The Super 30 journey - How it all began!

Renowned mathematician and columnist Anand Kumar who  is known for his Super 30 programme stressed on positive thinking, hard work and patience as the three  keys for students to reach  their goal while speaking in flagship lecture series being organised by WIC Dehradun on Saturday.

Sharing his own experiences, he said that being from a poor family, he had to study in a Government school. “However, my passion for mathematics made me to march on, taking  all the obstacles in my stride. 

“The research papers I submitted  were published in many famous journals when I was doing my graduation. I received an offer from Cambridge University, but I couldn’t make it.  Our family’s financial condition was further   compounded by my father’s untimely death. Things were so grim that I started selling papads door-to-door with my mother to earn just for bare survival. I then started teaching two students and over the time, the number of students increased. Now, I am running Ramanujan School of Mathematics in Bihar,” he said.

He further said that the plight of students who could not  afford studies had moved him deeply. “I suffered the same way and so my empathy for those wretched students prodded me to embark on the Super 30 journey. This initiative, started humbly, has  helped close to 400 students from economically unprivileged families  to reach places which  they could never have imagined. I am really proud of them as they have scaled dizzy heights, clearing IIT and working now in places across the world,” he said.

Dwelling on the import of education in dispelling darkness and ushering in light in poverty-scourged life, Kumar said that one cannot have everything by money. “But education can revolutionise life,” he said.  Asking students to fall in on their own inner reservoirs for strength, the mathematician said that he had been left high and dry by all he approached for some help during those grim days of struggle for survival. “They turned me away, but  I was not to give in,” he added.

Asked about the future goals he has set for his mission Super  30, he said that they are now working to take the mission across the country.

“But we want to move step by slow step. As our focus is on quality we cannot afford to hasten things. However, if things go as we desire the light of the mission would reach many parts of the country by 2019,” he said.

He said that his thrust is on simplicity in teaching. “This is what can make a teacher a distinguished one. We must make things to the students as simple as possible.  This is why we have switched to multimedia as through it the students can understand things by cartoon characters which make studies interesting as well as simple,” he said. Talking about his upcoming biopic where Hrithik Roshan  is playing the role, he said it would be  released in January 2019.  “I am sure that the film once released would go a long way in steeling resolve of many of the unfortunate students to reach goal while taking the hindrances in the right spirit,” he said.