Nearly 120 years ago Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya left his law practice with an aim to start an Indian university that brought multiple streams of education to students at Varanasi. He had no money but was ready to beg to the princely families of India for the sake of Educating India
His first associates after over seven years of effort was the Maharaja of Darbangha and Maharaja of Banaras who not only donated money but accompanied him in his noble pursuit of persuading other Maharajas for funding. Benaras Hindu University was finally founded in the year 1916 despite resistance from many powerful people including theNizam of Hyderabad and the missionaries who ran the education system in British India.
They pulled of a seemingly impossible task – to build a massive university of brick and mortar on a 2700 acre of land run wholly by Indians that taught engineering and medical science, but arts, pharmacy, science, agriculture and law. It also had residential facility for 10,000 students and teachers.
Education and employment of the youth of our nation is even today a cause worth fighting for, begging for. We need to be inspired by Pandit Malviyajee and build a team ready to fight and beg for India. We have been fortunate to have everything in our lifetime. If we don’t do it who will.
Asian countries like China and South Korea who were economically in bad shape just 30 years ago have moved far ahead of us . We have fallen far behind as our education system provides no hope and no answers.
Three years ago when we formed the IIT IIM Stock market group with a handful of members and started sharing our experience on buying and selling stocks, I had no idea that we would end up being a 1000 member fraternity sharing knowledge. This is an immensely talented pool of people to begin with, from where we can create a small team that starts educating people online.
So despite having content creation background but no grooming as a teacher, I started the Technology for All TALL online video program after my book got published with the help of Kamlesh Kumar an IIT D / IIMB alumni and an entrepreneur based in Bangalore. We have come a long way since with the book available in 300 global libraries including MIT and UC Berkeley and over 40 videos made that taught us how to deliver content online.
Most importantly we have started building a team of people who are ready to give back to the nation and teach Technology. The third member of our team is Ashish Mehta from Pune an IIT Kharagpur alumni who is a Professor and a research fellow in IIT and an expert in Blockchain, cyber security and digital transformation. So we have taken the next step to connect start online and offline education and take it to schools and colleges ready to start informal education and make it truly scalable and give it a fully professional touch.