Life Begins At Zindagi

Bhatta Hembram would have been sweating it out at a construction site like his parents and elder brother had it not been for the Zindagi Foundation—an organisation that prepares poor, meritorious students in Odisha for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). The tribal teenager from Mayurbhanj district cleared this year’s test conducted for enrollment in medical colleges. He can’t thank Ajay Bahadur Singh enough, the founder of Zindagi on the lines of ‘Super 30’ of Anand Kumar in Patna. “I had to quit studies after Class XII due to poverty. Then I heard about Zindagi Foundation. I was selected after a screening test and was provided free food and lodging, study materials and, above all, personal attention at Zindagi that helped me pass the tough all-India test. Ajay Sir is god for me,” Bhatta says.

Bhatta is among 19 poor students that Zindagi coached—all cleared the NEET this year, a repeat of last year’s performance when all 14 made the grades. For all of these students, Ajay Sir is ‘god’.

But how did this man from Jharkhand land in Odisha and make it his workplace? Singh is convinced it was god Jagannath who brought him to Odisha. “I was on my way to Hyderabad in 2004, made a break-journey and visited Puri. When I had my first look at the Lord, I remembered I had seen Him in my dream a few months before. It was love at first sight with Odisha. Coming as I did from lawless Bihar, it seemed to be an island of peace with a much better atmosphere for studies than my native state. It did not take me long to decide to make it my karmabhoomi,” Singh says.    

Singh wanted to become a doctor, but his dream shattered when his father had to undergo a kidney transplant, which crippled the family economically. He quit studies after Class XII, shifted to Deoghar and did odd jobs—selling tea and soft drinks, putting up posters. “At this stage, my father advised me to complete my graduation. So, I shifted to Patna and started giving tuitions to fund my stay and education there. Later, I set up a coaching institute that prepared candidates for railway jobs,” he recalls.

In Bhubaneswar, Singh established Adyanta higher secondary school. Later, he obtained a franchise from Akash Institute for Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. The students of Zindagi receive coaching at the institute’s Bhubaneswar centre for the medical test, while the foundation takes care of their lodging. What sets them apart is the personal attention they receive from Singh—giving the underprivileged students the confidence to take the demanding test.

Singh had received an offer from the Chhattisgarh government to set up a similar facility there with government help. He politely declined. “I was clear from the beginning that I won’t accept any donations or external funds,” he says. Zindagi is run entirely from the income generated by the school he has set up and the franchise arrangement he has with Akash.

By Sandeep Sahu in Bhubaneswar