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Gandhigram - Transforming Rural India

Two events occurred in the 1940s that came together to create the many faceted Gandhigram.

On Feb 2, 1946 the villagers of Chinnalappatti rioted near the railway lines to force the British authorities to stop a train heading for Madurai. On the train was Mahatma Gandhi and the villagers wouldn't have anything less than his darshan and blessings.

The second event had occurred some years before in Madurai. Soundaram, the beautiful daughter of affluent businessman T V Sundaram Iyengar, became a teen-aged widow. Her dying husband Dr.Sunder Rajan had made her promise that she will not sit at home, but would educate herself to serve the society. Her father sent her to study medicine at Delhi. Here, wily old Gandhi had trapped the young student and added her to his growing army of dedicated young people.

The odyssey started and continued in the follwing areas:

1. First, was health - Kasturba Hospital was founded. http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/jun/hlt-gramhosp.htm
2. Full scale education - http://www.ruraluniv.org/ was created
3. People making people - People educate people for a better society

Read the whole story @ "The Mahatma's magic lives on in Gandhigram"

I was taking to Sathya, a volunteer with Gandhigram foundation and he told that they do produce lots of rural products. The only handicap is that they don't have a proper network to take the products to the national and international markets. If a website can be built which can help to take these products to the international markets, that would be awesome. Anybody wants to pitch in to make that a reality, let me know.