14 underprivileged students of Odisha have qualified the national medical entrance exam, NEET, this year and their success story is as inspiring as the journey of their mentor. 47 year old Ajaya Bahadur Singh had always dreamt of becoming a doctor, but could not meet his aspirations following a tragedy. Undeterred, he chose to help underprivileged students who aim to become doctor. In 2017 he started "Zindagi" foundation. The upshot of this endeavor brought laurels, when 18 students qualified NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) under his mentorship in 2018.
"In 2018, students came to Zindagi. 18 students had qualified and out of them 12 took admissions in different medical colleges of Odisha," he told reporters in a press conference.
A graduate in Sociology, Mr Singh, had to sell tea to make ends meet. After completing intermediate education, I used to sell soda making machine. I gave tuitions as well to complete my education," he said.
After overcoming financial crisis, he pledged to help the needy students in fulfilling their dreams.
"When I am now in a good condition, I think I should find helpless students who could not afford to pay and help them. Poor students can join our foundation, the expenses of their accommodation, food, studies and coaching of medical entrance examinations are borne by us," he said.
"I will continue to take 'Gurudakshina' from students for the whole life. I only want my students to treat poor patients free of cost," he said.
Krishna Mohanty, one of 14 students of "Zindagi" who qualified for the exam, has been roped in by a government medical college. "My father was 'rajmistri' while my mother was a housewife. When my father died, I was in the sixth standard. My mother prepares 'pitha' for ISKCON temple at Bhubaneswar. I contacted Raj sir and later joined the Zindagi batch. I scored 573 marks in NEET exam 2019," she told ANI.
Among the 14 students of Zindagi, Aniruddha Nayak who hails from Narasinghpur area of Cuttack district has secured the highest rank in Singh's 2018 batch with All India Rank (AIR) of 5662.
Besides these two, Abanikant Swain (8582), Sailendu Raut (9196), Sai Gourav Mohapatra (10558), Sudhansu Priyadarshini (14831), Krishna Mohanty (15295), Omm Singh (16501), Amiya Ranjan Das (25361), Rutuparna MalIa (35265), Jaya Prakash Panda (36900), Manas Ranjan Mishra (47571), Rakesh Kumar Rout (63502), Happin Pattanayak (6501 0) and Namrata Panda (72778) qualified the exam.
Modelled along the lines of Super 30, a record-setting program run by the acclaimed mathematician Anand Kumar, "Zindagi" is specifically set for students who are highly talented but have financial limitation to take highly-expensive tuition classes.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) announced the results of NEET 2019 on June 5. As per the data shared by NTA 30,000 students have cleared the NEET in Odisha.
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