46th spot for Usgao ST boy at IITJEE-Advance

PANAJI: Aman Malekar was in Class II when his parents decided to move residence from the interior and forested Mollem to Usgao. Just two years into primary school, Aman’s parents, recognising that their son was unusually bright, realised that they needed to cut the travel time to school for him.
On Sunday, his parents were proven right when Aman, a Scheduled Tribe (ST) student belonging to the gauda community, bagged an all India rank of 46 on the IITJEE-Advance ST list. With it, he becomes probably the only one from his community in Goa to do so. He now dreams of designing and developing drones. In the general category list he features in the first 6,000 at IITJEE-Advance.

The son of junior engineer in the public works department Dinkar and homemaker Sweta, Aman had to travel for over 80km each day to his school — Mushtifund Aaryan Higher Secondary School, Cujira, Panjim — and back.

The school’s director Vynkatesh Prabhudesai said, “It is not easy for students who travel long distances. They get far lesser time at home to study than their classmates.”

“On days when I would stay awake till 3am or 4am to study, my parents would stay up with me and that would motivate me,” Aman, who scored 95.1% at Class X, said.

Aman is not the only one. Many students from rural Goa are dreaming of cracking the IITJEE, despite the lack of coaching facilities near them.

Ravindra Kuchadkar, son of businessman Abhay and homemaker Radha, would travel a similar distance like Aman, from Margao to Panaji, each day, to attend Mushtifund Aaryaan Higher Secondary School. Ravindra, who also has a high score of 306 at BITSAT and 568 in NEET, finished in the first 5,000 in the country at the IITJEE-Advance. “I just want to join an IIT. The stream is secondary,” said Ravindra, who would get home from school only by 8pm everyday.

Also doing its part to fuel the dreams of rural and economically backward students to get into an IIT is the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya of Canacona. This year Sonu Harijan, Ratnesh Velip, Neshma Maitri and Prasmit Butt cleared the IITJEE-Main, but could not crack the IITJEE-Advance.