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Tribal students from Chandigarh script IIT success story
RAIPUR: As many as 27 tribal students who live in remote, Maoist-affected villages in Chhattisgarh have cleared the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) entrance exam this year thanks to a state government programme called ‘Prayas’.
‘Prayas’ residential schools were started in July 2010 by the state government as an expansion of the Mukhyamantri Baal Bhavishya Suraksha Yojana for children in the most violent areas of the state.
The successful students are today examples of grit and perseverance, but life before they were picked out by Prayas was far from ordinary.
Sodi Deva, 18, who clinched rank 1,141, was forced to move out of strife-torn Sukma district a few years ago because Maoists destroyed his home after his family refused to send away one of their children for the rebels’ cause.
“We don’t wish to be targeted by them (Maoists) again, so I got enrolled in Prayas, which offered me positive reinforcement and realistic benchmarks on where I stand,” Deva told HT.
At Prayas, exceptional students are handpicked from schools across various Maoist-affected and tribal districts based on their academic performance till Class 10. They are groomed to excel in competitive exams. Between 2012 and 2015, nine of its students made it to IITs, but this year’s results have been a pleasant surprise — 27 students cleared the exam in addition to more than 150 others who qualified for different engineering institutes across India.
For a majority of these students, the residential schools are also home. “Back home, there is only an environment of fear and despair. So we thought its better we should come to meet our son, Ravindra, in Raipur,” said Budhram Mourya, a resident of Lohandiguda in Bastar district.
The Prayas schools continue to find and groom talented students from remote villages in Maoist-affected areas of the state. As for the engineers-to-be, they are gearing up for the challenges ahead.