Odyssey to real India

At a time when his friends were ushering in the New Year with parties, 21-year-old final year engineering student Surya Adavi was travelling last year with a group of 350 people, all strangers but youngsters of his age. He came face to face with entrepreneurs, visited various model institutions dotting the country and saw the real India and one which is on the road to development. It was a journey which changed his life and motivated Adavi to do what he had always dreamt of doing.

He returned home to start a magazine for the youth. “I tested the idea on the trip with people from the media, animation and marketing field. Their feedback gave my idea a focus and direction,” says Adavi, who started the monthly magazine Ode in February this year.

Adavi, along with these 350 youngsters were part of the Tata Jagriti Yatra 2008, a national train journey that takes hundreds of India’s highly motivated youth on an 18 day trip, introducing them to the unsung heroes of India. The trip focuses on exposing these youth to individuals and institutions that are developing unique solutions to India’s challenges.

“We wanted to provide today’s youth with real role models, those whose work are actually benefiting the country,” explains Swapnil Dixit, one of the founders and executive director of the Tata Jagriti Yatra. Dixit, an IIT graduate, wanted people to hear success stories from the smaller areas of India. “We believe that enterprise led development is the solution to many problems, so what better way to change the future than by guiding the youth in this direction,” he reasons.

The aim is to awaken the spirit of entrepreneurship — both social and economic — within India’s youth by exposing them to such success stories and inspiring them to lead and develop institutions both nationally and within their communities.

Like last year, this year’s 18 day journey will begin from December 24 and will witness almost 400 candidates aged between 20-25 years undertaking a 8,000 kilometres journey across India, beginning from Mumbai and halting at Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, Kanyakumari, Madurai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bhubaneshwar, Jamshedpur, Deoria, Delhi, Meethapur and Tiloniya.

This year, the focus is on attracting more women participants. It is also open to people from foreign countries, aimed at providing them a glimpse of India’s smaller towns and villages. Like last year, where participants were introduced to 18 role models and institutions like Aravind Eye Hospital at Pondicherry, R. Elango of Kutumbakam village (Chennai), Joe Maddiath of Gram Vikas (Orissa), Anshu Gupta of Goonj (New Delhi) and Bunker Roy of the Barefoot College (Tiloniya, Rajasthan) among many others, this year too will see a visit to similar such institutions. The fee for the yatra is Rs32,000 per person.

Recalls 22-year-old student of IIT-Mumbai Vivek Khandelwal, “It was a life-changing experience.” Especially his visit to the midday meal programme in Hyderabad, the largest kitchen in the country. Meeting Manoj Kumar, CEO of Naandi Foundation, which runs the midday meal on behalf of the government of Andhra Pradesh influenced Khandelwal greatly. “He totally changed my idea of how an NGO works.

He spoke about how an NGO can work together with the government, make a profit, operate on a large scale and still do good work,” he says. Motivated by this kind of work, Khandelwal too decided to do something of his own. Post the journey, Khandelwal along with a fellow traveller Mrigank Tripathi started a website called Voicetap —  a bridge between knowledge seekers and knowledge experts.

25-year-old Nashik resident Kalyani Khodke, who had undertaken the maiden journey last year states, “I was taken to the Aravind Eye Hospital and was impressed to see how they’d come up with an economical way to provide eye care to people in remote areas via a satellite van.”

Apart from travelling with hundreds of young people and meeting inspirational entrepreneurs, the journey is also about enjoying the smaller things of life. Be it the fun of picking up new words and languages at every state one visits, splashing around in a beach at Kochivalli, having a bath under hosepipes meant to wash trains or sleeping on a railway platform. These are some of the cherished memories that participants take back home.
So get set for a life changing odyssey.

Check www.jagritiyatra.com. Last date for registration is November 15.