Express News Service
PATNA: ‘The village of IITians’ in Bihar’s Gaya district is humming with activities once again. Situated on the banks of Falgu river, Patwa Toli has turned into a pilgrimage site for IIT aspirants, who jostle with each other to attend free-of-cost classes run by IIT graduates.
On Sunday, a new batch of engineering aspirants attended the induction classes run by ‘Vriksh’, an organisation set up by IIT graduates from Patwa Toli. The village was earlier famous for being a hub of textile industry. Around 200 students, mostly from poor families, joined the online classes on Sunday.
Last year 16 students from this village had cracked the IIT-JEE and got admission in IITs. “Our preference is to guide those students who can’t afford to go outside to prepare for the country’s toughest examination,” said Chandrakant Pateshwari, founder member of Vriksh.
Students from far off villages like Khijarsarai, Bara and Delha, which are affected with Naxal activities, come for classes. Once the classes are over, they visit the nearby library.
“We have set up another library in the premises of Bodh Gaya Mutt with the assistance of district administration. The books and paper notes donated by former students are stored there for IIT aspirants,” Pateshwari revealed. Encouraged with the response from aspirants, the organisation has decided to open such libraries in every panchayat in the district.
So far 300 students from Patwa Toli and its neighbourhood have made it to the IITs in the last two-and-a-half decades. The first student who got selected in IIT was Jitendra Singh, who is now settled in the US. At least 25 families from this village are settled in the US alone after completing engineering courses from IITs, a local resident Alok Kumar said.
The Patwa Toli inhabitants got attracted to IITs way back in 1998-99 when the power looms used for making cloths had to be shut down due to electricity shortage. “With business opportunities shrinking, many families turned to education and it paid high dividends,” said a local resident Prem Narayan Patwa. And now, every house in the village has an engineering graduate.