Dear Viewer,

The number of disabled in India as per the New Disabilities Act of 2016 is 27 million.

The number of people having mental illness is 180 million and the number of people having severe mental illness of them is a staggering 25 million.

The number of people living below the poverty line (viz 123.5 Rs per day) is 172 million.

110 million of the population of India is tribal.

Even on the assumption that there is an overlap between various categories, we would roughly estimate that 250-300 million people in India are underprivileged in some form or the other.

While we are mentioning our bank details to facilitate the process of donating to Shraddha, this appeal is to all of you as the representative of each and every underprivileged person in Indian society, be they illiterate/disabled/below the poverty line/a tribal/or a wandering mentally ill.

Baba Amte, our Guru started off with the leprosy afflicted, but gradually moved on to encompass the blind, the deaf/dumb/mute, the mentally retarded, the cerebral palsy and every underprivileged person in society, culminating in his immense contribution to the cause of the wandering mentally ill through Shraddha.

Compassion has no ending, it is the ever widening river reaching out to the sea.

So this appeal represents the collective hopes, the collective aspirations, the collective dreams, the collective prayers of 250-300 million of our fellow brothers and sisters who look up to you to reach out to them and provide them with your collective succour/your collective compassion/your collective empathy/your collective understanding. This is your moment of Truth. To give your heart/your soul/your collective self to the cause that you cherish the most.

To use a website such as ours to garner funds for our own NGO Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation would be downright mean/crass/and absolutely self-centered on our part. We wish to go one step further and appeal to you to donate to any and every cause close to your heart and to charities that are equally honest and equally genuine in their commitment to a cause. We are definite there must be many such in India.

It matters not whether Awards, Donations, Felicitations come a true social worker's way. What matters is whether because of his/her efforts, the quantum of pain and human suffering within the underprivileged masses and within the sea of human suffering sweeping the length and breadth of our country has ameliorated or diminished marginally.

This is what Rabindranath Tagore and Baba Amte have taught us.

That should become the final common goal post of our efforts.