When A Rajeshwari, a tribal girl, walks on the hallowed corridors of Indian Institute of Technology soon, she will be living her own dream, and one her father held close to his heart till he succumbed to cancer a year ago.
A Aundi, her dad who belonged to the Malayali (Scheduled Tribe) community of Karumandurai, a village located 65 km from Salem in the Kalvarayan Hills with a 90% tribal population, could study only up to Class 8 due to poverty and seasonal migration in search of work, according to the report by The New Indian Express.
Determined that his four children should have a different future, Aundi took up tailoring and toiled hard to provide them with a stable education, ably supported by his wife Kavitha. He succeeded in making his first two children undergraduates, which in itself is no mean feat.
If he had not died in 2024, Aundi would have not only witnessed the proudest moment of his life but also the beginning of a transformation in the lives of his family as his third child Rajeshwari will make history by becoming the first tribal student from a Government Tribal Residential School run by the state government to enter into an IIT, most likely IIT-Madras.
The girl from Government Tribal Residential Higher Secondary School in Karumandurai, has secured an all-India rank of 417 under the Scheduled Tribes category in the JEE Advanced results published on Monday.
With the closing ST rank of the last tribal girl student to get admitted to IIT-Madras in 2024 being 1,691, officials of the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare (ADTW) Department in Tamil Nadu and her school teachers are confident that Rajeshwari will certainly secure a seat in the premiere institution, although getting into department of Computer Science or Electrical Engineering could be tough, as per a report by The New Indian Express.
