Heard of Mahatma Gandhi’s talisman, which exhorts you to recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man wherever in doubt about doing something?
As a civil servant, Kozhikode district collector N. Prasanth follows his talisman, The man who successfully designed the ‘Compassionate Kozhikode’ had followed this talisman during his stint as the sub collector in the Wayanad in 2009-11. He then used to make law-breakers to visit schools and orphanages and ask them to contribute materials to those centres in their own names.
“I didn’t make it compulsory.” Mr. Prasanth told Deccan Chronicle. “Recently I got to know that once such person is still continuing to contribute for the orphanage, which is really a happy news.”
Read | Making Kozhikode city of compassion
Prasanth says that the idea of launching such a project was earlier also in mind but took a definite shape after he got a ‘good crazy’ team. “You can be in many posts during your civil service career but the positive impact you can make in the life of thousands only possible when you are a district collector,” the 2007 batch Kerala cadre IAS officer said.
Mr. Prasanth who became popular among the masses through social media with the sobriquet ‘Collector Bro,’ says that all the projects are transparent and involves no direct money transactions.
“It depends on the support of public instead of individuals or organisations,” he said, revealing the thinking that went into the design of the schemes.
“The projects are purely running on community ownerships and mass participation. We had even offers of Rs. 1 crore from individuals. However we humbly refused it became that would be against the concept. We have a core team of experts to discuss the initiatives. We are also using social media interactions for assessing and amending the projects.”
