Shankar Ghose retired from a full-time job at the National Foundation of India (NFI), the outfit which gives grants to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—to relax, listen to Beethoven, Mozart and Rabindra Sangeet, finish partially read books, play golf and meet his friends for long lunches.
But, two days after leaving NFI in 2001, Ghose ended up joining Charkha, the development and communication network that his son had started in 1994 and which, until then, was being run by a board.
With long years in the corporate sector—Caltex, Godrej, Philips and Shriram Industrial Enterprises—and a stint at NFI, Ghose, who joined as president of Charkha, decided he had to continue the work of Charkha, which tries to empower rural people by giving them a voice.
Charkha had been started in 1994 by Ghose’s son, Sanjoy Ghose, who was abducted by Ulfa militants in 1997 on a work visit to Assam, and has not been heard from since.
Charkha’s Shankar Ghose says he takes pride in the popularity of the Urdu features service brought out by the organization.
Today, the septuagenarian works almost seven days a week holding workshops in rural areas, getting articles written by them in newspapers and magazines, and creating awareness among them to stand up for their rights. “It’s like an old father following his son’s footsteps, but I enjoy working for people at grass-root levels,” says Ghose.
His nondescript office in South Delhi’s Malviya Nagar area is cluttered with paper clippings in Hindi, English and Urdu, and placards of workshops held by Charkha. He speaks passionately about Charkha’s activities, and about his son, even as his tea gets cold. It isn’t an easy conversation. The pain of talking about Sanjoy in the past tense, and the persistent guilt that he could not stop him from going to the North-East are palpable. Charkha’s website describes Ghose trying to dissuade his son from visiting Assam only for Sanjoy to ask: “Then, whose son will you send?”
But, it isn’t all personal. Ghose is no less passionate when he starts talking about how mainstream media does not adequately cover development issues relating to rural areas. Among his favourite topics is how Charkha was in the limelight in the mid-1990s, and how it works now.
Charkha (www.charkha.org) provides a link between people in the villages, grass-roots level activists, NGOs working in the area and mainstream media. Ghose and his team of six in Delhi make sure that “positive” aspects of developmental works done in rural areas are reported in the mainstream media. Charkha tries to use conventional communication as a tool to empower the impoverished. In order to retain what people at the grass-roots levels want to convey, there is minimal editing and rewriting of articles by the Charkha team.