The teacher who has become icon

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The teacher who has become an icon
Anand Kumar's Super 30, a coaching institute in Patna which prepares 30 poor kids for
the Indian Institute of Technology entrance exam free of cost, has achieved iconic stature
because of its success rate.

A Ganesh Nadar met Anand Kumar, the
fiery and idealistic teacher-founder as we
continue our series on Extraordinary
Indians.

They are a troika of very young, simple and
humble teachers led by a fiery and idealistic
Anand Kumar. I could have mistaken
Kumar for the neighbourhood shopkeeper,
he was unshaven and dressed simply.

But behind that deceptive exterior lay an extraordinary man who has become an icon for
helping underprivileged students from the villages of Bihar clear the prestigious entrance
exam to the Indian Institutes of Technology.

Anand Kumar runs Super 30, a small IIT coaching school in Patna. This year too, all 30
of its students cleared the IIT entrance test, the dream of many young Indians.

Kumar met me in his ordinary home where I learnt how he brought hope into the lives of
many poor children, making them believe everyday that in merit and hard work lie life's
endless opportunities.

Like many Indians, Kumar had had his own youthful dreams of escaping from poverty by
doing well in his studies. He had finished a BA Honours in Maths and was accepted for a
post graduate degree by Cambridge University
in the United Kingdom.

Just then fate struck and his father Rajendra
Prasad, a clerk in the postal department, passed
away.

Cambridge became a distant dream never to be
fulfilled for Anand Kumar. Well meaning
relatives and friends tried to get him his father's
job but he did not like the idea as he wanted to
become a mathematician. He sacrificed the security of a government job to live his
dream.

Pursuing excellence in rotational moulding.

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He was only 21, his younger brother Pranab was 19 and studying at the Banaras Hindu
University in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. "Mother made papad and I sold it door to door.
We used to call it 'Anand Papad'," he says.

Times were hard. Everyday Anand carried two bags on a cycle and returned home after
selling them. To save money, the family gave up the telephone connection, stopped the
milk and daily newspaper.

The Swami Vivekananda Sewashram in Patna let out a room to him for Rs 500. Here he
started a maths tution centre in 1995. Initially there were just two students, his fee was Rs
500 for each student annually. He would teach and then go to sell the papad. Slowly his
reputation as a good teacher drew more students. Three years later, he stopped being a
papad salesman, the telephone connection was restored along with the milk and
newspaper.

In 2001 his fee was Rs 1,500 per year. He now charges Rs 4,000 per student per year.
There are over 300 students at his tuition centre which is named after mathematics genius
Srinivasa Ramanujan. The money earned from here is used for providing free coaching
and stay to Super 30 students.

The thought behind setting up Super 30 came to Kumar in 2001 when a poor student told
him he could not afford the Rs 1,500 annual fee.

Anand Kumar then started the Super 30 institute to coach the poorest students and
prepare them for the IIT-JEE. His only criteria was that they had to be bright and
talented.

News about Super 30 spread through word of mouth primarily by the 300 students who
were already taking coaching from Anand Kumar. For his Super 30 initiative, Kumar
received more than 800 applications. The application fee was Rs 10.

An entrance test was conducted and 100 students were short-listed. The economic
background of these students was checked and the poorest among them were selected.

The students of Super 30 receive coaching for a whole year. They get free food cooked in
Anand Kumar's home and are housed in rooms spread over the city. The two girls in the
last group stayed in a girl's hostel.

The students are taught four days a week from 4 pm to 8.30 pm. The rest of the time, they
study or hold group discussions amongst themselves. Tests are conducted everyday.


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The other two teachers at the institute are Praveen Kumar and Amit Kumar. Super 30's
first batch appeared for the IIT-JEE entrance test in 2003. 18 of the 30 cleared the exam.
In 2004, 22 were successful; in 2005, 26; in 2006, 28; in 2008, 2009 and 2010 -- all 30
students made it.

Now Anand Kumar wants to start a school
from Class VI onwards. He also wants to coach
students for the Maths and Physics Olympiad.
"I want one of my students to win the Nobel
Prize," he declares with all humility.

Many people have come forward to help
Kumar financially but he has humbly refused.
"We have refused all help so far. I will take it
when I start building the school," says Anand
Kumar, who has two well armed but polite
guards.

Ask him about the armed guards and he says, "I was threatened by a criminal who was in
jail at that time. He wanted me to stop Super 30."

When Kumar refused, he was attacked at his doorstep and one of his aides was stabbed.
A bomb was thrown at his home and there were gun shots, but he managed to escape
unhurt. After the incident, the police provided him with security.

To get a sense of the impact of Super 30
on the lives of its young students, I met
some of them and came back truly
inspired by what Anand Kumar has
achieved.

Anoop Kumar is from Chewl village in
Aurangabad district in Bihar and has
studied in a Hindi medium school. He
read about Super 30 in the papers and
asked a friend to get him the form.

His father Ram Pravesh Prasad used to run a cloth shop but four years ago, he
disappeared. "Our family survives on the little land we have and tuitions. My elder
brother gives tuitions," says Anoop.

Mohammad Shadab Azam is from Belharia village in Gaya district in Bihar. He too is
from a Hindi medium school. His father Mohammad Aslam teaches typing in the village.


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"No one wants to learn typing these days. Only SSC students who want to become typists
come to my father," he says.

Though the classes in Super 30 are conducted in Hindi he says the students write their
notes in English. Super 30 is like family, he adds.

Subham Kumar Gautam is from Kulti district in Bihar. He is an educated farmer's son.
His father is a postgraduate; his mother is a graduate. Subham's uncle had heard about
Super 30 during his visits to Patna and picked up a form for his nephew.

"All our meals come from Sir's home, there is a stove here, we sometimes make chuda
(flat rice) or chapati and eat it with jaggery. We don't go out for movies, there is no
television and no newspapers," he says.

Vishwaraj Anand is a Super 30 alumni who joined IIT in 2009. He is doing computer
science at IIT-Patna. He belongs to Hasanpura village in Patna district and has three elder
sisters. Two of them tried for admission to the government engineering college but did
not succeed. This spurred Vishwaraj to try harder and he did succeed.

His father works in a company that makes transformers. He is paying his IIT fee through
a bank loan.

After IIT, he plans to appear for the Union Public Service Commission entrance exam
and get into the Indian Administrative Service. "A change has to happen and if I have the
capacity I will change the system," he says.

Narmada Jaiswal joined IIT-Mumbai in
2009. Her father Pramod Kumar Jaiswal
has a medical shop in Patna and had
encouraged his daughter to apply for Super
30.

"Everyone in Patna knows Anand Kumar.
Without Anand Kumar she would not have
got into IIT. I don't have the money to put
her in any of the private engineering
college," he says.

"I am doing chemical engineering and got a merit scholarship from IIT where Rs 25,000
is subsidised from my fees every semester. I also get a stipend of Rs 1,000 every month,"
says Narmada.


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Rahul Sharma is in IIT-Kharagpur. His father works in a printing press in Patna. Rahul
now wants to do a master's degree abroad. "I want to go to Harvard," he says.

Aditya Kumar is from Nalanda district. His father has a gift shop. Two of Aditya's elder
brothers had tried for Super 30 but failed to make it. Aditya is in IIT Guwahati.

"It is not only an intelligent class, it's a morale booster. We know that the past students
have done well. This makes us very self confident," he says.

That is really the uniqueness of Super 30. Where Anand Kumar and his brother Pranab
choose 30 children from the most economically disadvantaged homes who pass their
entrance exams.

A year of this coaching has taken many of them to the Indian Institute of Technology, a
hallowed learning ground in India and the world. All this because one man chose to tutor
them free of cost for a future that could have been lost forever if not for his path-breaking
effort.


The teacher who has become icon

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