On June 11at 5pm, I received from Shri Jagadanand, a dear friend and social activist, the sad news of Prof Radhamohan's demise at the wee hours (3 am) of the day. I was totally nonplussed by the news. I knew that Prof Radhamohan had an attack of pneumonia and was in coma for some time. I was praying for him all the time and was hoping against hope that he will come back to life soon with the same physical energy and spirit, so natural for him. Little did I realise that the slings and arrows of an outrageous destiny would snatch him away from us, leaving us completely crestfallen.
Prof Rahamohan belonged to a rare category of Good Samaritans. Rightm from his school, college and university days, he always thought of the good of others and in particular those in distress and consecrated his time, energy and resources in relieving them of their suffering. He had a brilliant academic career throughout. After post-graduation in Applied Economics in 1965 from Utkal University, he devoted a major portion of his life to teaching, action research and voluntary social work. He had a special flair for work relating to protection and conservation of environment from his very early days and he passionately dedicated himself—body, mind and spirits –to this very important pursuit for nearly 5 decades.
Prof Radhamohan had a fascinating and eventful career of engagement in public service for more than 5 decades. To give a few illustrative specimens of that engagement, he retired as Principal, SCS College, Puri in 2001 after 36 years of a very satisfying teaching career. Thereafter, he worked for some time as Member, State Planning Board.
He subsequently held a number of important assignments, both official and non-official, such as Member, Advisory Committee of the State Watershed Mission, Member, Task Force on Education, Member, State Wildlife Advisory Committee, Member, NSS Advisory and Evaluation Committee, Member, State Steering Committee on Joint Forest
Management, Member, State Pollution Control Board, Member, Governing Body of the State Resource Centre on Adult Education, Member, Centre for World Solidarity, Hyderabad, Adviser, Rashtriya Gramin Vikas Nidhi, Guwahati, and Member,Programme Advisory Committee, All India Radio. In 2005, he was appointed as the first State Information Commissioner under the Right to Information Act, 2005 for a period of 2 years(till he attained the age of 65).During this brief period, he had initiated a number of reforms to promote openness, transparency and public accountability with a view to making governance responsive, sensitive to the needs of the poor and aggrieved and responsible. His action, conduct and contribution boosted the image of this public office at a very nascent stage of its existence.
He had initiated a series of efforts to establish schools, colleges and NGOs for genuine people's development which is pro-poor, pro-nature, pro-women and pro-children. In 1990 he founded a Resource Centre called 'Sambabh' meaning possible. It was a registers society which in due course became a torch-bearer in the field of conservation, agriculture and organic farming. 'Sambhab' was a tremendous grass-root level initiative in the field of sustainable development and gender justice.
To demonstrate the impact of conservation on sustainable food production, he developed 36 hectares of degraded land in Nayagarh (the district to which he belonged) which by all accounts today is a pioneering model for growing rare species of clove bean, jack bean, black rice and sword bean apart from a number of other food plants. The forest has over 1,000 species of plants and 500 varieties of rice and supports a seed bank with 700 indigenous varieties of seeds.
He has been a recipient of a number of awards such as 'Global Roll of Honour' by UNEP (1989) for his outstanding contribution to conservation, 'Utkal Seva Samman', the highest civilian award at the State level for dedicated public service and 'Padma Award for outstanding contribution to public service along with his daughter Sabarmati by the Government of India.
Prof Radhamohan was an extraordinarily simple, unassuming and unpretentious person, who was also scrupulously honest, intensely aware, kind, compassionate and considerate to all colleagues and co-workers, and in particular to people in the lower strata of the society. He was deeply committed to Gandhian values of respect for truth, peace, tolerance of dissent and non-violence. He was the very salt of the earth and full of empathy and sensitivity to his fellow beings. At the same time he was extremely business-like, a no-nonsense person who was very firmly entrenched in his fundamentals and never swerved an inch from the path of justice.
I had a number of occasions to interact with him on a host of issues, commencing from literacy to promoting voluntarism in social work, conservation, climate change and degradation of the environment , as DG, National Literacy Mission(NLM) and DG, Council of People's Action and Rural Technology(CAPART) and every time I met him and had a serious discussion, I felt in the words of German poet Goethe 'enraptured, feasted and fed'. The last we met was on the occasion of my being invited to deliver SB Mishra Memorial Lecture on July 17, 2017 at the Sai International School, Bhubaneswar.
(Dr Mishra is a former Union Labour Secretary, Email: ldmishraias@gmail.com)