The Hindu : National : An elite club comes to the help of needy students

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Sunday, May 20, 2007
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National

An elite club comes to the help of needy students

Indrani Dutta

Amitabh dinner helps to form initial corpus

KOLKATA: In March this year, film actor Amitabh Bachchan was in the city in connection with a corporate launch. He also spent an evening with members of the 100-year-oldCalcutta Club. Not many knew the aim behind the exercise, dismissing it as just another money-squandering night by the city's glitterati.

As over 1,000 members and their wives turned out just to shake hands with the Big B, money started pouring in to form the initial corpus of a Rs. 1-crore fund the club planned to set up to help needy students pursue higher studies. The charity dinner was priced at Rs. 3,000 per member-couple and at Rs. 5,000 for their guests. Thus Rs. 10 lakh was raised on a single evening.

President Kalam launched the scholarship fund during his visit here on May 17. The twinkle in his eye as he handed over the citations matched the look — at once of awe and a glimmer of hope in the eyes — of the two teenagers, who would be the first recipients.

Of them, Tahera Khatun, 19, lives in a remote village in Birbhum, one of West Bengal's backward districts, which does not have access to either water or electricity. Her father's monthly income is Rs. 1,200. She hardly had books of her own, yet she passed both the secondary and higher secondary examinations with distinction.

The other, Bikramjit Barkandaj, comes from the Sundarbans, which again has no electricity. He could not burn the midnight oil; nor his father could afford the solar lanterns slung from the roofs of many mud houses. Still the boy achieved distinction.

The scholarships will enable the students to chase their dreams of becoming doctors, as they have already secured admission to reputed government medical colleges.

The initiative has spurred many of the 4,800 members of the club — which mainly provides a social platform for the city's elite — to loosen their purse strings, helping to mobilise funds. There are plans to extend the scholarship to four needy and meritorious students — one each for medicine, engineering, economics and liberal arts — every year.

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