About the Writer

This is Pulkit Parikh, hailing from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, the land renowned for producing the father of the nation, M K Gandhi *. I spent the first 21 years of my life there, playing backyard cricket, pestering my lovely little sister and enjoying the blissful care of mommy dearest. In between all this, I also managed to study a wee bit to get into Nirma Institute for engineering in IT, which was followed by MS by research (specialization in computer vision) from IIIT Hyderabad. I earn my wages by working as a computer science researcher with HP Labs, Bangalore. In a life-turning event, on Nov 2007, I embraced Sejal as my partner for life. Every passing day makes me surer that I couldn’t have married anyone more caring and similar-minded than her.

In the last few years, I have been deeply concerned about the injustice that prevails in the world. I firmly believe that in an ideal set-up, every human should have access to equal opportunities and facilities, at the start of her/his life. But, today, there exist homes where hunger is rotated among family members – Each day, one of them would go without anything to eat at all. Fundamental rights such as nutrition, health and education are denied to children born to poor parents. Now, there are two ways in which one can respond to this catastrophic situation: A) It’s not my fault that these people are poor. Besides, it’s the government’s job to ensure these things for them. Let me just bother about my own life. B) I don’t care who is doing what. Being a privileged person, I will do whatever I can to make things fair. I’ve chosen B.

Volunteering for and donating to non-profit groups typically form a massive part of option B. Finding a good NGO is just a matter of searching the web or contacting a friend/colleague. There exist groups working in almost every sphere, ranging from education to RTI to farming. Recently, the big issue of environment conservation has also been added to the mix. Having said that, making a difference goes beyond NGOs and volunteering. The kind of choices I make day in day out in my personal life and my attitude towards the people around play an equally massive role. Simple things like helping your maid/office boy in their various problems  [e.g., interest-free loans], stressing on fuel/energy efficiency more than comfort while buying vehicles/appliances and attending to the leaking taps and unwantedly running tube lights urgently are no less important. You may even think of changing your shopping pattern to suit the local vendors as opposed to the big malls and traveling by buses/bicycles as much as possible. Taking this a step further, one can quit the regular job and plunge into social entrepreneurship or full time activism or IAS or even politics. An exhaustive list of ways-to-contribute, in terms of both equity and ecology, can be found on this regularly updated page. Details on some of my involvement are captured here. Most of my community work, so far, has centered around NGOs AshaKiran, AID, and more recently, Prerna.

I am very fond of following cricket and playing bridge (an intelligent game of cards). Here are the links to my profiles in Orkut & Facebook, and my research page. You are welcome to drop me an email at pulkitparikh[at]yahoo[dot]com.

* Since toddler time, Gandhi is a man I have looked up to and derived inspiration from. Many argue, perhaps with merit, that he didn’t play all his political cards well.  But, that doesn’t diminish my admiration for the man, as my respect revolves all around his qualities of boundless compassion and the courage to follow one’s conviction (in his case, non-violence) against all odds.