Higher education is not only about how much knowledge you accumulate, but more about the zest for learning and acquiring skills to facilitate your survival and nurture your livelihood.
To have a flourishing higher education sector is critical to any nation's economy and culture, especially for a growing one like India. Higher education is, and should always be, a partnership between students and alumni, faculty and administrators, donors and trustees and neighbourhoods, besides serving as an instrument for building a vibrant community and a rich culture.
It is in this light that we need to see the impact of two laudable higher education schemes in two very specific and sensitive regions of India – The Indian Army’s Super 30 programme in Jammu and Kashmir and the Centre for Excellence, or NEIDO in North East India.
The "Super 30" programme in J&K is an initiative conceived by the Indian Army to give free academic and extracurricular coaching to deserving children from underprivileged background who aspire to crack the All India Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and/or the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).
While JEE is a national-level entrance exam designed to assess and select students for admission to undergraduate engineering and architecture programs at prestigious institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and other top engineering colleges, the NEET is for students seeking admission to undergraduate medical programs, including MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BHMS, besides others.
Both of these examinations aim to provide aspiring students with access to quality education.
The Indian Army’s “Super 30” program is a part of its two-and-a-half-decade-long “Operation Sadbhavna” (Goodwill) welfare initiative, aiming to empower underprivileged students of J&K through free coaching for higher education competitive exams.
The National Integrity and Educational Development Organisation (NEDO), which supervises the faculty and teaching norms also executes it. The Army, specifically its 19 Artillery Brigade, on the other hand, oversees administration and logistics in collaboration with Indian oil and gas company Petronet LNG Limited (PLL) and the Centre for Social Responsibility and Leadership (CSRL).
Students are provided intensive instruction in subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Zoology, and Botany under the program. Their selection is based on performance in a written examination and subject-specific interviews.
From a result point of view, the program has been successful, scripting history last year (2024) when, 18 out of 27 eligible students, including one from the Other Social Caste category, from J&K’s Reasi district cracked the JEE Phase-II examination.
The Indian Army launched the “Super 30” initiative in 2014, basing its program on the globally recognised “Super 30” model created by Bihar’s mathematics educator Anand Kumar.
The Kashmir Super 30 was launched with less than 30 students in its first year. The Army selected those who were from the lower strata and had the requisite academic acumen to take on the challenge of achieving higher education mark-ups with necessary coaching. In 2014, one cleared the IIT-JEE examination and 17 found seats in other prestigious engineering colleges.
This successful beginning encouraged the army to raise the bar and select 36 students in 2015. In that year, three cleared the IIT entrance exam and 27 were admitted to other engineering colleges within J&K and in other states.
Such results clearly reveal that students from J&K, especially from remote areas of the Kashmir Valley, possess the required qualities needed to compete with the best in the country, notwithstanding their exposure to political and socio-economic turbulence brought on by the menace of terrorism.
The other very specific and result oriented education-centric institution for underprivileged children making waves is The National Integrity and Educational Development Organisation, better known as NEIDO.
It is another initiative of the Indian Army that seeks to offer and secure a better future for the youth of Assam.
Launched in 2022 by the Albert Ekka Brigade of Red Shield Division, which functions under the aegis of the Indian Army’s 3 Corps, a.k.a. 'The Spear Corps', this initiative is a collaboration with the public sector Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), which is the corporate partner, and the National Integrity and Educational Development Organisation (NIEDO), which is the executing arm of the program.
The Rs.1.5 crore education-centric project is a full-time residential programme for mentoring and guiding a minimum of 45 Assamese youths for one year for various medical and engineering college entrance examinations in India.
The Kanpur, UP headquartered NGO NIEDO looks after the academics, while the Indian Army oversees overall operations, including administration and logistics. The requisite funding support comes from the IOCL. NEIDO also has a similar arrangement with the paramilitary Assam Rifles and corporate partner Axis Bank.
Since December 2017, NIEDO primarily makes provisions for residential Centres of Excellence (CE). These CE’s provide a form of education to remove deficiencies and disadvantages faced by children of the lower socio-economic strata and other disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those coming from India’s conflict zones.
The project involves coaching and mentorship, soft skill training, critical life competency, leadership capabilities, wellness programmes and modules and end to end grooming till they become a productive human resource for the nation.
Focus areas for NEIDO are J&K, Leh in Ladakh, the North Eastern states and the Red Corridor regions of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, parts of Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, where Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) is rampant and preventing the effective development of the youth.
Both programs – “Super 30” and “NEIDO” are integrative projects involving working on children and parents and by extension the socio-economic affected communities around them.
Both need to be seen and are seen as transformative processes for a better future for the next generation. When problems like unemployment, ignorance, illiteracy, ungoverned mind space, psychological upheaval, etc., are redressed, it is a win-win situation for all involved stakeholders.
Its success generates goodwill in society and presumably assists in creating jobs for youth from trouble-torn regions of India.
Outcomes are tangible, visible and time bound. In short, the lives of poor students, their parents and of the future generation changes for the better as soon as the results of these higher academic excellence exercises are declared.
Higher education in India is one of the most agile systems when looked from a global perspective. It has shown capability to continuously innovate through nation-building and transformative programs like the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP-2020). Its self-expanding values and socio-cultural flexibility are plus points for Gen. Next.
Is it a wonder then that India's annual enrolment of scientists, engineers and technicians now exceeds two million?

Email:-----------farooqwani61@yahoo.co.in