PEOPLE SPECIAL............. TRUE Grit

TRUE Grit  Many students across India, from economically challenged families, are now conquering  limitation to achieve pinnacles of success. When Anand Kumar started the Super 30 programme in Patna, he had no idea that it would become so successful. “I had got admission for higher studies at Cambridge University based on merit and couldn’t go because my family didn’t have the resources,” he says. And now he has the satisfaction of seeing most of the students from his coaching centre Super 30, cracking the Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE). While Kumar’s success stories are always about IITs, there are many more such cases of students overcoming huge challenges to carve out their own success stories. Gypsy Scholar     Life was never easy for Bhukya Jagadish Singh Nayak. He had to travel 40-45 km by bus to reach school, crossing 3-4 irrigation canals on the way. The first bus left at 7 am and he had to wait till 5 pm for the bus back home. And if there were special classes — like when he was in Class 10 — then he could only take the 10 pm bus.     As for food: a bowl of rice and then straight to bed.     The odds were stacked against Nayak. He belongs to the Lambadi (Banjara) tribe and comes from Surya Thanda village in Kamman district of Andhra Pradesh. Worse he lost his father to tuberculosis when he was 15 and was brought up by his mother who worked as a community worker.     “I was always good at studies and the Banjara Sevak Samithi chipped in to help me get through school,” he says. “I knew I had to do well in studies and for that I was willing to sacrifice all the small joys growing up has.” Well sacrifice he did. During his plus-2 years he enrolled in a course to prepare for IIT-JEE. That meant his study hours extended from 6 am to 11 pm.     All this paid off when a few months back he found himself at the gates of IITBombay — his first trip outside his village. STUDYING: Chemical engineering, IIT-Bombay FAMILY BACKGROUND: Comes from a backward tribe in a backward region “I sacrificed all the joys and just concentrated on studies” Bhukya Jagadish Singh Nayak STUDYING: Qualified for Global Leadership Education & Foundation scholarship that enables her to study in the US FAMILY BACKGROUND: Brought up at an orphanage “I did what I could for the sake of my institution” Sufaira Nazir  — Neenu Abraham