This is a feel very good story. It is a modern story. And it is a story of the victory of values, ethics and humane, inclusive growth.

75 kms. South of Chennai lies the hamlet of Kuthambakkam. Till a decade ago it was the usual area of darkness filled with caste wars, illicit liquor and abysmal poverty. One visionary, following the principals of Gandhiji, changed that.

Elango Rangaswami was born at the bottom of the heap, a Dalit child in a filthy, quarrelsome, untouchable neighbourhood. All around him was the degradation of the human spirit. Men beat women. Upper caste men beat and violated Dalit men and women. Everyone drank. No one went to school.

But Elango went to school. He became the first Dalit from the village to pass high school and go to engineering college. Even before he graduated he landed a high paying job. And decided to visit his village and family after five years, and before taking up his job responsibilities.

He was shocked at how the village and his community seemed frozen in time. Nothing had changed, no one had changed. He felt a deep anguish and decided that his education had little meaning if he couldn’t ring a change in his own village and amongst his own people.

His first attempt was to try and understand the poverty and its causes. Like elsewhere most people were small farmers or labourers. Besides basic grain, the villages produced little that the people needed. He expanded his study to include surrounding villages and calculated that every month Rs.60 lakhs was spent by the village to purchase goods and essentials from outside – money that should and could stay in the village. He got elected sarpanch and started conferences to explain his model to his own villagers and those around.  If the villages could co-operate, he explained, most essentials could be produced in the villages, by each specializing in one or more product groups and the consumption would be also within the group of villages. After many parlays and convincing, a group of villages was formed and 40 essential product groups identified. These included services as well. Dairy, grain, weaving and stitching, forging, soap and detergent making were some of them. Within just a few months the villagers started seeing the results of most of the Rs 60 lakhs being spent inside the cluster of villages rather than going into the coffers of some multinational or far off corporation.

Elango’s fame grew as did the villagers’ faith in his system. When new housing was needed he convinced villagers to break the caste barrier, and built twin houses which became home to Brahmin and Dalit families. It was mandatory for every child to go to school and schools where children of different castes or religions were treated differently became a thing of the past. The key change however that allowed for other behavioural changes was the prosperity that the gramswaraj model brought. Youngsters started not migrating to cities as there was enough work and more in their homes.

Today Elango’s model is being studied across the world by developing countries with the twin problems of huge migration to the cities and huge rural poverty. The change has not come without great opposition from corrupt officials and those to whom the true path meant a loss of revenue. But Elango’s vision grows by the day.

A prophet is unrecognized in his or her own land. And this is true of Elango and India. Perhaps the Planning Commission and all the IIM graduates should be studying this as THE case study for a country that still has 65% of people living in the villages and cities that can not ever keep up with the millions flooding them every day.