Organization takes multi-pronged approach to help India prosper

Published 12:25 pm Friday, December 27, 2013

The image most Americans associate with India includes shining palaces and developing cities, according to Sunitha Gorty of Redmond. But this only represents the top 10 or 20 percent of the country.

“Seventy percent of India is still dependent on agriculture,” said Gorty, who is chapter coordinator for the Association for India’s Development (AID) in Seattle. “For India to prosper, we can’t just focus on the top percent.”

That’s why Gorty and her husband got involved with the organization in 1999, when they started donating to AID’s first chapter, located in College Park, Md.

Ravi Kuchimanchi founded the organization in 1991, when he was a graduate student at the University of Maryland. He wanted to create a channel for East Indians living in the U.S. to connect to rural India.

“The goal was to create awareness in the U.S. and inspire volunteerism so interested people can join it, learn and work together to understand and address issues of inequity, social justice and sustainable development (in India),” Kuchimanchi said.

The organization has now expanded to 38 chapters in the U.S., with more located internationally. Each chapter organizes fundraisers and supports non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are working on projects in India.

Gorty said AID is involved in efforts that address multiple issues.

“We don’t focus just on education, or just on agriculture,” Gorty said. “The idea is that you need to address all the issues.”

One issue that AID has focused on over the years concerns the world’s worst industrial disaster, in Bhopal, India. A gas leak at a pesticide production plant in 1984 killed thousands, and many are still drinking water that was contaminated by the gas.

Nirveek Bhattacharjee, AID volunteer and board member, has been particularly involved in this issue over the years. He said there’s been little to no cleanup after the gas leak, even after all this time.

“The cleanup is still very much necessary and a work in progress,” Bhattacharjee said.

However, AID has been taking steps to inform people about the issues at hand, and in some ways has been successful.

“We’ve had U.S. congressmen and senators write letters urging the government of India to act in at least providing clean water,” Bhattacharjee said. “Now about 60 percent of families do receive it, so that was a huge victory for us over a long period of time.”

The local chapter held a film screening recently at the Redmond Library; present at the event was Sanjay Verma, a survivor of the Union Carbide disaster.

Bhattacharjee said that AID has had a notable impact on India over the years.

“Through all of our projects we’ve easily reached 10 million or more people,” he said, “but more than that, what we have been able to do is connect different groups in India.”

In 2009, organic farming was a relatively new concept in India. There were only 25 organic farmers in the whole country. Because AID was able to connect farmers to organic farmers who could share their knowledge, organic farming has become a movement with almost 6,000 farmers and counting.

“Being able to connect all these people has an amplification effect on every movement,” Bhattacharjee said.

Aside from project coordination, AID Seattle organizes fundraisers and gathers donations to support different NGOs in India.

“Our biggest donors come from Microsoft and they match us dollar to dollar,” Gorty said. “We also do events; for example we’ll invite a big-name artist from India to come perform.”

The Seattle chapter typically has 10 to 15 volunteers at a time. All of them come from India. They meet every Friday in a building on the Microsoft campus to discuss projects and plan upcoming events.

“Seattle has a very active chapter of AID with some very hard-working volunteers who have been involved in supporting some of our best projects and campaigns,” Kuchimanchi said.

Many of the volunteers travel to India themselves to help with projects, and AID has an internship program that sends people to India to volunteer for about three months.

Gorty and Bhattacharjee agree that AID has changed them in ways they could never have imagined.

“I came from a middle-class family and grew up in the top 20 or 30 percent of the people, so I never saw any of the things I see now through AID,” Gorty said. “I think that I should make time to do something, no matter what it is, to give back to India.”

“I think it’s first and foremost a change in perspective,” Bhattacharjee said. “It has opened up a whole new world and it’s made me more humble, it’s made me value things a lot more than maybe I used to when I was growing up, and it has led to a change in the way we live our lives.”

Gorty said that some of the people who were involved with AID from the beginning have moved back to India to do full-time social work.

“We call them ‘jeevansathi,’ which means ‘life-long partner,’” she said.

“Meeting so many mindboggling grassroots activists who pretty much could have gone anywhere but decided to be on the ground working in these remote places — that’s inspiring, that just eggs you on,” Bhattacharjee said.

To get involved or to learn more about the Seattle chapter’s upcoming events and projects, visit seattle.aidindia.org

Kaylan Lovrovich is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.