The Ramco Group has made enormous efforts to uplift society but does not call attention to itself as it does so. Long before corporate philanthropy became an integral part of the corporate world’s business model, the Ramco group had been quietly working towards the holistic socio-economic development of the villages and society around its plants. Rajapalayam in Tamil Nadu is where the group began its journey with a spinning mill. It later diversified into cement, building products, software solutions, wind energy and logistics. Ramco today is a large industrial conglomerate. The philosophy of the Ramco group is to facilitate the community’s desire for self-sustainability, thereby liberating it from dependency. It plays a catalytic role in the creation of rural infrastructure, women empowerment, education, healthcare and the environment. The company has built several schools, colleges, industrial training centres, hospitals, hostels, which directly and indirectly help in the development of Rajapalayam and the nearby villages. With a high literacy rate, the town is growing employment opportunities. “It is our legacy to move with the community by offering welfare services through our several charitable trusts,” says Nirmala Raja, wife of PRV Raja, Ramco chairman, who is passionately driving the company’s CSR initiatives. At the centre of these programmes is the tribal welfare service started by the group in 2004. Tribal Welfare is working in many fields towards the betterment of villagers, health, income generation, women's empowerment, agriculture, and irrigation. The self-help group also makes them aware of various government benefits of which they have not heard. The company also observed that when tribal adults go to the forest to work and earn a livelihood, they leave their children behind, without any support and care. They therefore become isolated, sick and suffer from malnutrition. To weed out the problems faced by tribal children, Ramco volunteered to support these children by setting up a tribal hostel called Jayanth Tribal Students Hostel for Boys & Girls. It started with 69 tribal students in 2005. The company arranges their stay, food, clothing and education from primary to higher secondary education. From 69 the number of tribal students has now gone up to 155, of which 72 are girls. The Jayanth Hostel later constructed a new building on one acre of land in Rajapalayam. M Pandi Selvi is a typical beneficiary student of the tribal hostel; she completed her BE in computer science at the Ramco Institution of Technology and is now the main breadwinner of her family, working in the ERP section of Sudarsanam Spinning Mills. Similarly, M Dharmadurai works in the state forest department after completing his diploma in electrical engineering. Looking at the benefits, requests for admission to the hostel are now piling up. “It was not easy to convince the tribal parents to send their children to the hostel. It took almost 10 years to build trust,” Nirmala Raja explains cheerfully. Continuing traditions In an age where education has become an industry and entrepreneurs are lining up to open engineering, IT and medical colleges, the older Indian traditional education and cultural heritage is getting the short end of the stick. Moved by the need to continue some of these traditions, Raja’s family, who are great admirers of religious activities, built the Veda Pathasala in 1997. It aims to preserve ancient Hindu culture and the oral traditions of Vedic studies using the Gurukul method.
-
Students at the tribal hostel: bringing pleasant changes in the society
