They’re India’s nationwide college board toppers over 20 years. So it’s no shock that one’s a cancer doctor in New York; one other is a PhD fellow at MIT; one is a Harvard professor; one a hedge fund supervisor in Singapore — and as many as 11 are working for Google.
Every is a narrative of particular person expertise and energy, excellence and achievement, outliers all. However taken collectively, as an investigation by The Indian Express reveals, the arcs of their completely different lives — and careers — inform vital tales of a technology coming of age after India opened up within the Nineties. Of how some aspirations endure, some don’t; how some divides have crumbled, some stay as intractable as ever.
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Greater than half the toppers dwell abroad at the moment, the US being the vacation spot of selection. Most are in science and know-how with IITs their most favoured undergraduate pit-stop; greater than half of them grew up exterior metros, in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, and just one is a minority — there’s not one Dalit or tribal. And in case you are a woman topper, you might be a lot much less more likely to transfer abroad than in case you had been a boy.
These are among the many key findings of the four-month investigation by The Indian Specific that tracked down 86 women and men who stood first in India, between 1996 and 2015, of their Class 10 and 12 exams carried out by the Central Board of Secondary Schooling (CBSE) and the Council for the Indian Faculty Certificates Examinations.
Amid hovering cut-off marks based mostly on Class 12 Board exams, as the federal government, in tune with its new Nationwide Schooling Coverage, units up a panel to discover a nationwide check to rejig the school admission course of, the findings from the investigation are tips that could the challenges forward.
Over half the toppers dwell or work overseas
Greater than half the toppers — between 21 and 42 years of age — are in international international locations, most of them are employed, 1 / 4 of them are pursuing superior levels. Three of each 4 who’re overseas are in the US. Whereas the US stays the popular vacation spot, others are based mostly within the UK, Australia, Singapore, China, Canada, Bangladesh and the UAE.
Of these employed overseas, most work within the tech sector, adopted by drugs and finance.
4 out of 10 working within the US are in Silicon Valley. Like Biswanath Panda, who graduated from Little Flower Faculty in Jamshedpur in 1999 and is now senior director of engineering at Google in San Francisco. Certainly, Google is dwelling to 11 toppers, essentially the most in anybody firm.
Karuna Ganesh, 37, left the nation quickly after topping her Class 10 ICSE examination in 1999 to hitch United World School (UWC), USA, a world boarding college that brings collectively 200 college students from 80 international locations. She is now a physician-scientist on the Memorial Sloan Kettering Most cancers Middle in New York.
“My dad and mom had been supportive about my shifting overseas since UWC has a powerful monitor report of sending college students to high universities all over the world, along with the worldwide, multicultural training it supplies,” stated Ganesh, who subsequently earned a BA in Biochemistry, MA in Drugs, PhD in Molecular Biology and MD from Cambridge College.
Most went overseas to review citing higher ecosystem
Increased training is the first motive why toppers left the nation. Of these dwelling overseas, over 70% left India to pursue both their undergraduate or postgraduate research — solely a dozen of the 86 went to take up a job.
For instance, Somnath Bose, 40, left India in 2008 with an MBBS from Calcutta Medical School and an MD from AIIMS, to pursue coaching in essential care. In the present day, he’s an assistant professor at Boston’s Harvard Medical Faculty and workers anesthesiologist at its educating hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Middle.
Bose says that when he left India, programmes in essential care had been simply beginning to open up. “The US… had well-established medical coaching pathways in that subject, plus afforded alternatives to combine medical work with deal with analysis,” he stated.
Janaki Sheth, 28, who studied at a college in Thane and aced the Class 10 ICSE exams in 2008 with 98.6%, has a BTech in Engineering Physics from IIT Bombay. In 2014, she left for the US for a PhD in Physics on the College of California, Los Angeles. On why she determined to review overseas, Sheth, now a postdoctoral scholar on the College of Pennsylvania, stated, “Six to seven years in the past, scientific analysis was not very well-funded in India. So whereas I had some invaluable experiences at IIT, it was not ample for a PhD. Within the US, science will get an ideal coverage thrust which implies there are extra locations to do good work, and there’s fixed upgradation of know-how,” she stated.
For Arkya Chatterjee, 24, who topped the Class 12 ISC examination in 2015 from a Kolkata college earlier than graduating from IIT-Bombay in Engineering Physics, the transfer to the US revealed a unique aspect to the teacher-student equation. “(There may be) extra honesty about collaborations — professors encourage college students to speak to one another and work on homework collectively. This reduces the motivation for educational dishonesty. This type of belief was principally absent at my undergraduate institute again in India,” stated Chatterjee, who’s now enrolled as a PhD pupil at MIT.
Greater than half the toppers (48 out of 86) selected engineering as their undergraduate diploma — solely 12 did drugs. Amongst those that studied engineering, six out of 10 did so at an IIT.
Many, nonetheless, confessed that an curiosity in engineering wasn’t at all times the motivation behind the choice.
Sundaresh Nageswaran, 32, who topped the CBSE Class 10 examination in 2004 earlier than learning Mechanical Engineering at IIT-Roorkee, stated it was the “societal norm” for many who did properly in class to review engineering. “Engineering, or extra particularly IIT, was the rule… I later realised I wasn’t thinking about engineering and moved out to different fields,” he stated.
Sundresh later pursued an MBA from the Indian Faculty of Enterprise, Hyderabad, and till September, was basic supervisor (enterprise improvement) at Sea6 Vitality, a platform that harnesses the potential of oceans. In his position there, he admits, there was no direct use for his mechanical engineering know-how. He’s now engaged on his personal enterprise.
To make sure, few remorse their undergraduate diploma in engineering. Nonetheless, many want they’d publicity to different professions or profession counselling at that age.
Lekshmi Vaidyeswaran, 29, who topped the CBSE Class 10 examination in 2007 with 99%, and is at the moment a senior product supervisor at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance coverage in Mumbai, has a BTech diploma in utilized electronics and instrumentation from the School of Engineering Trivandrum.
“My household wished me to go for Commerce. I insisted on engineering as every other selection was perceived as one thing opted by those that couldn’t make it to engineering,” she stated. “In hindsight, sure, I’d have gone for Commerce and pursued Chartered Accountancy.”
Subhojit Ghosh, 29, who topped the ISC Class 12 examination from a Kolkata college in 2009 with 99.25%, has a BTech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur.
He later did an MBA from Harvard Enterprise Faculty and is working as senior product supervisor at Amazon in Seattle. “Whereas the IIT model was positively an element, there was no household stress… I appreciated math and science, and agree that I didn’t know a lot about different non-IIT choices at that time, most likely as a consequence of lack of profession recommendation at a college stage. However in hindsight, a greater consciousness on how your undergraduate diploma hyperlinks to numerous sorts of future profession roles might have altered my choice of selecting mechanical engineering,” he stated.
Those that stayed again in India
Amongst toppers who stayed again or returned to India after their greater research, most have chosen a profession in finance, adopted by the tech sector, consulting, and enterprise. That is not like these settled overseas, who principally labored within the tech sector.
For Parnil Singh, 27, the CBSE Class 10 topper of 2009 from a college in Visakhapatnam, there was little incentive to pursue postgraduate research in administration overseas since, she says, premier enterprise colleges in India provided extra worth for cash. Whereas she was at IIM-Calcutta, the place she did her MBA, Singh was provided a job by Kearney, a world administration consulting agency, and joined them in Delhi as advisor this month. “Whereas an MBA overseas has its deserves, it’s too costly. And at the moment, India has a lot of nice jobs and alternatives within the non-public sector,” she stated.
Tackling social, financial challenges
Of the 86 toppers, just one belonged to the Different Backward Class (OBC) class. None was Dalit or tribal. Of the 76 toppers who responded to this newspaper’s questionnaire, simply 5 had been first-generation college-goers.
Mohammad Ismat, 29, from Imphal, Manipur, topped the Class 12 CBSE examination in 2012. Ismat, who says his trainer S M Singh paid his Board examination charge since his household couldn’t afford it, went on to review BSc (Honours) Physics at Delhi’s St. Stephen’s School, funded by a company home.
A private disaster at dwelling meant that Ismat needed to put his profession aspirations on maintain for nearly 4 years after he graduated from Delhi College. This yr, he began making ready for the UPSC examination. Of the 74 toppers who shared their household earnings with The Indian Specific, just one got here from the bottom incomes quartile. The scholar, who didn’t wish to be recognized, stated his dad and mom earned lower than Rs 1 lakh every year when he topped the Class 12 Board examination.
Nearly three-fourths stated their dad and mom earned over Rs 5 lakh yearly on the time of their Board exams. The remaining reported annual household incomes of between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 5 lakh.
Greater than half the toppers are from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities equivalent to Dehradun, Dhanbad, Asansol, Jamshedpur, Trivandrum, Lucknow and Meerut — cities the place English-medium ICSE and CBSE colleges have ridden on the ambition and aspiration for a greater future in these elements. These are additionally the cities hardest hit throughout the pandemic, compounding fears of job losses and faculty dropouts.
