When one thinks of an IAS aspirant, the image of a student buried under a pile of textbooks and a grade sheet marked with nothing but a row of 'A+'s is often the first that comes to mind. This common perception is not only flawed but sets the bar too high for those wunderkinds who often challenge the way things work by achieving the impossible. The Vedhik Erudite Scholarship is a free education programme for Civil Service aspirants that was set up to champion the grade X graduates who barely scraped through their subjects.
On January 16, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan declared the the One School, One IAS programme open. The aim behind it is to provide free training to economically backward aspirants from class VIII to 32 years of age for the civil services and other competitive exams. Under the programme, 10,000 students will be adopted from schools across the state to be coached, free of cost.
Chancellor of the Vedhik Erudite Foundation and Former Vice-Chancellor of MG University and Kannur University, Dr Babu Sebastian says, “We have more than 10,000 schools in the state. In every school, we are approaching the authorities. Either a principal or class teacher can recommend one deserving student from their school and these students may be financially struggling and in need of a good in education.This is for those who are studious who deserve support from the management in order to learn something a premium competitive exam like this will demand.”
Under the programme, the entirety of the fee is waived off. The Chancellor continues, “We are going to approach schools from the rural areas of Kerala. This is because, nowadays, there are students in many parts who are deprived of a proper education because of the lack of good coaching centres and the financial constraints of parents. We take students from government-run and private schools. We do not care about status or anything else.”
In addition to IAS, the scholarship offers coaching for the UN Civil Service exams, Tata Civil Service exams and other local state Civil Service coaching under the leadership of Dr Alexander Jacob IAS. Vedhik’s academic team consists of seasoned and accomplished IAS coaches from various parts of India who have designed training strategies, taking into account the additional possibilities offered by online learning.
Once the 10,000 students are trained, they may not end up becoming IAS or IPS officers. But the idea is to give them a fair shot in these or the 14 other categories within the Civil Services. In addition to this, the Central Government is conducting a number of competitive exams under the national recruitment agency wich selects students for job roles under the Government of India.
“The basic eligibility or qualification for students to attend the UPSC Civil Service exams is their wide knowledge and working mentality. And their attitude and aptitude towards the exam itself. This means there is a wide spectrum of students who deserve it because of their knowledge. The fear that they may not be able to attend these exams because of social or economic reasons leads to them being unaware of the basic structure of the exam or the preparation needed. Here, we would like to create a platform where they get an insight into what it entails,” concludes the chancellor.
