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Shanthi Raghavan's inspiring approach to enabling India's disabled includes training, technology, and tons of determination. Know more about her journey here!
Shanthi Raghavan’s inspiring approach to enabling India’s disabled includes training, technology, and tons of determination. Know more about her journey here!
“Disability isn’t the problem, the lack of solutions that work for the disabled is.” Shanti Raghavan is a believer. She says, “Any person with disability actually can do any job if they have the right solution. I call it the ‘workplace’ solution. For instance if you or I want to see at night we would use a torch, and in the same way a person with disability can use a suitable solution and achieve a similar result.”
Shanti’s brother, Hari, started losing his eyesight at the age of fifteen due to retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that gradually diminishes eyesight. During Hari’s visit to the US when he was almost still a teenager, where Shanti and her husband – Dipesh Sutaria – lived at the time, they collectively decided that if he couldn’t see, that didn’t mean he couldn’t do. And so, they did: they attempted every kind of adventure sport and every – ‘ing’… swimming, kayaking and snorkeling too! This is the summer that initiated Shanti and Dipesh, into the world of empowering people with disabilities.
Today, Shanti and Dipesh run Enable India, an organization that is enabling thousands of people with disability, allowing them to contribute on par with the able. They do this by creating solutions that include – sometimes even technology, by training differently abled men and women, by sensitizing corporates on how to effectively employ people with disabilities, and by working closely with the state government to create inclusive policies.
To know more on the lives that Enable India has touched and Shanthi Raghavan’s inspiring contribution in this space, watch this video from Chai with Lakshmi!
An award-winning online talk show featuring people and ideas positively shaping India for the future. Anchored by Lakshmi Rebecca. Produced by Red Bangle. This show is over 120 episodes and 2.8 million views read more...
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Children should be taught to aspire to be successful, but success doesn't have to mean an IIT admission only!
Imagine studying for 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 whole years for the JEE exam only to find out that there’s only a very, very slim chance of getting into an IIT. It is a fact widely acknowledged that the IIT-JEE is one of the toughest exams not just in India but in the whole world. Apart from IITs, the NITs and IIITs of India also accept the JEE scores for admission. There are said to be a total of 23 IITs, 31 NITs and 25 IIITs across the country.
Now, let’s first get a few facts about the IITs right. First, according to the NIRF rankings of 2023, only 17 IITs rank in the top 50 engineering colleges of India and only a few (around 5) IITs are in the list of the world’s top 100 engineering colleges. Second, the dropout rate of IIT-qualifying students stands at least at 20%, with reasons being cited ranging from academic pressure and unmanageable workload to caste discrimination and high levels of competition within the IIT.
So, it’s quite clear that the journey of making it through IIT is as challenging as the journey of getting into an IIT. Third and most important of all, the acceptance rate or the odds of getting into an IIT are below 3% which is a lot lower than the acceptance rate of highly and very highly ranked US universities. Four, getting into an IIT of one’s choice doesn’t mean one will also get into a branch of one’s preference at that IIT.
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