There are no shortcuts to one aspect of nation building — growing great institutions. One such is the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions near Bangalore, which recently turned 15 and showcased a remarkable transition with founder and inspirational head Darshan Shankar handing over the executive leadership to deputy, engineer-turned- forester D K Ved.

The foundation began as a result of a physical meeting in the late eighties between Darshan Shankar and Sam Pitroda, which quickly turned into a meeting of minds. "We clicked though we had little in common," recalls Pitroda, India's modern telecom trailblazer. Darshan Shankar had in the early eighties discovered a rich tribal health tradition while working among the Thakurs in coastal Maharashtra. This had led to the creation in 1986 of a network of NGOs, medical colleges and research centres called Lok Swasthya Parampara Sambvardhan Samiti.

The foundation, whose name conveys the same spirit in English, has since 1993 blazed a trail in building a comprehensive electronic database of Indian medicinal plants. To preserve biodiversity it has established 84 forest gene banks. Plus it has assembled some of the most highly endangered plants on its campus, which holds some 900 species, as also a bio-cultural repository of medicinal plants numbering some 2,700.

The rite of passage that took place was also used to announce a multi-dimensional transformation of the foundation. From being a research-driven organisation it is going to acquire two new facets — teaching and business. To impart training it will set up the Indian Institute for Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine, which will be a 100-bed teaching hospital. To get into commerce it has incorporated Indian Health Systems Pvt Ltd, which will set up a network of hospitals and health centres based on ayurveda and yoga.

The foundation first received support from the Tata Trusts, whose help down the line has transformed it and created a corpus. Over the years help has also come from diverse quarters — the Danish government, Ford Foundation, UNDP and government of India ministries. The foundation and Darshan Shankar have also received accolades as diverse as the Norman Borlaug Prize and the Equator Initiative Prize from the UN.

The foundation has tried to build a critical bridge between traditional Indian knowledge that resides in its health systems and modern science. By using chemistry and bio-activity, it has tried to find out what a physician is looking for in a plant. Explains Darshan Shankar, "We have been trying to forge a link between modern bio-science, which is structural in nature, and the system of ayurveda, which is holistic in nature. The challenge in our institute is to establish the relationship between the whole and the part — the holistic (Indian) and the reductionist (western or modern) approach."
                        
All this is founded on Darshan Shankar's belief that "medical pluralism" holds the key to the future of healthcare as people around the world seek wellness from not one but several health systems. At this juncture India is particularly blessed to have as many as five officially recognised health systems — ayurveda, siddha, unani, homoeopathy and Tibetan medicine (Swa-rig-pa) alongside familiarity with western allopathy. The foundation's aim is to design a research system to bridge the different health knowledge systems.

The big task which remains, according to Darshan Shankar, is to traverse from the shastras to science — scientifically explain traditional health system knowledge. Pitroda puts it succinctly by declaring that traditional knowledge has to be based in science and practices cannot be followed simply because "my grandmother said so".

Indicating which way the foundation's work is headed, Darshan Shankar said it was ready to pass on the technology for commercial production of herbal drinks, foods and oils based on traditional knowledge. In particular, a simple copper device, named Jal Bandhu, had been developed to purify water for drinking at zero cost. The foundation has also applied for half a dozen patents based on its own innovations.

The bane of many successful NGOs is inability to handle succession. The foundation and Darshan Shankar, now 56, have set themselves apart by institutionalising its succession mechanism. The governing council set up a sub-committee, which formulated a succession plan leading to Ved taking over. KRS Murthy, former director of IIM Bangalore who headed the sub-committee, emphasises it is important for institutions to have governance processes so that change becomes a platform for "shared leadership", and when you "hand over charge" you also use the occasion to have a "relook".

Institutions can't grow in isolation and which way a society is headed depends on what kind of networks it can support. During the change of guard, the foundation honoured an endless list of its friends who helped it grow. R Rajamani, a former union secretary of environment and forests, Yellappa Reddy, a former environment secretary of Karnataka, A V Balasubramaniam, a bio-physicist and scholar of Indian knowledge systems, P R Krishnakumar, managing director of Arya Vaidya Group and patron and supporter of dozens of good causes, all took their bow.

The foundation also remembered its cross-cultural friends. Sonia and Girish of IDIOM, a leading design company, Namith Verma of G&N Associates, a top architectural firm (responsible for the design of the foundation's highly distinctive campus, which, with its Mangalore tile roofs and clean elegant lines, capture the tradition-plus-modern spirit of the institution) and Uma Magal, a documentary film maker, had all helped the foundation for years.

And then there were the professional friends. John Stanley, a financial management expert specialising in the education sector, Deenadayal, a chartered accountant who helped prepare business plans for Indian Health Systems, Xerxes Desai, former head of watch maker Titan who helped conceptualise the new facets, G Raju, a graduate of IIT and IRMA who conceived an innovative community owned enterprise, and Vijay Shankar, a former senior executive of Larsen & Toubro who helped improve the foundation's management. The list goes on and on.

subir.roy@bsmail.com

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