New bank?

Had heard - vaguely - of the T. Nagar Cooperative Bank earlier, but was not aware of anything about it beyond a name. 

Not that I know much more about it now, but at least I know where their head office is. Noticed this new building on Doraiswamy Road, and then realized it was housing a business that has been around for quite some time. Long enough for its address to be registered as 'Madras' on the DICGC's website!

Lease of life

The media have been all agog over a heart transplant operation performed in this hospital a couple of days ago. While the coordination between the hospitals involved and the Chennai City Traffic Police was indeed commendable, not much attention has yet been given to the framework that enabled it to come about. In the 20 years since the Transplantation of Human Organs (THO) Act, 1994 was passed, Tamil Nadu has led the country by many a mile in reaping the benefits of this Act. In 2012, over 40% of the donors (and the harvested organs) were from Tamil Nadu, giving it a donation rate of 1.15/million population (Punjab with 0.43 and Kerala with 0.36 were the nearest)

Chennai, of course, has been in the vanguard of this movement. In 1999, five hospitals in the city came together to create the Indian Network for Organ Sharing, under the MOHAN Foundation. The experience with this project was encouraging and the state government came into it in 2008, setting a clear process to support such sharing - the Cadaver Transplant Programme, which has become the point of reference for other states to implement similar programmes. 

Fortis Malar, pictured here, was where the transplant was carried out on Monday evening. But there are other hospitals, both private and government-run, that have carried out similar procedures as a matter of routine. The newsworthiness of Monday's transplant was the traffic management, to ensure that the heart was moved here from the donor hospital in double-quick time. But let us also take a moment to cheer the progress achieved in making such transplants routine!

First in co-operation

Frederick Nicholson, Collector of Madras in the late 19th century, had proposed setting up agricultural credit banks to alleviate the problems faced by the farmers. That experiment was successful, and a few years later, the government was attempting to see how that model could be extended to non-agricultural sectors as well. Both these attempts - the agricultural credit banks as well as the extension of such credit facilities to other sectors - were spearheaded by the Madras Presidency, but their impact was across the subcontinent. 

Based on the recommendations of the committee that considered extension of credit societies, The Co-operative Credit Societies Act 1904 was passed in March 1904. Almost as soon as the Act was passed, a group of people in Triplicane registered the first society under that Act. The Triplicane Urban Co-operative Society (TUCS) thus became India's first registered co-operative body. The founders included V.R. Singaravelar and Ambat Sivarama Menon, with VS Srinivasa Sastri taking charge as the first President. 

TUCS continues to be extremely active today. It is run by a Special Officer deputed by the state government, and has over 100,000 individual members. It also has close to 300 institutional members - not including the state government, which is the largest shareholder - and over 50 other co-operative societies as members. Its turnover during the current financial year is expected to cross Rs.200 crores, making it a very decently run organization. The building in the picture is the headquarters of TUCS, inaugurated in 1952. Being the first in the country, TUCS has had a huge role in shaping the progress of the co-operative movement across India - even if that is hidden from many of the citizens!