Why I Didn't Sleep For 31 Hours... HARSHA

Why I Didn't Sleep For 31 Hours...

A casual glance at the excel sheet and I had enough reasons to worry. There are 85 students who needed Rs. 300 or less per year to continue their education. 85 out of 126! And there are many more students who's hopes for a bright future rested on the Pratibha Poshak scholarships, given by Friends of Children and Infosys Foundation. I am one of the volunteers from Infy who's helping Friends of Children in distributing the scholarships in Sangli, a town in Maharashtra near the border with Karnataka.


* So we started off to Sangli, my first journey into the Maharashtrian hinterland. A journey of 6 hours from Pune and yay, we're in Sangli. The school building was good, better than anything that I've expected. The town too, is unlike what I had expected it to be. There are some signs of development here and there, with all the hallmarks of an Indian town- chaos on the streets, unruly traffic, cows, and what not!

*The program started off with an intro to the whole program and when the name of Infy came up, the local volunteer asked the students, 'How many of you have heard the name of Infosys?' Not a single hand went up. The Infy people were stunned (and me, definitely not!) . A little prodding and they gave a better response to the next question, 'How many of you would like to join Infosys?' The response

*The counseling session kicked off very soon and the levels of confidence that many of these children had amazed me. All of them had scored more than 70% in the previous year and are very keen to pursue higher studies. But somewhere down the line, the session looked like a recruitment drive for Infy. Thankfully, the chief guest came and the counseling session came to an end. Otherwise, they would have been made to believe that IT is the only career option for all Indians and any Indian who doesn't know shell scripting in UNIX will not be allowed to vote in the next general elections.

* I didn't miss the chance to browse through their profiles while distributing the cheques. Most of the students came from very humble backgrounds that ranged from poorest to poor and depended entirely on these scholarships for continuing their education, which ranged from Rs.150 to Rs. 44,000. These are the students who are in real need of government help to continue their education, but they will never get it. Because once they're educated and cross the poverty line, the 'Garibi Hatao' and 'Roti, Kapda and Makan' (ok, now network too) slogans would make no sense to them. Will a certain Mr. Singh wake up from his deep slumber?

* Met an interesting person, Ketan Deshpande, a second year student of Engineering at Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune. Coming from a rural area, he had to join a college that he didn't like, because he didn't have access to the information on admission procedures of various colleges . So he took on the system in his own way- he published a booklet with details of various colleges, their admission procedures, entrance exams, etc. and made it available to students at a nominal cost. He and his FUEL even received appreciation from APJ. I'm impressed!

*When was the last time I saw a police officer being mobbed by children? The SP of Sangli, Krishna Prakash was. He reportedly drove out all the illegal activities from Sangli in two months and made Sangli definitely a better place to live in. He gave a brilliant speech in Hindi, so said the people around me. After doing night shift the previous day and being busy shooting pix on the way, I had no time to take a nap and his speech gave me the much needed break to sleep. His soothing voice worked like a lullaby and I soon dozed off, only to be awaken by the thunderous applause by the crowd.

* Then came the part where I really enjoyed. The students were on a high after receiving the scholarships and meeting their SP, now they started asking the volunteers for autographs. I was just a volunteer to help the asli volunteers in distributing cheques and did nothing more than that! Though embarrassed at first, I had to give in and I have to admit that I enjoyed giving away autographs... Here are my 5 minutes of fame.

There are certainly many more thousands of students who may need less than Rs. 300 to pursue their education in India. But having seen the vigour with which the group of individuals are doing under the umbrella of Friends of Children, I feel there is still hope left for these students. Want to help these kids? Call Venky, FoC @ 9890393132

Posted by HARSHA at 2:39 PM