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Zae¬C!

Santosh Kumar, son of a landless farmer from the dirt-poor Indian state of Bihar,
has got through the entrance exam of the country's most prestigious engineering
school, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
When you consider the fact that some 230,000 students from all over India compete for
barely 5,000 seats in the country's seven IITs every year, you realise the significance of
Santosh's achievement - he ranked 3,537.

IIT graduates have gone on to head companies like Vodafone, Infosys, Sun Microsystems,
United Airlines and McKinsey. There is hardly a US-based Fortune 500 company which
does not have an IIT alumnus in its senior management.
Santosh and other underprivileged students in a state where nearly half the population cannot
read or write have been helped by a small, derelict training school in the state capital, Patna.
The private coaching school, named after famous Indian mathematician Srinavasa
Ramanujan, has attained a cult status among academics and students for consistently
churning out students who crack arguably one of the world's most competitive exams.

Hitting the jackpot

Most of the students are like Santosh, whose elder brother, Niranjan, never went to school.
His younger brother, Saurabh, emboldened by his brother's feat, is pursuing his education.

Santosh Kumar, son of a landless farmer from the dirt-poor Indian state of Bihar,
has got through the entrance exam of the country's most prestigious engineering
school, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

When you consider the fact that some 230,000 students from all over India compete for
barely 5,000 seats in the country's seven IITs every year, you realise the significance of
Santosh's achievement - he ranked 3,537.
IIT graduates have gone on to head companies like Vodafone, Infosys, Sun Microsystems,
United Airlines and McKinsey. There is hardly a US-based Fortune 500 company which
does not have an IIT alumnus in its senior management.

Santosh and other underprivileged students in a state where nearly half the population cannot
read or write have been helped by a small, derelict training school in the state capital, Patna.

The private coaching school, named after famous Indian mathematician Srinavasa
Ramanujan, has attained a cult status among academics and students for consistently
churning out students who crack arguably one of the world's most competitive exams.

Hitting the jackpot

Most of the students are like Santosh, whose elder brother, Niranjan, never went to school.
His younger brother, Saurabh, emboldened by his brother's feat, is pursuing his education.

Mr Abhyanand, who himself went to an IIT, teaches physics without taking a salary from
the school.

"My remuneration is seeing the growing numbers of students coming from poor, rural
families who succeed. I hope they pull their families and relatives out of penury," he says.
He is not wide of the mark - 11 of the 28 successful students who cracked the IIT test last
year were from the lower castes, the bottom-most rung of Indian society.
The parents of students like Anupam Kumar (rank: 2,299) and Priyanshu Kumar (rank:
2,379) and Suresh Ram work as auto-rickshaw drivers, watch mechanic and construction
workers respectively.

Writer Sandipan Deb who has written a book on IITs says these students are "exposed to a
whole new world" when they arrive on the IIT campuses.

"The first thing they realise is that just because they spent their lives in a village does not
make them any less bright than the kids from the metropolises. This is a huge confidence
booster," he says.
The training school's feat is amazing in a state where more than two million children are out
of school, and the literacy rate is a shameful 47%.