By Sudipta Mohanty (smohanty@sightsavers.org) Programme Manager, NEAO
An unexpected call while I was travelling in Koraput, Orissa along with our CEO paved my way to attend the Global Consultation on Enabling Environment for Eye Care at LAICO.
An unexpected call while I was travelling in Koraput, Orissa along with our CEO paved my way to attend the Global Consultation on Enabling Environment for Eye Care at LAICO.
Even though I was a bit reluctant to attend it sacrificing my dussera holidays with family, the lure of being invited as a guest speaker among the dignitaries like Dr. Para and others convinced me to be there. When I looked at other dignitaries who would be presenting along with me I realized that I need to make a thorough preparation for the session on our Public Private Partnership Project in Kisangani, Bihar. I was confident and I didn’t want to loose this opportunity to highlight our work in Bihar. The prep started with discussion on presentation with Prasanna and Suvendu (e-discussion as he was on leave) to get their perception about the project. After some deliberation, we could finalize a draft framework regarding the session.
The next hassle was to get my tickets booked till Madurai. After a lot of permutation and combination, we finalized to fly via Delhi to Chennai and than to Madurai. Thanks to Somnath, our new Programme Administrator who helped me in finding out all the possible connection (with cost consideration) to the destination. I booked myself in the Air India flight from Ranchi to Delhi and than from Delhi to Chennai without having a clue that I would run in to problem because of the Air India employee strike. Till two hours before the departure of the flight, I was not informed whether the flight would take off that day or not. Thankfully, it did.
It was around middle of the session, when I reached LAICO and was astonished to see that there were around 50 participants, some of them were known faces and some are from abroad as well. I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Manikutti from IIM, Ahmedabad, Mr. Amarjeet Singh from Gov. of Gujarat and other such dignitaries. During the lunch time, I took the opportunity to meet Dr. Para and discussed about my visit along with CEO. He was quite inquisitive about the PPP approach and promised to visit the project during his next tour to India.
My session started after the lunch with a video show on Surat City transformation and it was inspiring to see that individual commitment , support of a team and consistency in approach was the key in bringing Surat city from the plague affected city to its modern day grandeur. I was correlating with the Kishanganj initiative and trying to figure out whether we had similar stages in the success of the project? Probably to some extent yes.
After a brief introduction given by Shashi, I started presenting on the Kishanganj Public Private Partnership project and how an enabling environment has been created in Bihar to work with government hospital as far as eye care is concerned.
The next hassle was to get my tickets booked till Madurai. After a lot of permutation and combination, we finalized to fly via Delhi to Chennai and than to Madurai. Thanks to Somnath, our new Programme Administrator who helped me in finding out all the possible connection (with cost consideration) to the destination. I booked myself in the Air India flight from Ranchi to Delhi and than from Delhi to Chennai without having a clue that I would run in to problem because of the Air India employee strike. Till two hours before the departure of the flight, I was not informed whether the flight would take off that day or not. Thankfully, it did.
It was around middle of the session, when I reached LAICO and was astonished to see that there were around 50 participants, some of them were known faces and some are from abroad as well. I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Manikutti from IIM, Ahmedabad, Mr. Amarjeet Singh from Gov. of Gujarat and other such dignitaries. During the lunch time, I took the opportunity to meet Dr. Para and discussed about my visit along with CEO. He was quite inquisitive about the PPP approach and promised to visit the project during his next tour to India.
My session started after the lunch with a video show on Surat City transformation and it was inspiring to see that individual commitment , support of a team and consistency in approach was the key in bringing Surat city from the plague affected city to its modern day grandeur. I was correlating with the Kishanganj initiative and trying to figure out whether we had similar stages in the success of the project? Probably to some extent yes.
After a brief introduction given by Shashi, I started presenting on the Kishanganj Public Private Partnership project and how an enabling environment has been created in Bihar to work with government hospital as far as eye care is concerned.
My presentation was about 45 min. instead of the 30 min. allotted to me. I presented some data about Bihar, success indicators of the project and proposed an eye care service delivery framework for the state of Bihar. The presentation was well appreciated from the fact that it invited lot of inquisitive questions from the participants. Most of them were interested in knowing the cost share mechanism involved in the project and some asked about the sustainability of the effort and some also refuted the surgery per district statistics presented by me. However it was a very interactive session and finally Dr. Para was invited to sum up the discussion by giving his reflection on the whole session.
A dinner was organized at the hotel in the same evening and we discussed lot of issues and I tried to establish some contacts with the big wigs of the sector. I also had, the opportunity to meet few people from Philippines and we discussed about their eye care programme in the country. As a whole the journey though a bit hectic, it provided a great opportunity to meet a host of dignitaries and it was an honor for me to be among them.
A dinner was organized at the hotel in the same evening and we discussed lot of issues and I tried to establish some contacts with the big wigs of the sector. I also had, the opportunity to meet few people from Philippines and we discussed about their eye care programme in the country. As a whole the journey though a bit hectic, it provided a great opportunity to meet a host of dignitaries and it was an honor for me to be among them.
I wonder how LAICO has managed to bring so many people around the globe every year to this October Summit. It must be the charismatic leadership of Mr. Thulashiraj and the quality of training provided by the institution. I feel proud to be an alumnus of this institute and look forward to avail similar opportunity in future…
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