Club no. 16150 Vol. 54 no. 24 Sunday, 21st March, 2021 President : Aloke Kumar Kanodia Secretary : Amar Kumar Malhotra Editor : Ajay Khanna 4 Way Test Awardee ...2 ROTARY CLUB OF BELUR Welcomes 4-Way Test Narrative... 4 PROGRAMME Minutes ... 8 4-WAY TEST RIPE Shekhar Mehta AWARD UPCOMING to be presented to EVENTS....8 DR RAVI KANNAN at Rajkutir, Swabhumi Club Projects ... 8-10 RIPR Dr. Mahesh Kotbagi DG Sudip Mukherjee Kolkata. 21st March, 2021 MESSAGES WELCOME ADDRESS BY Dear President and Members of Rotary Club of Belur, PRESIDENT RTN ALOKE KANODIA Let me take the opportunity of congratulating you for Organising the 4 Way Test Award at the OPENING REMARKS BY Plenary Session of Vocation Service at ‘SAMAGAM’ for the 27th consecutive year. DG. SUDIP MUKHERJEE Conferring the Award to a Non Rotarian like Dr. R. Ravi Kannan also enhances the Public INTRODUCTION OF THE AWARDEE Image of Rotary. DR. RAVI KANNAN – PDG RAVI SEHGAL Wish you all the best. POETRY RECITATION BY Sudip Mukherjee, District Governor RTN NIRMAL K SAHA PRESENTATION OF AWARD ITEMS BY RTN. RAMALINGAM Dear Aloke ji, It gives me immense pleasure to find Rotary Club of Belur is offering the Vocational Excellence Award to Padma Shri Ravi Kannan, a Medical messiah from Assam ADDRESS BY DR. RAVI KANNAN who has devoted his life for the Cancer patients in remote Barak Valley. ADDRESS BY RIPR DR. MAHESH Kotbagi Every year Team Rotary Belur presents the most coveted Vocational Excellence Award to an individual for maintaining excellent quality standards and Served to Change Lives through his/ KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY her chosen Vocational Field. I congratulate Rotary Club of Belur for taking this initiative. RIPE SHEKHAR Mehta Thank you & keep up the good work. VOTE OF THANKS BY Yours-in-Rotary, PP RTN VISHNU DHANDHANIA Prabir Chatterjee, District Governor 2021-22 List of Donors - 4 Way Test Award lRtn. Anil Jhawar - 25,000/- lRtn. Shankar Ramalingam - 25,000/- lRtn. Sunil Kr Jain - 25,000/- lRtn. Sunil Sobti - 15,000/- lRtn. Diwakar Sharma - 15,000/- lRtn. Subhash Agarwal -15,000/- lRtn. Vishnu Dhandhania - 11,000/- lRtn. Kishan Kejriwal - 10,000/- lRotary Club of Belur Community Service - 10,000/- 2021 4 Way Test Awardee DR RAVI KANNAN – an inspiring story Dr Ravi Kannan is an Indian Surgical oncologist based in Assam, India. He is the Director of Cachar Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (CCHRC), a nonprofit hospital that treats cancer patients and the former Head of Department of surgical oncology at Adyar Cancer Institute in Chennai. In the year 2006, Dr Ravi Kannan visited the Cachar Cancer Hospital and Research Centre for the first time for a consultation on the request of a colleague and that’s when he met the then director of CCHRC who offered him to head the centre. Dr Kannan who was then heading the surgical oncology department of Adyar Cancer Institute left his practice in Chennai and moved to Assam with his family in 2007. Not only did he convince his wife and daughter to leave with him and build a hospital from the ground in Assam, he also inspired several young professionals to follow him to Assam and help him manage the hospital and provide basic healthcare facilities to the people of Barak Valley. The commitment of the hospital staff is commendable despite the fact that the young professionals, live in very simple residential quarters. They bond like a family, working into the night and celebrate festivals with staff and patients. The Cachar Cancer Hospital pretty much runs like a close-knit family. As a matter of fact, he has treated around 70,000 cancer patients free of cost till now. In this year’s list of the Padma Awardees, an unsung hero like Dr Ravi Kannan who left his the comforts of his home in Chennai to take the less travelled road to Silchar to serve the underprivileged was honoured with the fourth highest civilian honour of Government of India- “Padma Shri”. He has also received several other awards and citations from various institutions and organisations. He has been rightly described as “Medical Messiah for Cancer Patients in Remote Barak Valley”. India needs more people like Dr Kannan to change the face of India’s medical industry. ROTARY INTERNATIONAL DISTRICT 3291 and ROTARY CLUB OF BELUR Presents Rotary’s THE FOUR WAY TEST – PERSON OF THE YEAR AwARD 2020 to Dr Ravi Kannan The Four Way Test embodies the ideals of Rotary- Truth, Fairness, Goodwill, Friendship, Peace and better understanding among human beings. Dr Ravi Kannan not only believes but also practices these ideals in his life and he is a living example of these values. 1. Is it the TRUTH DrRavi Kannan, an Oncologist by profession, is driven by the mission of providing free treatment to Cancer Patients. He is illuminating hope in the lives of Cancer Patients who otherwise would have lived in despair awaiting death from the day of diagnosis due. to lack of affordability of adequate treatment. He is incarnating ‘Service Above Self’ in true sense of the word. 2. Is it FAIR to all concerned Dr Ravi Kannan has treated more than 70,000 patients without taking a single rupee from them. Besides providing free treatment to cancer patients, his hospital also provides accommodation, food, and employment. He exemplifies fairness to the patients from all socioeconomic background. 3. Will it Build GOODWILLand better FRIENDSHIP He has devoted his entire life for the treatment and care of Cancer patients and was conferred the PADMA SHRI Award. He still continues to help his patients fight cancer. He has generated the chain and the bond and created an institution with a Team of equally committed professionals that is already building the goodwill and better friendship. 4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned Dr Ravi Kannan has whole heartedly worked to serve the cause of Cancer Patients and his institution is governed by the operating belief “ Cancer doesn’t discriminate – Neither does the hospital”. His hospital Chachar Hospital provides modern cancer care for adults and children despite their socio-economic status. Under Dr Ravi Kanan’s stewardship, professionals are with the patients- right from their admission, through the treatment- caring for them, helping them make relevant decisions and assisting them and their families approach cancer with confidence. This work is BENEFICIAL to all concerned. Rotary’s The Four Way Test is awarded to Dr Ravi Kanan 21st of March 2021. Citation compiled by PN Amitabh Mohan 3. Will it build GOODWILL 1. Is it the 2. Is it FAIR to all and BETTER 4.Will it be BENEFICAL to all FRIENDSHIP? TRUTH? concerned? Concerned? truth. It’s all, so to say, relative, dependent on a person’s time, background, or position in life. Truth? For the relativists, who play a major role in contemporary higher education, the word carries little weight, has no real authority. All the more reason, of course, for those of us who believe in the truth to defend it, which, surely, is one of the chief intentions behind The Four-Way Test. Narrative The Second Way — “Is it fair to all This is a narrative every Rotarian should know - concerned?” — is of course inextricably lashed In 1932, Herbert John Taylor crafted a simple to the First Way. Truth may be difficult, trying, measuring stick of ethics for employees of his painful, and much else, but if it is unfair it isn’t struggling cookware company, a short code quite truth. For truth is impartial, disinterested, its 250 workers could easily memorize. The by its very nature without favouritism — and guidelines’ embrace helped rescue the business hence fair. If you are unfair in your judgments by marking it as a company with integrity. Eleven or pronouncements, you are, ipso facto, being years later, in 1943 The Four-Way Test was less than truthful, and if you are truthful you adopted as one of Rotary’s guiding principles. are, again ipso facto, fair. The two, truth and fairness, do not so much follow, one after or from Herbert J Taylor, RI’s 44th President championed the other, but travel, like well-trained horses, in the code in all aspects of life. “Let us apply The tandem. A third horse, making a troika, is to ask, Four-Way Test to our relations with youth, he “Have I succeeded in treating my subject wrote, “and then I am certain we will all become with the complexity it deserves?” more determined to give as much as possible of our time”. Often when we think we are being truthful, we are being less than fair. This seems especially The Four-Way Test is one of Rotary’s central so in politics. Politics has never provided fruitful principles. It is of special interest in the current ground for truth; quite the reverse. No single day, when truth — or, more precisely, truthfulness group is perhaps less noted for consistent — seems to be losing its prestige in public life. truthfulness than politicians. The reason for this is Everywhere you turn, the first of the Four Ways that politics does not seem to allow for neutrality; — “Is it the truth?” — seems to be more and in politics people are regularly asked — “forced” more in danger of getting lost in the realm of may be closer to it — to choose sides. Once they time. Saying “the thing that was not” has become do, their version of truth takes on a coloration a minor specialty, almost a profession. What else that is likely to preclude fairness to people with is “spin” — that word much revered by politicians, politics different from their own.