A memorial for a banker

MANGALURU: Mulki Sunder Ram Shetty Birth Centenary Celebration Committee is all set to perpetuate the memory of a man who shaped the future of many in the erstwhile undivided DK district after the implementation of the Land Reforms Act. The committee is now celebrating the birth centenary of the former Vijaya Bank chairman, at Sri Durga Parameshwari Temple in Bappanadu, Mulki, on Saturday.
Describing the late Shetty as a self-made person with far-sightedness, N Vinaya Hegde, chancellor, Nitte University, who is also the chairman of the committee, told reporters that the Land Reforms Act ushered in by the then chief minister D Devaraj Urs had left the community at a crossroads.
"It was at this juncture that Sunder Ram Shetty played the Samaritan absorbing them in the roles of the Bank while guiding its fortunes from 1962 to 1979," he said.
The committee also has plans to construct a memorial befitting Shetty's stature at Mulki, his birth place. "The process of procuring the land for the same is underway," Hegde said, adding that the memorial should reflect Shetty's life's ambition of making people self-reliant.
"Shetty was instrumental in helping me become an entrepreneur," said Hegde, adding that scores of families in the district have taken him as an inspiration and paved their way to prosperity. It is this person's life that the committee is venerating, Hegde said.
D Veerendra Heggade, dharmadhikari, Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala, will inaugurate the event.