Esteemed chief guest, respected director, faculty members and my dear friends,
The fact that, I am standing before this august gathering on this very special occasion, gives me immense happiness. I consider this award as a blessing from god. At the outset, I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to my parents, teachers of IRMA, my batch mates and the non-teaching staff of IRMA including the mess and the GESS workers, without whose constant support and guidance, I would not have been able to get this award. And this award conferred upon me does not mean that I have outperformed my fellow students, but that, I have been fortunate enough to be the symbol of a collective effort at achieving academic excellence.
In the last one and a half years, I have benefited immensely from the PRM programme. Though every component of this programme is a marvel in itself, I would specifically like to recall my experience in the fieldwork component. During fieldwork, I had my first experience with a development organization – the Tarun Bharat Sangh which brought me in close contact with idealistic leaders like Shri Rajender Singh and others from the civil society. I got a first-hand experience of the realities of rural India. Over there, in that small dusty village of Rajasthan, I understood my first and the most important lesson about “Development”.
Development, does not only mean providing electricity, roads or electronic gadgets but is something beyond that. Man will not be satisfied with a comfortable biological existence. Man has to rise above his biological being and realize himself by expanding his powers of creativity. And for this he has to be empowered by providing him a dignified and an equitable social context. And this, in my strong belief can be ensured through community-based self-reliant systems of social production. In my humble understanding, this is what, we mean by “development”.
Apart from the fieldwork, the rich PRM curriculum, which includes training in development theory to social entrepreneurship to investment analysis, has expanded or rather exploded my academic horizons. The practice oriented segments of the curriculum are giving me not only an understanding of development theory and practice but also an understanding of developmental praxis. For someone like me who came to IRMA with a uni-dimensional background in finance, this was like a blessing from the heavens.
Moreover, being a person who is rather closed to himself, the tremendous opportunities that I got in IRMA for participating in extra-curricular activities – especially the Anand Run and the Ekta Nagar Slum educational initiative, has opened-up my personality, honed my inter-personal and other skills and has made me more confident as a person.
Here, what I feel is that, the compressed 22 month long education process in IRMA is something that incorporates all the salient features in the famous Plato’s scheme of education at the physical, cultural, intellectual and most importantly at the ideological level. In fact, IRMA education goes a step beyond that. IRMA gives us not only the knowledge about how society is and more importantly how society ought to be, but also equips us with the practical skills needed to do constructive work on the social development front.
As we all know, the semi-mythical boy called Eklavya had to sacrifice his thumb and his life’s passion for the crime of being born, in an under-privileged section of society. And the fact remains that, 59 years after India’s independence, there are millions of Eklavyas who are getting prevented by an inequitable social system from entering the corridors of elite institutions like IRMA. And if all those talented Eklavyas had joined PRM 26, I might have very well finished in the last position in my class rather than the first. So, I would like to dedicate this award to all those Eklavyas. And I accept this honour as a tool for strengthening our collective struggle in bringing about a brave new world, a brave new world free from hunger, poverty and injustice.
Thank You.
Neeraj Biyani
This was the speech delivered by Neeraj Biyani of PRM 26 after receiving Eklavya Award for academic excellence on 27th October 2006