At BPCL we believe that it’s equally important to return back to society. Which is why, we believe some of our finest achievements aren’t those found in our balance sheets but those, in small towns and villages spread across India. Our involvement in sharing this wider responsibility dates way back to 1984, when in pursuance with our philosophy “to give back to the society/community our best”, we aimed to help the people enrich their lives, be it our employees or their families also extending the scope of definition of families to those that we saw beyond our glass cabins in these rustic surroundings, and thus started our romance. Today, we term them as our extended family i.e. our villagers from rural areas.
India, has a social contrast, while one strata of the society comprising of approximately 30% live in the cities, a great percentage of nearly double -700 million Indians reside in villages, which we term as rural India. Now rural India too has its own disparity, some are what we call the islands of prosperity and the rest that have the other extremes, riddled by droughts and some difficult conditions of weather and climate and sometimes these villages are so remote and far flung from cities that many a times makes others go past unnoticed.
BPCL initially started working in Mahul, the village located in the neighbourhood of its Mumbai refinery in 1986, with the sole reason of their social upliftment. The residents of Mahul, essentially from the fishing community, were rich because they possessed marine wealth but as far as education, health, etc was concerned, they needed direction and help. BPCL volunteered and the initial success brought such gratification that immediately it adopted another village (this time an interior one) called Karjat. Developments with selfless intentions helped introspect about the future role BPCL should adopt in its aim to contribute to this effort. There after there was no looking back.
As a corporate responsibility, BPCL has today adopted 37 villages across India. This adoption included, making substantial investments for nearly a decade and a half in them to make them fully self reliant, providing them fresh drinking water, sanitation facilities, medical facilities, enhancing their income standards by imparting vocational training and agricultural innovations. However, BPCL also firmly believes that the only vehicle for raising the villagers from their present state is by educating the young and the old, a focus on providing grants for opening schools and opening adult literacy camps as well.
A Herculean task indeed, which BPCL recognized and thus even sought assistance from NGO’s working around these centers in fulfilling its dream, which to many of BPCL employee’s still remains incomplete, on account of the large magnitude of work necessary in completion.