Mag Raj Jain
Mag Raj Jain (1931 – 4 November 2014)[1] was a social worker of Rajasthan state in India and recipient of the Padma Shri award for his contribution to the development of the Thar desert region. A teacher by profession in 1990 he started the organization Society to Uplift Rural Economy (SURE) to work for the betterment of the poor in Barmer district of Rajasthan. Presently the organization reaches out to more than 30,000 people spread across sixty villages of the region.
For the population of the region consisting mostly of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and refugees of the Indo-Pak wars the only source of income seems to be the traditional craft of patchwork and mirror embroidery practiced by the women of the area. Over the years contractors and middlemen exploited this trade by garnering maximum of the profits to the local community. To remove middle man involved and to provide maximum benefits to the local craftspersons SURE, the non profit organisation was started.