By Azera Rahman, IANS
New Delhi : The greatness of a nation doesn’t lie in sitting back and regaling in the glories of the past. To learn and do something today, 400 students will undertake a journey to meet entrepreneurial heroes shaping India.
The Jagriti Yatra will see 18- to 25-year-olds from across the country travelling to meet the people who are making a change in India today. Conceptualised by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumnus Shashank Mani, it will be a train journey to be undertaken in 18 days in May next year.
“Jagriti Yatra is a unique train journey across India to discover India’s real heroes. The aim of the journey will be to introduce the youngsters to heroes who through innovation and perseverance have undertaken a difficult challenge and have had a significant impact,” Mani told IANS.
“In the journey, we will meet people who are using innovative solutions to build new institutions, a new India. For example, we will visit Sankara Nethralaya, which does some of the largest number of eye surgeries at a very low price, with its headquarters in Coimbatore.
“We want to visit the headquarters of Konkan Railway, meet Bindeshwar Pathak who started the toilet chain of Sulabh Shauchalayas. We also want to meet N.R. Narayana Murthy and others who have re-shaped the way wealth is created through hard work, excellence and integrity,” Mani added.
The journey will be along the same lines as another one organised by Mani in 1997.
“1997 was an emotional year for all of us since it was the 50th year of independence. The journey, the ‘Azad Bharat Rail Yatra’ (Independent India Train Journey), was a small way of giving back to a country that has given us so much.
“Hence we organised a train journey across the country where young students, around 200 of them, met modern Indians and visited modern institutions like the Space Application Centre in Ahmedabad, IIT-Delhi and the naval installation in Vizag (Visakhapatnam) among others,” he said.
Covering a total of 7,000 km, the students along with the organisers, travelled to 15 cities and two villages. The yatra, undertaken in a special train, started in Mumbai Dec 24, 1997, and ended in the same place, 22 days later.
Besides meeting influential people and visiting institutions that nurture talent, the students also had avid discussions en route on an array of subjects, be it on politics, civil society, philosophy or science and put minutes of all those discussions together in a 40-page document called “A manifesto of young India for the future”.
In his book released this month, Mani talks about all the discussions and debates at that time and those that have taken place in the country since then. The book, “India, A Journey Through a Healing Civilization”, is also a recount of the author’s personal experience of an India that has grown since then.
Like last time, the participants of the journey are selected on the basis of an essay that the students write on the subject, “The future of India and what would be their contribution”.
“Like the previous time, this time too we are looking for non-conformists for the journey. A selection panel consisting of eminent Indians will shortlist them and then they will be sent a list of books and list of items to bring with them for the journey,” Mani said.
He also plans to make this event an annual affair.
“The aim of the yatra is to instil in the youth through example, teaching and dialogue the feeling that they can ‘be the change’ that India needs,” Mani said.
(Azera Rahman can be contacted at [email protected])