Kshama Metre

Biography

Kshama Metre was born on 26 June 1950 to renowned geologist, Wamanrao Bapuji Metre, and Shantabai Metre at Nagpur, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra but spent her early years in Assam. Moving to Delhi, she did her schooling at The Frank Anthony Public School before graduating in medicine (MBBS) from Maulana Azad Medical College and secured her post graduate degree (MD) in pediatrics from the same institution. Later, she did her senior residency at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, Delhi and set up her practice in the city. It was during this time, she met Chinmayananda Saraswati, a spiritual leader and educationist; the meeting is reported to have influenced her to abandon medical practice and join the Chinmaya Mission to assist in their work in the rural areas of the country.

In 1985, she went to Sidhbari, a village in Himachal Pradesh, and set up six health centres for women and children and a community health training centre for nurses. The movement gathered momentum in due course and evolved into Chinmaya Organisation of Rural Development (CORD), with Metre becoming the founding National Director of the organization. Under her leadership, CORD assisted in forming self-help groups (Mahila Mandals) in 564 villages in Kangra district and introduced microfinancing facilities through the groups. After the integration of Chinmaya Mission rural activities under the umbrella of CORD in 2003, the organization expanded its activities and is now reported to be serving in other states in India such as Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand. Besides microfinancing initiatives, she also focused on social issues like HIV/AIDS, substance abuse and discriminative treatment of women and her efforts are reported behind setting up of social forums where law and order issues could be settled without the interference of Police.

Metre's activities have been supported by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) which extended finance for the microfinancing of the Mahila Mandals. The system initiated by her covers 1490 self-help groups, 75 children's groups, 220 men's groups and several girls' groups and is active in community health programmes, rehabilitation programmes for disabled people, legal aid programmes, and livelihood support programmes. Her efforts gained her a nomination to the now defunct Planning Commission of India in 2007 for a five-year term that lasted till 2012 where she was a member of the work group which focused on primary healthcare. She has written several articles on rural healthcare and development; some of them getting accepted by Changemakers, a networking platform for social entrepreneurship. Her group of volunteers have trained over 39,000 people, representing government and banking institutions, non government organizations and self-help group (SHG) members.

Awards and honours

In 1993, The Week magazine selected Metre as the Woman of the Year. The Ojaswani Shikhar Sewa Alankaran Award of the Times Group reached her in 2000, followed by the Women's Empowerment Award of the National Commission for Women in 2002. Two years later, Prophets of India, a 2004 publication, listed her as one of the protagonists and she received the Sadguru Ganananda Award for social service in 2005. She was awarded the Nina Sibal Award in 2006 by the All India Women’s Education Fund Association (AIWEFA) for her leadership of CORD and the organization's contribution towards Integrated Community Based Rehabilitation work for differently abled person. The Government of India included her in the 2008 Republic Day honours list for the civilian award of the Padma Shri. The Guardian, the British national daily, chose her for the International Achievement Award in 2012, for her exceptional work to alleviate poverty in the developing world.