Footsteps4good – walking on Gandhi’s birthday for a Mumbai cause

Most Indians know that 2 October marks the anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. That fact is less well known among UK staff in the Deputy High Commission, but they were aware enough when they joined about 700 others in a 10K walk or run at 7am to mark the date, and raise money for Mumbai -based NGO’s.

The event, Footsteps4Good, was an idea of my wife Jill, who secured its overall promotion by major Indian company Aditya Birla and sponsorship  by Tata and Glaxo SmithKline. All three companies  had supported a 357 Km charity walk she arranged last November following the route of Gandhi’s famous Salt March. Many people had said they would have liked to take part in a smaller version, so Jill initiated and organised Footsteps4Good. With invaluable support from the State Government’s Protocol Secretary Sumit Mullick and Traffic Commissioner Vivek Phansalkar, the event gradually took shape over about two months of hard slog.

Footsteps4Good, which coincided with Give India Week, was entirely for charity, with each participant making a donation of R2000 (about £25) for an NGO of their choice. The day was given a great boost by the participation of one of Mahatma Gandhi’s great grandsons, Tushar Gandhi, who found the time in a busy schedule to greet the participants and fire the starting pistol.

The Walk/Run was around the wide streets of the new business and education district called Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), which boasts the new buildings of, among others, The National Stock Exchange, Standard Chartered Bank, the Tata Trent Group, the American and Dhirubhai Ambani International Schools, and our very own Deputy High Commission. We will shortly be joined by the American Consulate, with its own self-contained compound. BKC is another example of how Mumbai, and India, is rapidly becoming a hive of new infrastructure development.

Among the participants were 100 excited children who live in the Dharavi slum famous for the location of the film Slum Dog Millionaire. They were sponsored by one of India’s leading businessman, who chose anonymity. The children were brought to the event by one of Mumbai’s most well-known NGOs, Magic Bus,   among the ten charities participating. Disabled adults and children living in Cheshire Homes joined in with the hundreds of able-bodied walkers and runners.

Apart from the Deputy High Commission team the UK was out in force with participants from, among others,  Cathay Pacific led by its regional head Tom Wright, a group from Fitch, part of the WPP advertising and design empire, and over 70 from our outsource visa partner VFS. In the spirit of Gandhi’s birthday, the three winning men and women runners (including the Deputy High Commission’s Justin Von der Recke), won prizes, not for themselves but for an NGO of their choice.

By 11am the last wheelchair participants and weary walkers had returned, the event organisers ICE,  who everyone agreed had done a superb job, started disassembling the grandstand for the winners, and the participants could continue their normal Sunday activities –knowing they had made a small contribution to a variety of causes which, as Gandhi’s great grandson noted, would assuredly have received the support of India’s most famous son, and a man known to walk hundreds of miles for the causes for which he toiled.