Aditya Birla Group with its dominance in more than 14 industry sectors, from building homes through Ultratech Cement to connecting people through Vodafone-Idea, from creating clothing fibers through Birla Cellulose to rejuvenating the fashion trends through Pantaloons, Allen Solly and Louis Philippe time and again have always stayed true to its traditions. From being the world’s largest aluminium rolling company to producing the world-class aluminium alloys for the aerospace domain, Aditya Birla Group has become a household name in India since its inception. In contemporary India it stands for tradition, it stands for trust.
Every Indian kid has been a witness to the evolution of various brands under the ABG umbrella. Be it Ultratech cement’s from “Kyun ki Is cement me Jaan h” to “Build Beautiful” or be it Pantaloons changing from “In love with life, In love with fashion” to “Style your Change”. The message which they portray has always been inspiring to entire generations.
“There are two roadblocks in the way of transforming India into an economic giant and one of them was education. I believe that if education is privatized at the primary and secondary level, a lot of our problems will be answered to” – Kumar Mangalam Birla
These lines curated by the visionary leader Kumar Mangalam Birla is the source from where I have drawn inspiration to work towards the upliftment of underprivileged children of our society through imparting them the understanding of why formal education is important. After visiting a number of rural areas it was evident to me that there exists a great disparity between the quality of education being imparted in urban and rural areas. I understood that this is the very reason why India was not progressing at the pace it potentially could. It was evident that if India wishes to grow at a dynamic rate and actually become a world leader then it needs to take the heart of its civilization and villages, together on this voyage of evolution because the hotshot cities alone cannot make the dream of Modern India come true. India would always be only as modern as its Villages.
Being from a background where education was the top priority I felt that Right to Quality Education should be universal. So I started out with a simple purpose: Make the children and their parents aware of the importance of formal education. I thought it would be an easy task to convince the parents and kids to attend the school but I could not have been more wrong. The parents were not willing to send their children to school, especially girls, due to a motley of reasons. Be it the culture, be it the traditions or maybe just the lack of awareness.
“The one important factor that keeps me going is the people I work with”- Kumar Mangalam Birla
The team is the most important variable in the equation of success and having undertaken the task to spread awareness in the nearby villages was not an easy one to achieve. But with the right team, no mountain is insurmountable. To achieve the goal, we started conducting various meetups and seminars. We held a lot of engagement activities for the children and started out with teaching them basic English, made them aware about current happenings around the country, arranged the screening of some inspirational movies and videos of people who made a mark. We invited them to be themselves- to dance, to Sing, to play, to laugh. Bottom line was to have fun while learning and after a time we could make them believe that it was possible. Did we succeed? Did we manage to initiate the change we set out to?- Maybe and Maybe not. Truth be told we did manage to convince many of the parents and kids to enroll the children in schools. But there was also a chunk of people who did not get on board.
Ideas can be invigorating. Ideas can shatter perspectives and broaden them at the same time. Ideas can be the means to break the shackles. The shackles of culture, shackles of traditions and shackles of the imagined reality we have been holding onto. What mattered, in the end, was an idea in the mind of the kids that they too had equal right to prosper, an equal right to explore and an equal right to make India, the India we all have been dreaming of since ages and Aditya Birla Group stands for the same amalgamated yet united India.