Chevening Awardee Dedicates Success To The Struggles Of His Mother

A post of a Chevening Scholarship awardee is going viral on the web in which he shares the struggles his mother went through to give him quality education. Being a Dalit woman, she worked hard for her son's ambitions and he dedicates his success to her strong will.

Every year, a few talented and exceptional students from around the world are chosen by the United Kingdom government to pursue a fully funded one year masters course in any of its university. Goutham Raj Konda is one such talented individual who was awarded the Chevening scholarship and will be leaving for London to pursue his Masters in Science in September 2022. Konda took to his social media and wrote a long note dedicating his education and success to his mother who decided to overcome the barriers of caste and class to pave the way for him.

Chevening Awardee Mother Overcomes All Odds To Give Him Quality Education

Goutham Raj Konda is a post graduate with a Masters in Arts in Urban Policy and Governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He currently works as a full time research associate at the Indian Institute Of Technology, Hyderabad. He described the early life of his mother in the post and writes, "My mom is the one who taught me many things in life and especially the dare to dream. She was born and brought up in a Dalit ghetto, married off at 19, and never got to study beyond matriculation. As a child she visited her father who was a migrant informal worker living in a rented shack in Chembur (Mumbai) decades back."

Konda's mother never let the shortcomings come in the way of her son's career and education and because of her efforts, he got selected in JNV and later in TISS in 2018. "She has been always ambitious about my education. As quality private education was unaffordable for my family, my mom planned to send me to Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV). She was the happiest soul the day I cracked the JNV entrance where I studied from 6 to 12 standard," he added.

He calls his mother his driving force who always believed in him and encouraged him to be confident and ambitious. "It's my mom who bore the weight of generations of disadvantage to give me a safe push towards emancipation through education," Konda wrote.

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