Inside the small but neat office done in soothing blue, the man sitting in the MD’s chair is all smiles. His blue striped shirt gels well and so does his latest possession of pride – a bound volume in blue called “Star Trek.” The 210 pages in between the hard cover traces the “fascination journey of 101 successful first generation entrepreneurs” in Tamil Nadu.
Smiling out from the pages inside this publication – brought out by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Tamil Nadu, and priced at Rs.1,000 – is our man in focus this week. His blue shirt in once again screaming from the pages of Star Trek. “Blue, your favorite color?” I ask his settling down for a chat. “No, lucky color,” he gushes and points to his favorite line on his company logo – “Keep the sky blue and land green”.
So how do you keep a vigil on the skyline and the landscape in cities across the State, I ask him. “My job is to convince people…how they are spoiling the environment and how they can prevent it. Over the years I have learnt to change people gently, not by admonishing,” he proffers
As the Managing Director of Enviro Care India Private Ltd, Dr.S.Rajamohan is celebrating his tenth year into the business of environmental auditing. This simple son of the soil born to “teacher” parents in Usilampatti (father retired as headmaster and mother as teacher from Government School, Usilampatti) had never dreamt he would be rubbing shoulders with captains of the industry one day.
As a child what always irritated him was the “stink and stench” emanating from improperly disposed garbage in his small village. But he had no clue what to do.
Education
“ I was a voracious reader and always studied sincerely as my poor parents struggled hard to give me and my two siblings good education,” he says. And he did them proud, finishing BE (Civil) from Government College of Technology, Coimbatore; ME (Environmental Engineering), Anna University, Chennai and a Ph.D in Composite Landscape Assessment for Madurai Metropolitan Region using the Geographical Information System.
“It was during Post-Graduation that I started figuring out how to minimize abuse on Mother Earth. Lot of scattered ideas had to be strung together because two decades ago nobody knew or spoke about industries polluting the atmosphere. Especially in smaller towns where factories generated employment. People never thought they could be harming the nature in any way!” He recalls how after returning to Madurai in 1992, he joined the Thiagarajar College of Engineering (TCE) as a lecturer, simultaneously enrolled for Ph.D in Madurai Kamaraj University and started approaching industries for a feasibility report on the effluent they were generating and their mode of disposal.
“I was a beginner and it was very difficult to convince them. I approached at least 10 big companies in and around Madurai including Fenner and TVS Group. But the all rejected my proposal. Finally, one small mill in Kappalur hired me as a consultant on a fee of Rs.2000. his eyes light up as he recalls his maiden project.
Turning point
That also became the turning point in his life. At TCE he was given the additional responsibility of the Placement officer and during his stint he achieved the highest rate ever – of placing 98 per cent students in various industries.
It also paved the way for him to meet industrialists and push his case as a specialist in treating and disposing wastewater. Solid waste industrial waste besides doing environmental impact assessments.
Though people he approached did not take to him kindly, Dr.Rajamohan continued with his studies, continuously updating himself on environment management systems and slowly started putting together a laboratory with facilities for all kinds of pollution tests.
After years of running from pillar to post convincing people about safer methods of running industries. He finally registered his company in 1998.
And 10 years on at 43, with his sheer grit and determination to breakthrough all “negativism and pessimism” Dr.Rajamohan has scripted an entirely different story.
Companies that rejected him in his initial years of struggle, today have him on their panel as an environment consultant and his client’s list goes beyond 500, Spread across the State, 70 per cent of his business is concentrated in Coimbatore and rest in Tiruchi, Cuddalore, Erode, Chennai, Madurai and even Abu Dhabi.
So what does this eco-friendly man exactly do? “I ensure industries are not further damaging the environment by recklessly discharging their effluents either into the air or water bodies,” he makes it sound simple. But he actually goes into the nitty-gritty of first designing need and unit specific sewage or water treatment plant, installing, operating and maintaining it lifelong.