Why An IIT Graduate Left His Cushy Job Abroad To Set Up Digital Classrooms In Rural Bihar
by The Daily Eye Team November 5 2016, 2:25 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 53 secsWhen Pramod Kumar, who belongs to a small village in Bihar, decided to prepare for engineering exams, he was struck by the lack of educational resources like textbooks in regional languages. Pramod’s parents belonged to a remote area in Bihar — his father passed away when Pramod was very young, and his mother could attend school only up to fifth standard because the nearest one was 10 kilometres away from her village. Pramod finished his schooling at a government school. He says, “I studied in Hindi till 12th standard, and I always thought that communicating fluently in English was my weak point. I used to feel insecure about my accent and people even bullied me about it.” Pramod went on to graduate from IIT Varanasi and later completed a degree in management from IIM Kozhikode. But, he knew that he was one of the fortunate ones, that many other students like him were unable to achieve their potential because of the dismal state of the education system in Bihar.