Jagriti Yatra

This is what the Jagriti Yatra site portrays.

Jagriti Yatra is a 15-day long, national train journey that takes you 8000 kilometers across the length and breadth of India, to understand and build the India of smaller towns and villages through enterprise.  As the name suggests, its a journey of social awakening.

I got to meet one of the yatris yesterday, Bhushan, who has recently joined SELCO. He is an engineering student from Hyderabad, who after engineering realized that the social sector was where he wanted to be, and then shifted to Development Studies at the Azim Premji University.  And he was talking about what a transformational experience the yatra was.

It's a program that's now been on for six years; an annual train journey that takes highly motivated young Indians and a few from outside India as well, between the ages of 20 and 27, on an 18 day national odyssey. An exclusive 18 bogie train that takes 450 young men and women selected out of a pool of thousands of applications, to meet with and learn from exceptional entrepreneurs who are developing innovative solutions to India's challenges. It is focused on the adaptation and replication of successful enterprise models across Middle India. The enterprises they visit are like Joe Madith of Gram Vikas, Dr. Aravind of Aravind Eye Hospital, Anshu of Goonj, Kiran Mazumdar of Biocon and also Harish Hande from Selco. 

Here's the path the train takes:

The 450 yatris literally live on the train for the duration of journey and the conversion ratio into entrepreneurs is 16% and 47% of these have been started in small towns and villages .....amazing numbers !!

The concept has as its center the belief that enterprise with a focus on the problems and solutions of the “middle India” of 500 million people earning Rs.100 to 200 a day, is the need of the hour.

A yatri said: 'Whether or not I have been successful, whether or not I got the best of this opportunity I don’t really know but more important is that after the 18 days on train, I am able to ask more questions' ..a true awakening.

And I was so happy to read...Google is their main sponsor. It's said..once a googler ...always a googler, true I guess :).  Coca Cola, Rolls Royce and The Indian Express are the Co Sponsors.

A picture of energy, comradeship and joy there !