Savita Doke enrolled herself at a local college for an MBA course.
Her mother sells scrap for a living. Her father goes door to door and trades in old clothes. Rs 250 is all they can put together on the table every day. And yet Savita Doke dreams big- to be an MBA graduate.
Nothing unusual one would think. That's life in India, especially in an aspirational city like Mumbai. Except that what brings twenty-two-year old Savita's story to the forefront is her determination to slog it out and ensure she gets a decent education. Living in single-room tenement with her sister in a slum in western suburbs of Kandivali in Mumbai, Savita, after graduating, first joined a pizza outlet where she earned Rs 4,500 per month. Then one day, she reveals, she was struck by reality.
"I said to myself I could keep working at a pizza joint, but then what? I always wanted to study and was convinced that was the only way to help my family come out of our state of poverty," Doke explains.
So, while continuing with her full time 9 hour job, she enrolled herself at a local college for an MBA course. As a Dalit, she got a seat in the Scheduled Caste quota and the institute consequently halved her Rs 1 lakh annual fee. She then got a government scholarship that took care of Rs 25,000 and she added the same amount from her salary. Unable to focus on her studies, she quit her job in December 2012. She had more time to focus on her course but then no money to pay for the second year. That's when a city paper reported her problem and overnight her destiny seems to have changed.
"My fees have been now taken care of! Complete strangers have come forward and are
offering to help. There is so much positivity in the world," she says elatedly.
While her institute has been supportive, she concedes the class divide did disturb her. "Today, it is all about e-learning. Our assignments or reading material are all on PDF files or on power point. But I don't have a laptop or a computer.
Mushkil hota hai."
But she didn't let that affect her. Nor did her broken English let her down. "Our assignments are all in English. But I always have a dictionary with me. That solved my problems to an extent," Savita says giggling girlishly.
Unlike many of her friends in the neighbourhood who have been married off by their parents, Savita says her parents have not forced her to tie the knot, especially as her sisters are not into happy marriages. "In the 1980s my family escaped the poverty and repeated droughts in our village in Jalna district in Maharashtra and migrated to Mumbai. They are not educated. But they are very happy that I am doing this. I just hope and pray I get a decent job in the corporate world."