EDUCATION SPECIAL.... How these smart students are jumping over social hurdles

How these smart students are jumping over social hurdles





You've read the headlines -samosa seller's son makes it to IIT, daily wager's child clears JEE Advanced. Behind these heart-warming stories are a bunch of institutes which are steering under-privileged kids to success

All of 24 and still in her last year at IIT Kharagpur, Poonam Gupta is the founder and CEO of Alive Home, an internet-of-things start up. Her family lives in Delhi's Geeta Colony, six people sharing a single room. Gupta studied at the Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya, a school for gifted students run by the Delhi government. She wanted to be an astronaut, an actress, join the army -but like many clever Indian students, eventually found herself aiming for the IITs.

“I'm a first-generation learner, my family didn't understand my need to study so much. There were always chores and interruptions and obligations,“ she says. Her family - her father didn't have a steady job -didn't believe she could crack the JEE, and neighbours told them she should just get married. But Poonam did make it to IIT Kharagpur in 2012, thanks to the time, teaching and peer group she found at the Centre for Learning and Social Responsibility (CSRL) Super 30 in Delhi.

In the lottery of life, the odds are against you if you're from a village or an urban slum, if you haven't been to an English-medium school, and if your parents don't have a high school education. Less than 3% of the engineering and business school intake is from rural schools. But now, there is a tidal wave of teaching programmes dedicated to helping smart students into professional institutions.

The most famous of these is Super 30. An initiative started in Patna in 2002, it picks 30 smart students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and strenuously trains them for the joint entrance exams (JEE Main and Advanced) to IIT and other engineering schools. The original Super 30 has split into two; the school run by Anand Kumar continues to work out of one site in Patna, and posts record victories. Meanwhile, the branch under retired IPS officer Abhayanand has sprout ed many others, like the Rahmani Super 30 meant for Muslim students. It has also partnered with public sector units across the country under the canopy of the Centre for Social Responsibility and Learning (CSRL). There's a GAIL Super 30 in Kanpur, a Petronet Super 40 in Kashmir, a Railtel Akanksha Super 30 in Uttarakhand. Now, with 13 centres across the country , it has helped 550 students make it to various IITs, central and state engineering institutes in the last seven years, says CSRL director S K Shahi.

“There's huge talent trapped in the lower half of the pyramid, which doesn't get a fair chance to get to top positions in any walk of life,“ says Anirudh Krishna, public policy professor at Duke University and author of `The Broken Ladder: The Paradox and Potential of India's One Billion'. “Super 30 was the catalyst that showed what was possible,“ he says.

Rohit Srivastava, a chemical engineer who shuttles between Dehradun and Srinagar to teach chemistry in these institutes, would agree. Having taught at Kota before, he says it isn't so much about any X factor in the teaching as much as “motivating students to see the value of an engineering career“. Abhayanand, who is the academic mentor to these schools and teaches physics, says his inspiration is the scientist Richard Feynman. “In India, the approach is that the child's mind is empty, the teacher's mind is full“-but his method is to get students to understand the logic, and hone their own problem-solving abilities.

Most of these students are a first in their families. None of them have the home environment, schools and tuition, or even leisure that middle-class students take for granted. Except for a driven few, most of them didn't even dream of IIT. “But once they get in, they inspire others around them to do the same,“ says Anand Kumar.

Super 30 has been a trailblazer, but there are many such access initiatives across India. Mumbai has Avanti, an IIT Bombay alum initiative. In Pune, Dakshana has been working since 2007 with underprivileged students, and got 67 out of its 69 students through JEE Advanced this year. In Kashmir, the Rise Institute has been working to hook up bright kids with better opportunities. “More than economic problems, Kashmiri students lack hope. They are expected to settle for mediocrity,“ says founder Mubeen Masudi. While they primarily groom students for technical exams like JEE, they also try to answer other needs, like the SAT. They find role models that young people can relate to, whether Kashmiri journalists or civil servants or chartered accountants. The school works around curfews and internet blocks, gets friends to ferry learning material across from Delhi, for instance. “The idea is to ignite optimism and get them to rely on their own hard work independent of the atmosphere,“ says Masudi.

Such social-mobility-promoting organisations are only going to increase, says Krishna, and “there needs to be synergy between the state and society“. Right now, CSRL Super 30s draws the bulk of its students from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, the school network for talented kids from rural low-income backgrounds. Many state governments also do free coaching for the JEE. In Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, one of the poorest districts in India, as many as 55 SCST students cracked JEE Advanced, thanks to the district administration's efforts. It's a ripple effect, “Once one student makes it to a professional institute, it will make his or her neighbour also think that it is possible,“ says zila parishad CEO Anurag Chowdhury , an IIT grad himself.

If education is to deliver true change, rather than merely reproduce social hierarchies, these efforts are vital. And a more diverse classroom makes for better learning, for everyone.

TOI 18JUN17