Chemmanakary 1989
An apology for a village, it was a minuscule swampy hinterland. Unemployment was high, there was no sanitation, potable drinking water or healthcare. Majority of the underprivileged inhabitants were caught in a vortex of poverty, starvation and deprivation. Survival was tough and escape from the quagmire-an impossible dream.

Chemmanakary 1999
Paddy-fields and tiled houses dot the palm-fringed landscape. A tarred road links Chemmanakary to the rest of Vaikom taluk. Cold storages, provision stores, medical shops, healthcare centres and a super speciality hospital are now a part of the effervescent village, that is clearly on the move.

Chemmanakary's transformation took shape in the hands of a neurosurgeon, Kumar Bahuleyan, who invested his enormous private fortune to better the lives of his country cousins.

Born to a physician in the village, times were hard for the poor family. Young Bahuleyan was one of the two survivors in a family of five; three of his siblings died in their childhood. Fighting disease and hunger every step of the way, Bahuleyan struggled to get an education. The young boy's grit and sheer brilliance carried him through, with the help of many benefactors and government scholarships he went on to acquire a medical degree. Life was no cake walk, but " I am an eternal optimist",he says.

Bahuleyan's career, goaded by his ability to circumvent, started going places- the Kerala Government sent him to the UK for neurosurgical training as the state did not have a neurosurgeon at that time. He returned home to the Chinese aggression; the army gobbled him up for the armed forces did not have a qualified neurosurgeon.

Three years later he discovered " the Kerala Government did not have a place for me; my post had been filled by a freshman". He, a qualified neurosurgeon, had to sit at home twiddling his thumbs waiting for bureaucratic red tape to work around his case. His patience wore thin and a disgusted Bahuleyan fled to Ontario, Canada, seeking employment. He eventually ended up in Buffalo, USA, where for the first time in his life he achieved economic security.

Even as he was scaling professional heights, Bahuleyan used to visit Chemmanakary regularly. Fifty years after Independence, the village still did not have potable drinking water, sanitation, electricity, roads and health centres. "Even marginally well-off people had no concept of sanitation", said
Bahuleyan. "Chemmanakary was a beautiful village contaminated by the people's lack of awareness".

The emotionally aroused doctor was determined to "clean up the mess" and in 1989 established a not-for-profit-private organization to bring basic healthcare to Kerala villages. " I put all my money of more than Rs 10 crore into the foundation. My attempt was to come back here and do some community work," he says.

The Bahuleyan Charitable Foundation began with a health survey to pick a target area. It chose an area comprising 17 sq. miles with a population of 66,356. The foundation plunged into a latrine construction programme in this area where 5009 of the 18,362 houses did not have latrines. So far 619 latrines meeting WHO standards and costing Rs 4,000 each have been built. "The people initially had no clue what to do with a latrine and started using it as a store room," says Bahuleyan.

In 1993 the foundation built a small clinic in the village to treat pregnant women and children. Demand was so high in spite of poor accessibility (there were no roads leading to the clinic), that the centre was soon upgraded and moved to Vaikom town. The foundation also spent Rs 50 lakh to construct a 6 km road to the main highway and subsidiary roads to link the clinic.

The Vaikom wing of The Indo-American Hospital opened in 1995 with 30 beds. " It was named to highlight the fact that it is built with the money I earned in the U.S. and to acknowledge the American tax payer's contribution," explained the doctor.

But with most of the patients being poor the hospital was making little by way of revenue and its very existence was threatened. " I started this whole project out of my sentiments, with no planning," said Bahuleyan. "However I realized I had to do something revenue generating to make it viable."
A project consultant was roped in and he suggested the idea of building a super specialty hospital to attract paying patients. "We decided to have a neuro centre in Chemmanakary and opened with the most modern equipment in November 1996."

A super specialty hospital in the hinterlands?

"Why not?" asked the doctor." Hospitals are all built in cities which are inaccessible to the villagers. I want to develop my village and its economy. Treatment here is at roughly one-third the cost of city hospitals and free on cost for the poor."

The hospital today is the hub of life in Chemmanakary. Indeed a far cry from the early days when the villagers viewed Bahuleyan and his motives with suspicion.

Most of the work force in the hospital is locally drawn, except for the specialized slots. " Thanks to the hospital, our youth have a channel of employment. Agriculture has received an impetus and the general quality of life here has improved." Said Sivaramakrishnan, 62. "Our sick people do not die for want of medical attention any more," said Zuhara Begum, 45. "What more do we need?"

According to Bahuleyan if "all the NRIs adopted a village each in India and did something for its people, underdevelopment in this country would soon be a thing of the past. When I hear these so-called NRIs crib about the lack of facilities here I tell them that the problem is with them and not with the country, It's they who have changed, not the land- after all, weren't they living here at one point in time? They come back and build huge mansions, with that money I can build 100 or more latrines. Don't we all owe a little something to our motherland?"

Though he pleads guilty of having strayed from his original vision of bringing general healthcare assistance to Chemmanakary, Bahuleyan says that he is taking steps to rectify this. He plans to upgrade the Vaikom clinic into a centre of excellence for women and children.

A multilingual learning centre is also under construction where the doctor plans to introduce computers and Internet facilities." " I am targeting the children here, " he says. " I want to take them off the streets so that in future even the specialized posts in the hospital can be filled by local hands."
The doctor claims to be a "in a state of nirvana" today. He says: " I am a dreamer; a professor of ideas. Everything I have achieved in my life is because of my dreams."

"I have also done some unpardonable things in my life," he says with a laugh. "But for a village boy desperate to do something, the world didn't offer very many choices."

However, it's yesterday no more; the little boy has grown up and today the world is his oyster. And Chemmanakary has finally made it to the map and the millennium- electricity, drinking water, health care and all.