Magnificent effort for an entire community

I had heard about Sharatchandra Gokhale way back in the 1970s. But I really came to know him when I returned from Delhi in 1991. At a special meeting, he asked me whether I would like to join the Community Aid and Sponsorship Programme (Casp).

I requested him to send me the documents and materials regarding Casp. When I read them I was quite impressed and readily joined hands with him. Our association has come a long way since then.

Gokhale and Casp have become almost synonymous. As a matter of fact, Casp is his dream come true.

What started with sponsorship of a few children has now blossomed into a magnificent effort with sponsorship of hundreds of children. This sponsorship has now rightly branched into caring of their families and even the community in which they live.

This, however, is a logical expansion of his activities. He also believed that a child should not be removed from his family and kept in an institution caring for such children. But the child should always live with his family, which alone would ensure the child’s proper development.

He refined this concept and working of the sponsorship and it now includes various activities which help the child to develop into a healthy adolescent.

Gokhale has varied interests, among them looking after leprosy-affected people, senior citizens and generally any human being who needs sympathetic care. Family planning and HIV- and AIDS-affected people have also attracted his attention.

What has really impressed me is his vision and unbounded optimism. He has never rested on his past achievements, but has always been looking ahead. Challenges have brought the best out of him. He has always enjoyed leaving a beaten track and
going after innovation and newer pastures.

He wants to cover schools in backward tribal areas like Maval taluka through computers and the Internet, to improve the quality of education and expose students to the outside world.

Many a times, his colleagues have questioned him to go slow and not be too ambitious. But his optimism knows no bounds. His philosophy is that if the cause is good and the means to achieve it are ethical, help will come by itself and money and resources will be no problem. And he proved it right time and again.

He has also an amazing organising capacity and has built Casp into a mini-empire. But what is remarkable in this is that he does not treat this as his private empire, but is content to lead through consensus. He treats himself as the first among equals.

He is a good writer and a remarkably good speaker. It has been a pleasure to hear him speak on many subjects with lucidity and authority.

When the silver jubilee of Casp was celebrated in Delhi recently, I came to realise what magnificent work he has carried out and with what attention and respect he is treated by his colleagues and junior social workers.

I would like to join all his friends and admirers in wishing him many more years of service to the children who need attention and help, to the leprosy patients who need care and sympathy from society, and the aged who want to feel they are still needed by others.

— BG Deshmukh is a former Union cabinet secretary

(Sharatchandra Gokhale will be felicitated by the Pune Municipal Corporation for his work on Saturday)