Prakash and Mandakini Amte win "Asian Nobel"

Mandakini and Prakash Amte have been conferred the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, for serving the medical, education and livelihood needs of remote tribal communities in Maharashtra for over 30 years.

Prakash Amte and his wife Mandakini, both doctors, have been awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership 2008. The Magsaysay Award, given annually by the government of the Philippines, is considered to be the Asian Nobel.

The Amtes have been working among the Madia Gond tribals in Bhamragarh, in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, since the 1970s. According to the award citation, they were being honoured for their work in ‘enhancing the capacity of the Madia Gonds to adapt positively in today’s India, through healing and teaching and other compassionate interventions’.

Prakash Amte grew up in Anandvan, an ashram and rehabilitation centre for people with leprosy started by his father, the late Baba Amte. In 1974, when Baba Amte wanted to start a new project for the Gonds, Prakash and Mandakini gave up their urban medical practice and moved to the remote tribal area with him.

The Madias had no access to medical treatment, a great distrust of outsiders, and an average lifespan of just 50 years.

Providing medical care often means finding out the cause of the diseases that plague tribal communities. For example, the Amtes discovered that many tribals, particularly women, suffered from scurvy, a disease caused by Vitamin C deficiency and unusual among communities that eat vegetables and fruits. They traced the cause to the practice among some tribals of giving up eating any one food item as a sacrifice to the gods. In the particular area where there was a concentration of scurvy cases, people had stopped eating bamboo shoots -- a common item in their diet and a good source of Vitamin C. Lactating mothers were the worst affected because their bodies were being further depleted of the vitamin.

Regular spraying with insecticide brought down the large number of malaria cases in the area which was so endemic that most Madias had enlarged spleens.

In time, the Lok Biradari Prakalpa (LBP) project, as it was called, took off and doctors and donors from all over the world started lending a hand. A permanent hospital was established at Hemalkasa, as also a school with a hostel and an athletics track. The area has a heavy Naxalite presence, but this has not deterred the Amtes.

The hospital caters to 40,000 patients a year from 1,000 villages within a radius of 150 km. The residential school has around 600 tribal children from Standards 1 to 12. Students from the school compete in track-and-field events at the state and national level; six have qualified as doctors.

Agricultural extension is another important activity of the LBP. Hybrid paddy varieties were distributed to the tribals so they could get higher yields. Students at the Lok Biradari school are taught improved agricultural techniques. There is also an animal orphanage that houses an incredible assortment of wild animals.

Source: The Indian Express, August 1, 2008 DNA, August 1, 2008 Rediff News, July 31, 2008 www.lokbiradariprakalp.org, July 2008