Updated: November 20, 2020 11:49:15 am
Gomathi comes from a Dalit family and lives in a 400-square-foot two-room house that has a large portrait of BR Ambedkar, a wedding gift for his parents. (Photo credit: Asfhaq Ahmed)
A Gomathi, 19, was among the 227 Tamil Nadu public school students selected for medical admission into the state on Wednesday’s first day of counseling, thanks to the 7.5 percent reservation introduced by the state exclusively for public school students who have achieved national eligibility. -Semen entry test (NEET).
Gomathi’s fight, “A Day in the Life of A Gomathi, An Aspiring Medical Student from the Tamil Nadu State Board,” was first published in The Indian Express in July 2018. It was a time when The state witnessed heated debates and protests, followed by the suicides of several Tamil students from economically poor backgrounds who failed to pass the NEET despite scoring high marks in Class XII.
After the report about his struggle in front of a centralized examination for medical admission, the head of DMK, MK Stalin, met with Gomathi and presented him with a check for his education.
“Why not give us equal opportunities before forcing us to compete with the students of CBSE, ICSE? If the Prime Minister came, he would say to him, ‘I’m going to prove myself, but give us the same education before you make us take a common exam,’ ”Gomathi had said in 2018, after he failed to pass the NEET even after get over your school. on Class XII Board exams.
Despite several would-be physician suicides rocked the state in the past three years, Gomathi did not allow the “unfair” exam system to kill his spirit. He worked hard, 20 hours every day, studying textbooks, while his parents, day laborers, struggled to provide for the family.
On Thursday, he was at Stanley Medical College in Chennai with his father R Anbazhagan, who used to work as a cleaner in a television showroom. “I must thank everyone. I was ranked 21st and made it to Stanley Medical College. Even if there were no reservations (7.5 percent) for public school students, I would have entered, but at a university far from Chennai, “Gomathi told The Indian Express.
She said she took no training and studied on her own. For Anbazhagan, with her monthly salary of 7,500 rupees, it was impossible to collect the 45,000 rupees needed for NEET training for her daughter.
Gomathi’s grandfather, Virugambakkam Aranganathan, was one of the first protesters to blow himself up in the anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu in 1965. In his memory, a busy subway lane in Chennai’s Saidapet is known as the Aranganathan Subway.
Gomathi comes from a Dalit family and lives in a 400-square-foot two-room house that has a large portrait of BR Ambedkar, a wedding gift for his parents.
On Thursday, Tamil Nadu’s School Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan said that seeking permanent exemption for NEET status is a political decision by the state government, and the chief minister, Edappadi K Palaniswami, is making constant efforts to achieve it. .
In the ongoing counseling, many students from the weaker sections, like Gomathi, benefited from the state’s policy of implementing a 7.5 percent reserve for public school students. The state had taken an executive route after a bill was passed unanimously in the Assembly, but it was pending the governor’s approval for more than a month.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
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