You can eat in Hotel even if you don’t have money

Come… Take this coupon and eat till your stomach full in a hotel of your choice. No need to pay a single rupee. There are no better words to listen for a hungry man and no better deed for a person who wants to help fellow human. This is the reason, “Operation Sulaimani” is receiving nationwide appreciation.

A young boy has come from village to city for studying. Money sent by his father was over way before the month end. But hunger doesn’t know that.

A hardworking labourer who couldn’t get his family going with his petty income, how can he satisfy the appetite of his children?

Daughter is in hospital. It is difficult for hospital expenses itself, how about food during those hospital days. Can he afford to eat food outside?

There are many people like these in our country who can’t eat stomach full. But they wont beg before anybody. Because for such people, self respect is more important than hunger. As such, they do hardwork and earn to eat. If they couldn’t eat, they starve. To support such people from starvation, one such mission started in Kerala Kozhikode district is Operation Sulaimani.

Operation Sulaimani was introduced by Prasanth Nair IAS, the District collector of Kozhikode, which aims to provide food for the starving people to go to a hotel and fill their appetite without paying a single rupee and without losing any self respect. The program is named after Sulaimani, a popular drink in Malabar, made from black tea, cardamom and lemon juice. People of Kozhikode drink after a meal. Operation Sulaimani is modelled on a system existing in western countries such as Coffee-on-Wall and Food-on-the-Wall, where you pay for an extra meal or coffee"

Coffee –on-wall means… If someone has one cup of coffee in a hotel, they pay for 2 cups and the amount paid for the extra cup is given to penniless people. For Food-on-the-wall, people willing to feed the hunger can donate an equal amount. Operation Sulaimani is also similar to this. But Collector Prasanth Nair wanted to do this in a big scale. For this, he spoke to “Kerala Hotel and Restaurants’ Association” and made 25 hotels as part of this scheme. Since this was started by an IAS office, people going to hotels and restaurants donated money into the donation boxes at these hotels. Similar donation boxes were setup in government offices and other places. Volunteers of Operation Sulaimani buy food coupons with the donated money. These coupons are distributed across hostels, bus stands, railway stations, collector office, panchayathi, Taluk offices, etc. Poor and needy people can collect the coupons from those places and go to any hotel part of the scheme. They just need to show the coupon and nobody will question and food will be served with due respect.

"Lost in Kozhikode without a penny? Don't Worry...!" - Operation Sulaimani

This scheme which was started on 14^th June 2015, currently satisfies the hunger needs of 1000 people daily in Kozhikode. Generally, if we collect money and cook the food at a single place, then such serving is useful only to the nearby people. And also, it is difficult to estimate how many people come each day and there is chance of food getting wasted. Through this scheme, people can go to their nearby hotel and this will be useful for people across different places. Students and petty workers need not feel shy to go to these hotels with these coupons and they will also have satisfaction that food is clean and tastier. To verify how the hotels are treating the people who come with food coupons, scheme volunteers themselves eat with those coupons. If they find any issues, they take immediate action. To avoid misuse of same person (who is not in need) to eat again and again, volunteers take full details and address while issuing the coupons. As a result, Operation Sulaimani gained good reputation within few days of inception. Volunteers canvassed that “If anybody wants to donate to large people, they can buy food coupons from the collector’s office and distribute. You can also donate on the occasion of Marriage or Birthdays..”. As a result of such canvassing, in addition to general public, Malayalam film personalities, politicians also came forward to contribute their part.

As a matter of fact, all this credit goes to 35 years Prasanth. After assuming the post of Collector, he wanted to do something to the public and started this scheme. Besides this, he also gained much popularity with the good deeds he does as part of his profession. Recently, he posted “Become part of a good dead, eat a tasty Biryani” on facebook for a 14 acre lake restoration. As a result, 750 people turned up for the lake restoration. Prasanth got Biryani cooked beside the lake and served them. Not only this, he learns about people difficulties through his facebook and solves them. His facebook post now has 2 lakh followers within 2 years. Many people come forward for doing good. We wish to see many more officers like Prasanth!