ROTARY INTERNATIONAL
ROTARY INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT 2011 –
2012
KALYAN BANERJEE
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| RI President Kalyan Banerjee and Binota |
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Kalyan Banerjee, a businessman from Gujarat India, is a director of United Phosphorus, the largest Indian agrochemical manufacturer, and the chair of United Phosphorus (Bangladesh) Limited. He is a member of the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Chemical Society, a past president of Vapi Industries Association and former chair of the Gujarat chapter of .the Confederation of Indian Industry. He earned a degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
Kalyan is married to Binota and they have two children and four grandchildren
Kalyan has been a member of the Rotary Club of Vapi, Gujurat since 1972. He is a past chair of the Southeast Asia Regional Polio Plus committee and a member of the RI Polio Plus Committee. He spearheaded many of Rotary's novel initiatives which have given a new push to the polio eradication programme in India. Kalyan served as a Director of RI in 1995-1996.
The RI President asks Rotarians to go to their communities and think of "new and different ways" to take on the challenges of today. "We are the doers of our communities, the leaders, the ones who are most involved, who see the problems and have the means to find the solutions. I am asking you to reach within and unleash your inner power and then use it to embrace everything and everyone around you".
Banerjee wants Rotarians to be guided by three emphases - the family, continuity, and change -- as they work to support the 2011-2012 RI theme.
Reach within to Embrace Humanity
Family is the first emphasis because the family is the starting point for everything Rotary is trying to accomplish. The family is the building block of the community. If we wish to see a world that is more joyous, we first have to make sure that the families of the world are more joyous, that they have the things they need to be happy, to thrive, and move forward. So we have to look at housing, at clean water and sanitation, at health care, at all the issues affecting mothers and children.
Continuity involves continuing and strengthening those things Rotarians do well.
There are so many areas in which we have been successful -- working for clean, safe water; spreading literacy; working in so many ways with our youth. And of course, our greatest project, polio eradication. If we want to really achieve the impossible, we have to have not only persistence, but vision - we have to be looking past what we are doing now, at what we can and should be doing in the days and years to come.
