JOBS: Jawahar Knowledge Centres' success in Andhra inspires other states to train rural youth.

When Srinivas Maggidi joined TCS in Mumbai a year ago, he had debts and medical bills worth lakhs to repay. Maggidi belongs to Manchriyal, a village in Andhra Pradesh, where his father worked as a coal mine worker till he became too weak to even walk.

His mother worked in paddy fields and Maggidi's annual family income was Rs 12,000. Today, Maggidi's annual package is Rs 3 lakh, enabling him to pay for his sibling's education too.

There's a quiet revolution taking place in Andhra Pradesh and Maggidi is just one among the rural youth who has benefited from it. Making a difference in the lives of Maggidi and many like him, is Jawahar Knowledge Centre, an initiative of the state government, which started four years ago.

An arm of the Institute of Electronic Governance (IEG), a non-profit organisation, also started by the state government, to offer quality human resource and services to IT sectors, the JKC programme was started with the aim to dig up talent from the numerous towns and villages in the state.

Having received funds worth Rs 1 crore from the state government, the first target for JKC was to train 1,000 female students and equip them with technical and communication skills, to facilitate their entry into renowned IT companies.

"We figured that a lot of talented youngsters didn't have the means to secure a place in IT companies. We also wanted to help IT companies reach out to as many talented youngsters as possible," explains M Chandrasekhar, director (academic affairs), JKC, adding, "One of our primary goals was to penetrate into the rural pockets of the state where families' annual incomes were not more than Rs 15,000."

With that clear objective, JKC has now reached out with 650 odd centres in different colleges and institutions. What's more, since its inception, it has secured placements of over 10,000 students in different IT companies in India.

That apart, companies like Oracle and IBM have started tying up with JKC to provide free software and trained faculty to some of the centres. Oracle, for instance, provided software worth Rs 5,400 crore only recently while there are tie-ups with companies like Infosys, IBM and Microsoft.

While the annual funding has increased considerably at Rs 13 crore for JKCs, students wanting to pursue engineering and MCA degrees have to pay Rs 2,000 every year to study at the centre.

Simply put, colleges which have JKCs usually have a lab equipped with computers and faculty provided by some of the best IT companies.

In addition, it's the on-campus placement by numerous IT companies which attracts the youngsters in the rural areas.

"The faculty consists of professionals who are working in the companies, in fact, at times we have ex-JKC students coming back to teach the next batch of students," says Chandrasehkar.

"It has been a successful model," confirms Sridhar, who received an offer letter from Satyam and is an ex-JKC student. In fact, governments of Rajasthan and Orissa have also showed keen interest and want to replicate the model in their respective states.