V Vaikunth, 75, Chennai, on rehabilitating prisoners and other welfare activities

Conducting vocational training programmes for juvenile delinquents, ensuring water supply to remote villages in Tamil Nadu, and overseeing infrastructure development for government schools are all in a day’s work for 75 year-old V Vaikunth, former director general of police. Having served the police in various capacities for over 35 years—earning seven President’s medals—Vaikunth realised the need to rehabilitate prisoners, many of them women and juveniles, to offer them a second chance in life. “During my years of service, I was bogged down by bureaucratic challenges,” he recalls. “Once you step out, you see the world for what it actually is.” Vaikunth set the ball rolling when, as inspector general of prisons, he helped a murder case convict pursue a PhD in math, enabling him to earn a teaching job on release from jail. Immediately after retirement, Vaikunth plunged headlong into social service, helping a school near Chengalpet set up classrooms. “Earlier, the students used to attend classes under a banyan tree. I spent nearly ₹ 200,000 from my pocket,” he reminisces. Over the years, Vaikunth has conducted various workshops and training programmes to rehabilitate former prisoners. His focus, however, has been on rehabilitating women prisoners, “as women face more challenges than men on being released from jail”. He enrols them in skill-training workshops conducted by his trust, Sree Balaji Seva Trust, set up in 2002 to fund his philanthropic endeavours. Several women trained by the trust have been hired by garment export units, empowering them financially. The trust also runs periodic vocational training programmes for orphaned children and the physically challenged. In 2013, it collected enough funds to ensure water supply to Orathi, a village near Maduranthakam in Kancheepuram district, besides facilitating group housing schemes and women’s cooperative milk societies in two villages in the district. And recently, after realising that the Chennai Corporation School on Eldham’s Road had a leaky roof, and the midday meal served to the kids didn’t have enough vegetables, Vaikunth equipped the school with a new ceiling and an organic vegetable garden on the terrace. The Sree Balaji Seva Trust is also in the process of supplying haemo-dialysis units to about 100 government hospitals all over Tamil Nadu free of charge. Recognising his work, the Rotary Club of Madras and the Senior Citizens Group of Besant Nagar have honoured Vaikunth as the ‘Pride of Madras’. Ask him about it, and he modestly replies, “I would say that I’m still in search of my true self.”

—Shivani Arora

Photograph by Chennai Pix
Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
October 2016