While the employees of children’s entertainment network Disney UTV were running with placards reading ‘Make a Wish,’ its Chairman Ronnie Screwvala was actually making a wish. He was charting out plans to fulfil the wishes of around a million people across 2,000 villages in Maharashtra in the next five years.

The media baron-turned-investor was not a participant this year, but was at the tenth Mumbai Marathon cheering for his team, as well as for his 26-year-old daughter, Trishya, as she completed the half marathon.

Screwvala, through his foundation Swades, is working towards the cause of water, health and education in rural India. “We want to have an exit strategy to our cause. The villages, where we are working, we want to exit those villages in 5 years so that they don’t need social work ever again from anybody,” Screwvala said.

He wants these villages to be self-sustainable with better living conditions, and he hopes to achieve this through the five-year-old social initiative started by his family. At present, Swades is functioning in the Ratnagiri and Raigarh districts of Maharashtra. He plans to expand this initiative to other geographies in another few years.

Screwvala, who started this initiative as Share Foundation, renamed it as Swades, inspired by the movie of the same name with Shahrukh Khan in the lead, which he co-produced. The movie also spoke about improving conditions of villages in rural India.

With an outlay of Rs 700 crore for this social cause, Screwvala has several international organisations wanting to be a part of this noble cause, which works across areas such as rainwater harvesting, English education and computer literacy, pre-natal issues, blindness and other health hazards.

“We really want rural India to figure out that they are not going to get a job so we are actually doing a course on self-employment and mini entrepreneurship that will fetch them a livelihood,” he added.

Screwvala is taking the message of his movie a little too seriously, but all for a noble cause.

> priyanka.pani@thehindu.co.in

> rajesh.kurup@thehindu.co.in

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