Fifteen years ago, a young man hailing from an impoverished, backward caste family in Karnataka defied social convention when he went to the US on an International Exchange Programme and eventually started his own healthcare staffing company. It would have been the perfect ending to Michael Thevar’s rags-to-riches life story if he had chosen to move on, except that he started work on the “next agenda in his life” — to establish a ‘Bhimnagar’ or a ‘Buddhavihar’ in Pennsylvania.

Thevar who acquired his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Social Work from Nirmala Niketan and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences is back in the city, busy making preparations to take a batch of 20 candidates hailing from SC, ST and OBC backgrounds to the US. These candidates are trained social workers who will be working in Thevar’s Temp Solutions as counsellors and therapists and will eventually be a part of the future ‘Bhimnagar.’

Born to an industrial labourer and a housewife in Karnataka, Thevar collected firewood to support his seven-member family, a memory which still haunts him. “I couldn’t forget my caste despite my NRI status. I realised that besides professional goals, I had a social responsibility towards my community as well,” said Thevar.

“In 2005, I had recruited 13 candidates belonging to the backward castes and these 20 will be this year’s addition to the company. Six families of the previous batch have already applied for a Green Card. My aim is to recruit around 125 such candidates in the next three years, enable them to shift to the US with their families. Just like there are Dalit networks, Dalit student forums, I have envisaged a Dalit, SC, ST, OBC community.”

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