In heart of darkness, shining lights

Jaiswal’s dream to count his son among the country’s best brains might have been impossible if two people—a mathematician named Anand Kumar (32) and a police officer, Abhyanand (50)—had not taken their own career decision three years ago.

Super 30, the institute they set up then, helps poor Bihari students realise their previously impossible dreams. These days, it’s making the country’s most expensive coaching centres (where the cost of studying for the IIT can go upto Rs 50,000) envious.

Apart from free education in physics, chemistry and mathematics, the Patna-based institute also provides free lodging and food, like the traditional gurukuls. And the results so far have been astounding.

Each year 30 bright students from poor families are picked after entrance tests. In the first year it was formed, 18 of the 30 students cleared the difficult IIT entrance examination. The following year, the figure jumped to 22.

This year it was an unbelievable 100 per cent. All the institute’s 26 students sailed through. Around 150-200 students usually clear this examination across Bihar.

Far from the glitz of modern coaching centres, these students stay in rented thatched huts with corrugated sheet roofs. Simple vegetarian food is prepared in a community kitchen and the students work to crack the IIT code with teachers who work for free.

So how was this idea born? ‘‘When I was in college my condition was no different from these poor students,’’ recounts Kumar. ‘‘In 1994 I got an invitation from Cambridge University but could not make it due to finances and nobody came to help me.’’

Cambridge was lost, but at home in Patna, Kumar made it as a successful teacher of mathematics, teaching in private coaching centres, which have mushroomed in the city. Now the money flowed in easily.

But he never forgot the hard days he had faced as a student. Though he was already teaching poor students during his free time, he wanted something more tangible. That’s when he met Abhyanand.

The police officer wanted to fulfil his suppressed desire to be a teacher and utilise his knowledge of physics in some way.

Today, their institute is flooded with aspirants—and demands to increase the number of people they train. But the duo have no desire to expand. ‘‘Big becomes bureaucratic and a bureaucratic system cannot deliver. ’’

Abhyanand says they have been flooded with proposals from people who want to donate money. For these, they have a standard answer— ‘‘Thank you for your concern. We need your good wishes. We don’t need money.’’ Kumar says money is not an issue. ‘‘I earn enough from coaching students from well-to-do families to meet the expenses incurred,’’ he says. It costs them around Rs 3.5 lakh to finance every batch. But is everything selfless? Certainly not. ‘‘We want these students to give back to Bihar,’’ says Abhyanand. ‘‘Out of so many students if only a core group of 30-40 decide to give something back to this state, it will make a lot of difference.’’