implementing its Mid-Day Meal Scheme only in 2004.

  

At Akshaya Patra, the practice of food preparation and distribution are conducted strictly in keeping with world standards of quality and hygiene with emphasis that every meal prepared needs to be completely safe, nutritious and tasty at the same time. Akshaya Patra – a term which comes from the Mahabharata and which means an inexhaustible bowl of food, much in keeping with its name, allows as many helpings as the children want, as long as the food doesn’t go wasted by them. This wholesome meal is often the only source of nutrition for the whole day for many of the organisation's beneficiaries, the children hailing from poor families. Therefore the menu is developed keeping in mind the nutritious needs of growing children, the local food habits prevalent in each state, the need for variety and the inclusion of special additional dishes like dessert twice a week to break monotony.

The Foundation runs its operations through two kitchen models – Centralised and De-centralised. Centralised kitchens are large factory-like kitchen units that have the capacity to typically cook up to 1,00,000 meals a day. The Technology and Process used in centralised kitchens have been a topic of research and study in the course curriculum of many renowned universities such as the Harvard Business School. Locations where factors like unfavourable geographical terrain and improper road connectivity don’t support construction of large infrastructure, de-centralised kitchens are set up. De-centralised kitchen units are run by local Women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) under the guidance and supervision of Akshaya Patra’s Kitchen Process and Operations Module.

Its ISO-certified, semi-automated, centralised kitchens are equipped with advanced technology to prepare hygienic meals for large-scale feeding. Standardised Procedures are in place for management of every part of the process, be it collection of vegetables, storing of grains, cooking, transport or distribution of food. Food Safety Management Systems are implemented in all the kitchens in order to handle, prepare and deliver food. All cauldrons, trolleys, rice chutes, dal/sambar tanks, cutting boards, knives and other instruments in these units are sanitised before usage every single day. The raw materials that are procured are of the best quality and to ensure this a robust Supplier Quality Management System (SQMS) is implemented. The blue bus is a customised transport vehicle of Akshaya Patra specially designed to deliver food that is packed in stainless steel 304 Grade vessels which can keep food hot and fresh for long intervals of time. Every vehicle is steam-sterilised before the loading process. The vehicle uses a puffed body to reduce loss of temperature and a honeycomb structure to hold the vessels upright and keep the freshness of the cooked meal intact till it is served. The quality of work of this NGO is so much recognised that Akshaya Patra has been appointed a member of the National Steering-cum-Monitoring Committee (NSMC) for the Govenment’s Mid-Day Meal Programme.

It’s heartening to find that Akshaya Patra fully understands that along with quality of performance, Transparency is the key to trust and reliability for any organisation. Akshaya Patra hence upholds absolute transparency in all its activities. For this purpose, they comply with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The IFRS reporting which was adopted in 2008-09 has contributed substantially in building confidence amongst the stakeholders of the organisation. They also comply with the Indian Accounting Standards issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and are up to date on accounting standards. At the end of each financial year an Annual Report with financial audits and statements is published and made available to the stakeholders. The organisation is so highly transparent that it makes available to the public not only its financial information but also all its intellectual property.

Akshaya Patra strives to ensure that stringent measures are in place, to meet the highest standards of transparency, accountability and management throughout all its branches. Towards this end they have set up an efficient Internal Control (Audit System). In order to ensure the effectiveness of the internal controls, the organisation has appointed Chartered Accountant firms of repute, as Branch Auditors. The Branch Auditors submit the audited reports of their respective branches to the management periodically. These reports are then reviewed by the Audit Committee. The Audit Committee is a sub-committee of the Board of Trustees that was formed to ensure the effectiveness of the internal control environment.

Akshaya Patra lays utmost importance on Good Governance. Its governance practices are based on a set of clearly defined and diligently drafted philosophy, methods, laws, rules & regulations that enables the organisation to perform efficiently and ethically, and create value for all its stakeholders. The organisation’s Executive Management Team consists of individuals with specific skills in fields of Management, Operations, Finance, Communications and the like. Their knowledge base, along with the guidance and dedication of the Unit Presidents, helps in the operation of the organisation in an efficient manner and ensures best usage of resources. Quite unlike with most other NGOs, at Akshaya Patra, on an average, 82% of the total cost is used towards meeting the programme cost, 14% is utilised as programme management cost and only 4% of the total cost is steered towards meeting fundraising and communication costs.

Akshaya Patra is focused on and has been successful in meeting the objectives of eliminating class-room hunger, increasing enrolment, improving attendance, improving socialisation, addressing malnutrition and women empowerment. The organisation, by means of its programme of providing filling, nutritious and hygienic mid-day meals to poor children in schools, works towards achieving two of the most critical Millennium Development Goals: Elimination of Hunger & Universalization of Primary Education. Built on a public-private partnership, Akshaya Patra combines government support, private funds, good management, innovative technology, smart engineering and efficient day-to-day operations to deliver its objective with quality, transparency and accountability. Over the years, Akshaya Patra has been the recipient of several awards and recognitions for its exemplary service and style of functioning. Being fast recognised across the globe as one of the most honest, efficient and effective NGOs, the foundation aims to reach out to 5 million children by 2020.

At a time when our country is beset with so many NGOs indulging in corruption and mismanagement of funds, men and resources, honest and efficient NGOs such as Akshaya Patra stand as brilliant silver linings on the cloud. In this context, it needs to be remembered that even this Mid-Day Meal Scheme of our Government which feeds our poor children was hijacked and put to shame at times by the crookedness of some self-serving NGOs.  In an Impact Assessment Study Report, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) makes a recommendation as follows: “In order to expand the scope of the programme to more children and to demystify wrong beliefs and apprehensions about the Mid-Day Meal Programme among parents and students, provisioning of necessary support for sensitisation and awareness activities on nutrition, and the process followed by Akshaya Patra is recommended among all key stakeholders such as school management, teaching / non-teaching staff, the students and parents.”

Omkar Nath Sharma – the one-man Medical Mission of Delhi’s Poor Patients

An under-construction bridge of Delhi Metro in East Delhi collapsed in 2008 claiming the lives of two labourers and injuring many others. The local hospital administered basic first aid, couldn’t do anything much, and the injured returned to die unable to afford the cost of medicines.

To most of us, many such unfortunate events come as daily feed on morning newspapers, we read them with apathy or sometimes with a bit of sensitivity, and then conveniently choose to forget about them even before the day’s newspaper reading is over. Even when some such things happen before our very eyes, even if they relate to somebody in our neighborhood, all we normally do is convince ourselves, sooner or later, that it’s not something concerning us, and simply get busy with our own lives. But an ordinary old man of Delhi who was a witness to the happenings mentioned above was just not ready to dump them conveniently into oblivion and go ahead coolly with his own life. That poor men die for want of medicines was something that pierced deep into his heart. His heart was so attuned to empathize with the sufferings of the poor that the incident shook him into churning out some solution to the problem at any cost. Even if it meant turning the course of his own life, even if it meant making more miserable his own already miserable life, this old man Omkar Nath got determined unto himself that he will do something to see to it that no more such poor people die for want of medicines. And, therein he had found his life-Mission. And what a life-saving Mission it really was!

Omkar Nath Sharma says: “I thought, why not collect medicines for the poor? No one else seems to be doing it but why isn’t it possible? I thought, maybe it isn’t that easy but wouldn’t the efforts be worth if I really do succeed. I thought, if that way I could save at least one life, if I could help at least one family, how fine.” And, it is this positive thought, this urge to impact positively the lives of his poor fellow beings that set off this retired lab technician, Omkar Nath on his one man unique Mission.

His work day starts at 6 O’clock each morning when he puts on his self designed uniform, a saffron kurta (shirt) on which is written “Mobile Medicine Bank for the Poor Patients”. Wearing this garb, which features also his mobile numbers, he sets out from his rented home in Mangalpuri slums and goes from door to door in different areas of Delhi asking for unused medicines. He collects them mainly from areas where middle class and upper middle class people live. He says: “My 27 years of work as a medical attendant gave me confidence and knowledge enough to take up this adventure, this begging for medicines for the sake of those who couldn’t afford them. While on the one side I’ve seen people who can’t even afford to buy some cheaper medicines like simple painkillers or antibiotics, on the other side, I’ve seen people simply throwing out unused medicines after recovery. And, all that I could think of doing was to avoid this wastage and intervene to see to it that such medicines become of some help to the poor.” After collecting the medicines he sits down to sort them out, especially to weed out those with expired dates, and then goes distributing them to various charitable hospitals, NGO’s and clinics in and around Delhi. He serves the needy through these institutions not only because it’s convenient but also because it helps him ward off certain legal hurdles.

As his work began to roll at a faster rate, as the quantity of medicines that he could collect expanded, Omkar Nath rented a single room to serve him and his needy patients as a Medicine Bank. Soon a few generous persons and some NGOs came to his help. Today his Medicine Bank “Raahat Hi Raahat” has a couple of fridges and a few other items of furniture to help him collect and store more medicines to be distributed to needy patients and his beneficiary hospitals including two government hospitals, Clinics and NGOs. Statistics show that, on an average, he collects medicines worth around Rs. 10 lakh per month.

At the age of 12 a car hit Omkar Nath and crippled him for life. His knees were damaged and he can walk now only with a limp. Besides his aged and ailing wife, he has a mentally challenged son at home, to be looked after. But life has taught him to look at the miseries of others and do something to alleviate them than keep crying over his own miseries. At times long back, he has had to even wash dishes and stay on railway platforms to keep his family of wife and two sons going. This poor old Humanitarian, who is 79 years now, cannot afford the metro rail fare, so he travels by buses aided by his senior citizen pass. In remote areas where buses do not ply, he simply walks, unmindful of his age and disability. Collecting medicines, cataloguing them, distributing them... all these have now become a routine for Omkar Nath and it’s something he just wouldn’t give up, come what may.

Talking to Mission AHIMSA, Omkar Nath Sharma says: “Recently I helped an NGO send a truck load of medicines, cloths and food items to the Quake-hit Nepal by collecting from various people across Delhi. Over the years, I’ve been able to develop a sound relationship with numerous people. Even people who once used to shun me and scorn me now admire my work and offer help in various ways. Yes, it’s my single-minded determination and untiring efforts which is helping me keep my Mission alive. But, looking from another angle, it is the kind-hearted people of Delhi who come forward to donate me their unused medicines who really keep the Mission alive. But, you see, the need is so big and what can this one little man do. I wish the youth of this country come out with similar such Missions to reach out help to more and more of the poor and the needy across the length and breadth of our country. I also wish an NGO could be formed to carry out the collection and distribution of unused medicines in a systematic and advanced manner.”

Subhashini Mistry – the poor, illiterate woman who built hospitals for the poor

There lived in a thatched hut in a remote village in the state of West Bengal in India, a poor young farmer, his illiterate wife and 4 little children. The poor farmer, despite his hard work, earned such meager wages that he could afford to give his family just a hand to mouth existence. Still the farmer and his wife, along with their kids, were leading a contented life just as most other villagers do, without any complaints, without any big dreams, until one evening when……

One evening, the poor young farmer returned home complaining of a pain in his stomach. The pain kept increasing hour by hour. His poor wife desperately tried to do all that she could to ease his pain. But to take him to a hospital for timely treatment was just not within her means. The nearest Government Hospital was around 5 kilometers away. It had been raining heavily for days and the road in that direction lay flooded. To afford a private vehicle or a private doctor was just out of question. Still the loving young woman was just not willing to give up. By the third day, as her husband lay at home writhing with pain, she somehow managed to borrow from the neighborhood enough money and took him to the nearest private hospital, around 10 kilometers away. But……

But, by then, things were too late and she had to see her husband breathe his last right in front of her eyes. The widowed mother then huddled her little ones close to her heart and vowed that she would work hard to see to it that no other family in her village suffered such fate as hers. This illiterate woman then vowed to give her children good education. This shattered woman then resolved to build a hospital for the poor in her village so that no more lives would be shattered for want of timely medical treatment. And……

And, thereafter, from 1971, life was one terrible trial, all the way for this woman, Subhashini Mistry. But so strong was her determination, and so tender her humanistic impulse that nothing could deter this seemingly ordinary woman from pursuing her extraordinary goals. She says: “It was hard labour all the way, but I had no other options to feed my children. I had to work as a construction laborer, house-help, waste picker, farm laborer & vegetable vendor. From morning till night, I would take up a number of jobs, one after another, with hardly any rest, because I had this one big dream of building a hospital for the poor. If I earned five rupees, I would use two rupees for our eating, two rupees for rent and other expenses, and I would save one rupee to fulfill my life goal. That was how I used to manage things.” Yes, she did manage a lot, or wouldn’t it be more proper to say that this woman, suffered, struggled and sacrificed a lot.

Subhashini Mistry says: “Even when the whole world jeered at my stubborn and seemingly foolish dream, thankfully for me, my children were very supportive. Before admission to school, my son Ajoy had to work in a tea stall to support the family. When things became more difficult I had to even put two of my kids into a government run children’s home. I found then that that was the only way the children could get proper food and a good education. But I didn’t ever regret any of those moves. For I always knew that there were many such things needed to be done for the greater good. I used to cry many nights not having my little ones next to me. I would visit them every week and take along some sweets, occasionally clothes and hold them for hours and kiss them. I would tell them that the reason they had to stay away was so they could have a better life and also because they could one day grow up to give better lives to many others maybe even poorer than them.”

Over the years, much to the relief of Subhashini Mistry, her elder son Ajoy excelled in his studies, earned scholarships and went on to become a doctor. So it was time for Subhashini to speed up things. After two decades of struggle, in 1993, this determined woman invested all her life-long savings to buy an acre of land in her husband’s native village. She along with her son, Dr. Ajoy and some fellow-villagers then set up a temporary shed in that newly acquired land. This shed served as their first hospital.  Dr. Ajoy and some of his kind-hearted colleagues offered their free services there. On the very first day, they diagnosed 252 patients. Day by day, as the patients started to line up more and more outside the temporary shed, Subhashini told Ajoy: “This is not enough. We need to build a proper hospital.” Soon Subhashini’s younger son Sujoy who had completed his graduation by then also joined the Mission. He started raising funds to set up the hospital of his mother’s dream while the poor mother still kept on with her vegetable selling to be able to contribute financially yet again to her avowed Mission, as much as she could.

But that’s all history now. Thanks to the compassion, sacrifice, hard work and unflinching determination of this village woman, thousands of poor villagers are today able to access free and subsidized medical treatment. Today, Subhashini’s NGO, the Humanity Trust runs two Hospitals for the poor (one at Hanspukur near Kolkata and the other one in the remote Sundarbans region), carries out several outreach medical programs and is presently in the process of setting up an ideal old-age home and an orphanage in its Hanspukur campus. Today, Subhashini’s whole family (including her daughters) is devotedly engaged in carrying forward her humanitarian mission. Today, Subhashini’s Humanity Hospital is a multi-specialty hospital serving the medical needs of thousands of villagers. Today, Subhashini is the recipient of several awards such as the ‘Mind of Steel Award’ by Godfrey Philips, ‘Real Heroes’ from CNN-IBN, ‘Silver Awards’ from HARMONY Foundation, ‘Service above Self’ from Rotary International and the Janahita Award by CKJI. But Subhashini Mistry is still the same simple, straightforward, compassionate and resolute woman that she was decades ago. Her body has sure become aged but her mind is still too young and highly inspiring.

Subhashini Mistry tells Mission AHIMSA: “Watching poor people get free medical aid, talking to them, listening to their problems, sketching out possible solutions for them by discussion with my sons and other board members, playing with my grand children… thus time runs out for me these days. I am happy that these hospitals are able to do so much to the needy poor but I am not contented still. I wish to spread the services deeper and wider. My mission was and is: ‘Nobody should die unattended and unserved.’ I know by experience how difficult it really is. The more the poor people we would be able to serve, the happier I would be.”

Sadhana Tai Amte – The Decoction and Ladoos of Love

The last lap of the journey involved hours of travel across some long stretches of dusty arid land. The wind blew thick clouds of scorching heat and sandy dust into our big four-wheeler which rolled and jumped and bumped, across and over unruly roads and roadless expanses. Finally, before sunset, when we reached our destination, I felt as if we had chanced upon a big and beautiful oasis. We had then reached the banks of the Narmada – before an ashram-like, humble dwelling inhabited by none other than the great Baba Amte and Sadhana Tai Amte. The year was 1994. The place, Kasaravad in Madhya Pradesh.

That night when the lights were switched off and the whole ashram lay asleep, I was suddenly awakened by a fit of cough (I was already suffering from a severe throat infection since evening). Within minutes the bulbs in my room went aglow. I turned around to see who it was. Sadhana Tai Amte. She had brought me a glass of warm water. She sat near me on my bed, stroked my back, asked me to take it easy, said it was all because of the heat and dust of the journey. Later she went into the kitchen, prepared some decoction (I don’t know what it contained – I think only mothers and grandmas know what such home-remedies are really made of) and made me drink it to the last drop.

All the while she was speaking to me on a lot of things – about Anandwan, about Baba, about life in the Narmada valley, etc. After some time, when I felt quite relieved, she bid me lie down, pulled the blanket over me, switched off the lights and went away saying I would be perfectly okay by morning. For the first time, after I had left home for Anandwan a few months ago, that night, I felt as if I was back home and in the presence of my mother. I must say that I was then beginning to understand the real Sadhana Tai, was then beginning to understand why that simple and unassuming woman was adored and revered by so many as if she were their own sister or mother, was then beginning to understand how Baba Amte was able to build such a vast and mighty empire of love and compassion. 

Soon I found out that rendering hospitality, feeding guests, tending to the sick, cheering up the depressed – and all such things she did always with an innate and inimitable warmth of heart seasoned with a pinch of creative humour. Her humility, humanness and humour had a tender magic of their own. Years later, in 2007, when I, along with my mother, visited Anandwan the second time, I found that age and work had worn her out a lot, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the spirit within her was still the same. Before our return to Kerala, during the over two years of our stay there, we, myself and my mother, had the fortune to know Tai too closely and to our heart’s content.  We found the aged and ailing Tai always too full of sincere care and concern for all others.

On the morning of our last day in Anandwan, in 2009, when my mother and elder sister entered her prayer room to bid her farewell, they were surprised to see her waiting there for them too anxiously. On that day of the festival of Lord Ganesha (The Elephant God) she was then distributing ladoos after offering it to the deity. She had told me the day before that she would be waiting there for them then to give those special ladoos and since they hadn’t turned up she was getting anxious, minute by minute, whether the ladoos would be exhausted before they arrive. As soon as she saw them she greeted them the most excitedly and offered them the ladoos with immense relief and joy and sent one for me too. The bitterness of her decoction or the sweetness of her ladoos linger no more in my tongue, but the ‘sweetness sans any bitterness’ of her character will keep my heart ever afresh.   

A Profile of the Personality

Once, at a family wedding, Muralidhar Devidas Amte (now famously known as Baba Amte, the Great Humanitarian) saw Indu Guleshastri (Sadhana), the younger sister of the day’s bride, silently engrossed in helping an overburdened servant woman. He was highly impressed by the compassion for the lowly, the dedication to work and the courage to break conventions of this simple and silent Brahmin girl which become plainly evident from this act of hers. He was quick to discern that she was no ordinary Brahmin girl and that she would be to him the perfect life-partner. Without any inhibitions, this till-then-ascetic, at once, made his intentions known to the mother of the girl. It took her mother and the others a while to digest this shocking but pleasurable truth. But the girl, Indu Guleshastri, had just no reservations in accepting this extra adventurous and out-of-the-ordinary young man as her husband. So, on the 18^th of December 1946, their marriage got solemnized. Ever since, she had been a great source of inspiration, strength and support to him in all his activities.

It was with the support and help offered by his wife that the young Amte boldly gave up his legal practice, renounced all his property and set up the Shram Ashram (Hermitage of Labour) for inter-caste living and manual work which was to become a forerunner to all his future projects including Anandwan. He organized the social outcastes into unions, cooperatives and societies to improve their abysmal socio-economic conditions. He worked as secretary of sixteen such associations. All this while, his devoted wife spent her time tending to the harijan women and children and fending off a plague of poisonous snakes and scorpions around the cooking area and under the cot. She had to even pay the severe price of exile from her own family for this living with the outcasts. But without any regrets, without any stepping back, with selfless dedication she ever walked forward with her husband and remained the silent spirit behind all his missions. Over the years she even served under various official capacities from working as an accountant to shouldering responsibility as an Assistant Secretary of their Trust (Maharogi Sewa Samiti). Throughout her career as a social worker, she was popularly known as ‘Tai’ (meaning ‘Sister’ in Marathi) because of her genuine friendliness, utter humility and heartfelt concern for one and all.

As a tribute to her greatness, at even National and International award presentation ceremonies Baba would always start his acceptance speech by firstly addressing his wife (Smt. Sadhana Amte) rather than start by addressing such honourable dignitaries as the President, the Prime Minister etc. Her selfless service for the leprosy-stricken, the physically challenged and the downtrodden have been honoured with various awards like ‘Chaturang Puraskar’, ‘Kasturba Gandhi Seva Puraskar’, ‘Matoroshri Puraskar’, ‘Dalit Mitra Puraskar’, ‘Millennium Award’ and ‘Grahini-Sakhi-Sachiv Puraskar’. Born on 5^th May 1926, in an aristocratic, Brahmin family, having lived a selfless and simple life as a true ‘woman of the soil’, Sadhana Tai Amte breathed her last on 9^th July 2011.