Headline, March13, 2013

'''THESE GOOD HUMANS-THESE GREAT​

AMBANIS OF INDIA'''

In the hierarchy of India's modern history, just next to Mohandas Gandhi there is Dhirubhai Ambani. In fact, Gandhi and Ambani came from the same background, both belonging to the Modh Bania, a commercial cast in Gujarat state, in northwestern India, and they were both messianic figures, too.

Despite this common lineage, the two are opposites in all other ways. While the former idealized passive resistance and cotton, the latter built an empire based on polyester and indoctrinated India's new middle class into capitalism.

His epic rags-to-riches story began in 1958 in the textile district of Bombay, in an office equipped with one table, three chairs, and a telephone, from which he quickly came to dominate the Indian market in imported polyester yarn. When he could not obtain adequate financing for his company's rapid expansion, he issued a stock-offering, whose unprecedented grassroots success introduced India to a stock-market culture.

By the time he died, in 2002, his diversified  company reported annual revenues of $ 12.2 billion. This equates to 3.5 per cent of India's GDP and dominated nearly every sector of India's industrial economy.

In 1997 Mukesh Ambani began building the world's largest Oil Refinery. He put his wife Nita in charge of creating an entire town from scratch in order to house the facility's workforce of 4800 and their families. Located in a remote desert near the city of Jamagar, in Gujarat, the new town required a hospital, a school, recreational centers and shopping facilities, in addition to housing.

For about two years, Nita commuted to the sites three times a week, leaving at 7 A.M. on one of the company planes for the hour long flight to Jamnagar, where she worked out of tin sheds in blistering heat. wading through brambles and bushes to various construction sites. While the township has been recognized worldwide as a Model Project, what she accomplished in the arid countryside around it is just as extraordinary. The family planted 138,000 mango trees on what was once barren land, to create the largest Mango Orchard in Asia.

They then also planted another 2.4 million mangrove trees for good measure, they basically built their own rain forest, which has altered the area's micro-climate and eco-system: the trees have brought rain, which in turn has brought migratory birds and animals. ''We created real environment change,'' says Nita. But this success sparked another big change, '' a transformation within me,'' she adds.

Emboldened, she decided Mumbai needed a First-Rate Preparatory School that was up to the International Standards. Before the Dhirubhai Ambani International School opened its doors in 2003, she dropped everything else and attended to its every detail, riding school buses to assess their comfort, designing uniforms, choosing fabric for upholstery, sampling the cafeteria fare, as well as planning the curriculum and overseeing faculty appointments. The school is now ranked as the very best in India.

Super Work that Maam!!

Most recently Nita has launched ''Reliance Drishti'' India's first Braille newspaper in the national language, Hindi.It will be distributed through 375 institutions for the blind across the country. Beyond these super projects, including a hospital wing, and a University, they served India best in many exemplary ways.

In India, the Ambanis are both admired and at the same time reviled. Dhirubhai contributed to the national prosperity by enriching the ordinary investors, and small shareholders, his children did so with splendid examples of serving and sharing.

On behalf of !WOW! I have the honor to invite the family, their children, their Educational Institutions to join up on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless.

Vishnu and, all the readers, Please, make sure that they stand informed.

With respectful dedication to the creative people of India. With personal wishes for Sunil Gavasker!! A great cricketer and a high class gentleman!!

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless