After 20 years of struggle, Haryan is now a qualified doctor eager to serve the underprivileged.
Pinki Haryan’s childhood was marked by begging on the streets of Mcleodganj and searching for food in garbage dumps. Today, 20 years later, she holds a medical degree from China and is working hard to pass an exam that will allow her to practice medicine in India.
In 2004, Lobsang Jamyang, a Tibetan refugee monk and director of a Dharamshala-based charitable trust, spotted Haryan begging. A few days later, he recognized her in a slum cluster at Charan Khud. That moment led to Jamyang beginning the difficult task of convincing her parents, especially her father, Kashmiri Lal, to let her pursue education. After hours of persuasion, Lal finally agreed.
Haryan was then enrolled at Dayanand Public School in Dharamshala and became part of the first batch of students at a hostel for destitute children set up by the charitable trust. Ajay Srivastava, president of NGO Umang Foundation, who has been working with Jamyang for 19 years, said that while Haryan initially missed her home and parents, she stayed focused on her studies, knowing it was her way out of poverty.
Her hard work soon paid off. She passed her senior secondary examination and cleared the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), an all-India entrance exam for admission to undergraduate medical courses. However, she could not afford the high fees of private medical colleges in India. With help from the Tong-Len Charitable Trust in the UK, Haryan secured admission to a prestigious medical college in China in 2018. She recently returned to Dharamshala after completing her MBBS.
After 20 years of struggle, Haryan is now a qualified doctor eager to serve the underprivileged. “Poverty was my biggest struggle. It was painful to see my family in distress. When I started school, I had the ambition to succeed in life,” she told.
She recalled her school admission interview as a four-year-old when she expressed her dream of becoming a doctor, though at that time, she didn’t fully understand what a doctor did. Today, she is preparing for the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE), which will allow her to practice medicine in India.
Haryan's brother and sister have also enrolled in school, inspired by her success. She credits Jamyang for her journey from living in a slum to becoming a doctor. “Jamyang believed in me, and that inspired me to do well,” she said, adding that many other children supported by the trust have also achieved great success.
Jamyang shared that his goal when setting up the trust was to provide basic education to poor children so they could live with dignity. "I didn't realize how talented these children were. They are now role models, inspiring others,” he said.
Srivastava added that Jamyang's focus has always been on helping children become good human beings rather than just earning money. "He has dedicated his life to children in slums, and many of them are now engineers, doctors, and journalists," he said.
(This story has been slightly reworked from an auto-generated PTI feed.)