IIT doors open for young tribal

The young achiever from Orissa?s Mayurbhanj district joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, on Monday after the human resource development ministry stepped in.

Published on: Sep 19, 2006, 03:19:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In the end, the mailman failed to kill Balaram Tudu’s IIT dream. The young achiever from Orissa’s Mayurbhanj district joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, on Monday after the human resource development ministry stepped in.

As the Hindustan Times had reported, Tudu was denied admission to the elite institution even after clearing the tough entrance examination because of a postal bungle. A communiqué from the IIT informing Tudu of the dates of his counseling session did not reach his home in Mayurbhanj district. By the time he discovered the goof-up it was too late. IIT Kharagpur authorities refused admission, saying that they could not be held responsible for the failure of postal authorities.

However, the institute budged on Saturday when higher education secretary Sudeep Banerjee spoke to its director Shishir K Dube and requested him to treat Tudu as a special case. Dube agreed to admit him. Tudu was informed about the decision on Sunday afternoon.

The story of the young tribal’s ordeal has created ripples in the corridors of power. HRD minister Arjun Singh has asked the IITs to make sure that bright minds from remote areas do not go through the same ordeal. The institutes have been asked to release a detailed schedule to the students. “All details should be incorporated in the information bulletin provided to students before they write the Joint Entrance Examination for IITs,” Singh said. He has also suggested that information about rank holders from SC and ST communities should be sent to their respective district magistrates.

A few weeks ago, Tudu had told HT. “I’ll never make it to the IIT. I just want that others be spared what I had to go through.” His wish may just come true.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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