India's Silent Heroes: Anand Kumar

Meet Santosh. He hails from a remote village of Bihar and comes from a family extremely inundated in poverty. He had studied in a school without windows and even doors. The teachers never showed up. Santosh had no money to even purchase books. In the evenings, he sold vegetables by the roadside to earn bread for his family. Despite his humble origins, Santosh understood the power of education and was very eager to pursue his education further. He managed to acquire some old books from his friends, and studied on his own, without the assistance of any teacher.

Santosh eventually stumbled upon the Super 30 programme. He approached the founder, Anand Kumar, to guide him, agreeing to work as hard as was necessary to get into IIT.

After two years of rigorous studying, he cleared the IIT-JEE exam and secured an entrance to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in India. Many newspapers and magazines from around the world covered Santosh’s story because of the awareness of the difficulties of the IIT-JEE examination. Santosh went on to become a scientist in Belgium.

Santosh is just one of many who approached Anand Kumar. Through Anand's Super 30, they've managed to reach heights heretofore unimaginable for them.

It is said that if teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. Anand Kumar is doing just that through his innovative educational program, Super 30 which stems from deep within the hinterlands of India.

He selects 30 candidates who have shown a spark from the economically impoverished sections of India who can’t afford coaching, and trains them for the IIT-JEE, the entrance examination for Indian Institute of Technology. Barack Obama's envoy R. Hussain termed Super 30 one of the best institutes in India. He prepares the students and his mother, Jayanti Devi cooks and provides lodging for the students.

18 of the 30 students of the first batch of Super 30, made it to IIT in the first year, 2002, when he started the center. The following year saw many applications for the second batch so Super 30 conducted a written test from which to select the 30 candidates. In the year 2004, 22 out of 30 students qualified for IIT JEE. This eventually led to the Super 30 program getting even more applications from hopefuls from all over. In 2017, Super 30 truly shined through when all 30 out of the 30 candidates clear the exam.

Many individuals and institutions have offered Anand financial assistance so he can provide better infrastructure to the students at Super 30 and recruit more students. However Anand and his team have decided to restrict the number of students to 30 and continue without external monetary help.

The life of Anand will be covered in the upcoming film, Super 30, starring Hrithik Roshan. Super 30 is supposed to trace Anand's rise to fame as the founder of the Super 30 program.

Anand announced the film's release date on social media. He has been in constant touch with filmmaker Vikas Bahl and actor Hrithik for the biopic since the inception.

He wrote, 'Eight years elapsed since famous script writer Sanjeev Dutta first drew the sketch of the script for the film on my life. Just a year from now on November 23, 2018, the film will be released.'

You can install the Flutur New Tab Chrome Extension to donate to Anand Kumar's cause without spending any money! It just takes 10 seconds to set up and you get to see beautiful images on your browser every day!