DREAMING BIG, BRINGING SMILES

DREAMING BIG, BRINGING SMILES – Shekhar Mehta

Source - https://rotarynewsonline.org/dreaming-big-bringingsmiles-shekhar-mehta/

…from RI President Shekhar

I am a good emulator and a quick learner. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. I am ready to learn from others. I have learned a lot watching PRIP Kalyan Banerjee and so many others. I saw how these leaders plan, organized, and speak.

I learned to achieve excellence in whatever I undertook. Add to that my father’s support in my Rotary journey. He never ever stopped anything I did for Rotary.

Ours was a family business, and suddenly I’d leave office at 2:00 p.m.

Never ever did he say that I was giving too much time to Rotary.

Mehta takes great pride in initiating and motivating Indian Rotarians to work for the goal of making India totally literate.

“This was such a big challenge, but with the TEACH programme (developed after painstaking research) we seem to have hit the bull’s eye! Our e-learning programme is being viewed by millions of children everyday over TV channels as well as on one of the largest education e-platforms of the world, Diksha, being run by Government of India (GoI).

State after state is now approaching Rotary India Literacy Mission (RILM) for implementation of different programmes under TEACH. The new adult literacy programme of GoI is in fact designed on the white paper provided by Rotary to the education ministry. We’re raring to go all out to make the difference in the total literacy canvas of India by taking the literacy rate to 90 per cent.

This is a herculean task… making literate nearly 20 crore (200 million) Indian adults in the next five years, but Rotary is ready to take 50 per cent of the burden, and work shoulder-to-shoulder with the government.

Rashi’s role

I had once told you that while I am the face, she is the back office; this has been even more relevant in the last 12–18 months.

In 35 years of planning and doing Rotary projects, I could do so much because I didn’t have to look at so many other things. I know only by colour, and not name, the medicines I have to take. When I travel, she ensures my suitcase is packed. Rashi ensures that everything I plan and undertake comes together without any snags. And above all that, she is also present by my side at all meetings and events, listening to my same speeches again and again!

The first response I seek, and value, is hers. She knows exactly what is happening or has happened. She’ll say: ‘Shekhar, today you spoke too much, or it wasn’t that good, or very nice or excellent.’

People’s President

I ask Mehta what is it that makes him so approachable; so that any Rotarian can just pick up a phone and call him, despite his seniority in Rotary.

He smiles, and says, “To me the biggest quality of a leader is humility. I admire this in leaders and try to imbibe it, and I suppose that makes me easily approachable. I have no airs, nor do I see myself as an ‘RI President.’ I see any high position as an added responsibility, and I do the work required willingly.”