News Wave Waves of News
By Shri Ram Shaw
New Delhi, 13 March: Through an elaborate feature, reputed magazine (print and web) Forbes has profiled Ravindra Kishore Sinha, Rajya Sabha member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and founder of the Security and Intelligence Services (SIS). It marks his journey from modest beginnings in Patna, capital of Bihar, to a stage where he has handed over the baton of his business to son Rituraj Sinha while he concentrates on managing India’s oldest news agency Hindusthan Samachar (established in 1948).
In his interaction with Forbes correspondent, Sinha says his main focus now, apart from politics and journalism, is charity. After both his kidneys failed a few years ago (one was replaced), his priorities, he said, are very clear. “I’m living on borrowed time,” he says.
As part of his charity work, recently, Sinha’s SIS has sponsored Rs 11.31 lakh to Anita Kundu, a Sub-Inspector in Haryana Police, who scaled Mount Everest twice and is the first Indian woman to climb the peak from the Chinese side also. On first occasion, Kundu had scaled the highest peak from the Nepal side.
Earlier, to console the family of Martyr Jyoti Prakash Nirala, as his tribute to Nirala’s supreme sacrifice, Sinha offered to bear the expenses of his only daughter and three sisters from school till marriage, to ensure a good future for all of them. Sinha has been paying for all their educational expenses.
Sinha’s story has appeared in the March 2018 issue of Forbes Asia.On Page 79, Forbes Asia wrote: As a teenager, one of India’s new billionaires saw a sister die of a high fever because their father didn’t have enough money for a doctor. Ravindra Kishore Sinha has come a long way since the mid 1960s of his native Patna city in the central Indian state of Bihar, one of the poorest in the country.
Today Sinha, 67, wears various hats. He’s the group chairman of Security and Intelligence Services (SIS), the company he got going in the 1980s and which went public last August. The business – the main source of his wealth – guards various industrial activity. It is run by his son Rituraj and Sinha now only shows for board meetings.
Sinha is, instead, active in his other concerns – politics and media. He is a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the richest member of India’s upper house of parliament. He’s also the chairman of Hindustan Samachar, a news agency where he got his first job in the 1960s.
Sinha told Forbes correspondent, “I’m a billionaire by accident.” Forbes also highlighted the other details about him and his business. It says, his office is large but sparse, save for a small temple in a wall alcove, filled with pictures of different Indian gods and a small black and white photo of his parents.
Sinha does his prayers before sitting at his desk.The fifth of eight children of a government officer, he has been a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist organization, the ideological parent of the BJP.
He got his first job – a reporting gig – at one of the group’s meetups in 1967.
Forbes also highlighted story about his early days struggle and how he started his entrepreneurship and now feels happy to extend his hands to help the needy.
