Health is Wealth, a 250-word essay with a ringing endorsement of prime minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Movement), has won Sangli (Maharashtra)-based teenager Ashish Jadhav #1 rank in version 9.0 of the Tata Build India (TBI) Essay Competition 2014-15 (Marathi language category). Ashish was among 11 national language (including English) winners to be awarded a certificate, TBI trophy and laptop computer at a celebratory event in New Delhi on December 8, 2016, followed by a tour of Rashtrapati Bhavan and meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee.
The TBI School Essay Competition is a two-phase contest organised annually by the well-known Mumbai-based Tata Group to motivate India’s youth to come up with nation-building initiatives. The 2014-15 ‘Clean India’ contest attracted entries from 3 million students across 180 cities countrywide.
The elder child of Shashikant Jadhav, a textile factory employee, and Ashwini, a homemaker, Ashish, a class XII science student of Shantiniketan Vidyalaya Junior College in Sangli’s Madhavnagar gram panchayat, is thrilled by the award. “Though I have always loved writing and participated in essay competitions before, I hadn’t taken part in a national contest. I still find it difficult to accept that my essay was among the best in the country. Moreover, my first visit to the national capital and Rashtrapati Bhavan was a dream come true,” says Ashish, who is actively involved in the clean India movement of his local gram panchayat.
In his essay, the 17-year-old highlighted the linkage between public hygiene and personal health citing the large number of deaths caused by chikungunya and dengue. “There is urgent need to address and resolve public hygiene issues. If we want to compete against the rest of the world, we need to be free of disease,” he says.
With his class XII board examinations less than a month away, Ashish is focusing on academics, making maximum benefit of his newly acquired laptop. “After Plus Two, my dream is to study software engineering. Simultaneously, I plan to campaign for a litter tax as I believe that is the only way to realise a clean, green India,” says this go-getter who is determined to go places.
Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)
Karun Balachandar
Extra-curricular writing is the favourite pastime of Bangalore-based Karun Divij Balachandar (16). On January 13, his debut 65-page novel The Teenager’s Guide to the Universe (Notion Press, Chennai) which explores the mysteries surrounding the cosmos, was released at the CIE (UK)-affiliated Trio World Academy, Bangalore where he is a class XI student. Renowned astronomer and director of Kolkata’s M.P. Birla Planetarium, Dr. Debiprasad Duari and former director of ISRO’s satellite communications programme, K. Narayanan, were the guests of honour.
The older child of Jayaraman Balachandar, a senior executive with Siemens AG, and food stylist mother Rupa, Karun unsurprisingly attributes his writing skills to “voracious reading”. “Huey, Dewey and Louce in Outer Space was my first introduction to the world of astronomy which over the years developed into a passion,” recalls Karun, who spent his formative years in the US making frequent visits to the Chabot Space Centre in Oakland, California and NASA, Florida in particular.
A chance meeting three years ago with Dr. Duari during a family vacation in Kolkata was a defining moment for Karun. “Impressed with my knowledge of space and desire to educate youth about the universe, Dr. Duari suggested I write on the subject. My mentor and guide since then, he also made valuable suggestions after vetting the initial draft,” says Karun, who began writing his novel in 2013 which took four months to complete. The writer attributes his lucid narrative style to his mother and English teacher Richard Old.
Despite a tight schedule of preparing for his school-leaving class XII exam next year, Karun sets aside two hours everyday for general extra-curricular reading. “I don’t watch television like other kids but prefer to gather information from online sources and social media sites,” he says. Currently, he’s working on his second novel which “is an investigation into old myths worldwide”.
About his future plans and career path Karun is keeping his options open. “I have shortlisted pediatric diagnostics, cosmology, philosophy and immunology as career options. But continuous writing and ideation is common to all of them,” he says.
Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)