When we land at the Ahmedabad airport, there is a car waiting for us from Arvind Mills. With clockwork precision, it takes us to the Lilawati Lalbhai Bungalow in eastern Ahmedabad where we are welcomed by Dr V L Mote, the 75-year-old Trustee of the Sharda Trust, an ex IIM professor who has been instrumental in pushing forth the many initiatives of the Trust, whose main interests are in education, health and helping the urban poor get employment.
Grasping our hand in a firm handshake, Dr Mote takes us straightaway to a presentation he has put together on the SHARDA Trust’s projects. “The idea of the Trust came around the time Arvind was poised to becoming a global company,” he begins. “The company had divested itself of its conventional businesses and got into denim, shirtings and trousers. It was raising resources globally and was working with global teams. If Arvind wished to become a world-class company, it could evidently not let Ahmedabad be a slum,” Dr Mote stresses.
“So, the Trust began defining its role and its strategy. It decided that it would focus on basic physical infrastructure, secondary and tertiary health care, and education to upgrade students’ skills in reading, writing and arithmetic. It also decided to create opportunities for upgrading skills and developing the capabilities necessary for actively participating in the fast-developing work environment of today,” he explains.
One of its earlier projects around early 2000, when Arvind Mills decided to produce garments from knitted fabrics, was training about 400 people from nearby towns and villages by partnering with the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gandhinagar. Executives from the company’s garment division participated actively in this training program after which 300 were inducted into the company and the remaining absorbed by other factories.
In 2006, the Trust looked at improving education levels and health care facilities in the city. Nearly 1,60,000 students study in Ahmedabad’s 447 municipal schools. They comprise 39% of all the students studying in the city’s primary schools. With a view to improving the quality of skilled workforce for emerging knowledge industries, the Trust got into an arrangement with the Ahmedabad Municipal School Board which let it set up a centre at one of their schools for boys in Shapur in east Ahmedabad where most children came from the nearby Shnakarbhuvan slum.
A typical centre is like “a school within the school”. The Trust is allotted two rooms – one for computer training and the other for teaching Maths and English. The infrastructure, trainers and curriculum come from the Trust. The Trust put up 16 computers and upgraded the décor of the rooms as well. The Trust set up its next centre in the Lilawati Lalbhai or Heritage Bungalow in November 2006, installing 10 computers here to cater to the students living in the nearby chawls.
The total cost of putting up these two centres was Rs 15 lakh and the direct recurring expenses amounted to Rs 6 lakh. A third centre was added in 2007. The Trust has a team of 18 teachers. It runs 3 centres and is looking to raise that figure to 10. The project is partly funded by Arvind and received a grant of Rs 1.2 crore in 2005 from a charitable trust called the SM Shah Settlement. “The Shah Foundation laid a condition, though. They wanted Arvind to put in 10% of this amount. Rs 50 lakh came from Arvind in 2005 and another Rs 30 lakh should follow,” Dr Mote says.
We are soon joined by the Chairman of the Municipal School Board, Jayprakash Desai with whom the Trust coordinated and whose cooperation they received for this venture. “If you want good graduates in bulk in Gujarat, students will have to upgrade their skills, particularly in English,” agrees Desai. “Therefore, improving education at the primary level is the answer,” he adds. Desai says that bringing in value into the education system is a welcome initiative. Incidentally, the Board may consider allowing more such corporates to partner with it in the future, he indicates.
Once this meeting is over, we go to Khanpur and Shapur to see their educational centres in operation. The experience was a memorable one, underlining how a little care, committed involvement and some money can improve the quality of life for the underprivileged.
Health Care
We are subsequently introduced to Mukund S Shah, Consultant, Arvind Quality of Life Programme. The 65-year-old Shah, a former Arvind Mills executive, visits at least 2 hospitals every week scouting for patients he can help. The initiative, which began in 1998, was given a fillip in 2006-07 when the Trust spent about Rs 4 lakh to help nearly 500 patients either by paying for their treatment or by helping them with medicines and other costs.
Rural Initiatives
Last but not the least is the company’s rural initiative which runs under the aegis of the 1978-established Narottam Lalbhai Rural Development Fund. B M Shah, vice president, corporate finance and systems at Arvind and executive director of this project says, “We cover villages of all the 13 Talukas of one of the tribal districts in Gujarat,” he adds. The Fund has also begun work in Gandhinagar, Rajkot, Surendranagar, Jamnagar Panchmahal, Kheda, Bhavnagar, Ahmedabad and Mehsana.
“We run integrated development programmes for agriculture, education, health, social and farm forestry, horticulture, animal husbandry, minor irrigation, rural electrification, roads, biogas, non-formal medical services, vocational training for the handicapped, watershed development, AIDS awareness and prevention and women and child development,”he explains.
Asked about the vocational programmes for the rural poor, he cites the example of the Khedbrahma taluka in Gujarat’s Sabarkantha district, which is a tribal and hilly area. “Unemployment was a big problem there. And ironically, Arvind Mills, which is located nearby, desperately needed adequately qualified youth for its garment factory. We saw an opportunity to help these young men and requested Arvind Mills to provide training to about 60 persons. Now, these people work in the factory,” says Shah.
“The idea would be to train as many people as possible and involve them in the garment industry,” he concludes. This concept of ‘enlightened self-interest’ or ‘mutual benefit’ forms the basis of all of Arvind’s CSR ventures. The professional approach to CSR also has a positive impact on the company’s buyers who see it as a long-term venture meant to play a nodal role in the community’s development and keen to make a meaningful contribution to society… beyond business.
