A trend has emerged where kids from poor backgrounds perform exceptionally well against all the odds in competitive examinations but fail to arrange money to pay for the fees to back their education and vanish into oblivion. Two such kids face a similar fate this year.
Aanjinappa who hails from Chekkanahalli, a village close to Electronic City in Bengaluru, is the son of a daily wage worker. He has cleared the JEE Advanced, one of the toughest exams in India, and also secured the 91st category rank. But now he does not know what to do next.
Aanjinappa’s mother is a daily wage labourer in an automobile company. His father is no more. They often struggled to have three meals a day.
He is a student of TAPAS, an initiative from RSS-linked outfit Rashtrotthana Parishat and renowned IIT coaching institute BASE. He wishes to study mechanical engineering at IIT Madras.
Aanjinappa had scored a 100 in Maths paper in the CET. In the PU finals exams, he scored 100 in Physics, Chemistry and Electronics and a total of 95.3%. He has a category rank of 32 in JEE Main.
Another youth and Aanjinappa’s batchmate, Prem Kumar from Bagalkot, is staring at a similar problem. His parents are daily wage labourers. Kumar scored a category rank of 213.
He did his schooling in JNV, Bagalkot and wants to study engineering in IIT-Mumbai.
A total of 36 students had enrolled for the two-year IIT course, all hailing from low-income families. 19 of them have qualified in the exam.