Taking the road less travelled
Anusha Krishnapuram is all set to spend a year in a village, all for development
By : sanchita dash
Update: 2014-08-26 23:01 GMT
Hyderabad: With an MBA and an MSc in bio informatics, Anusha Krishnapuram, should, going by current norms, have a high paying job in a reputed company. But she opted for a path less travelled. Giving up a job offer from a software company, Anusha, a graduate from Hyderabad Business School, Gitam University, Hyderabad, is now ready to spend a year of her life in a village for the cause of women’s empowerment and rural livelihood.
Selected for the SBI Youth for India fellowship, Anusha decided to take this uncharted path because she believes in following her passion. “Even though I had an offer from a software company, it just didn’t feel right to me. I kept thinking about all other possibilities. Then, my senior from college, who’s working with the International Labour Organisation in Bangladesh, told me about this fellowship,” she says.
And now, Anusha, who will soon start training in Pune, will have to spend a year in a village in Karnataka or Kerala. “The only condition of the fellowship was that you can’t choose a village in your home state. I wish to be placed in Karnataka as the language is similar to Telugu and then I can interact better with the people,” says Anusha.But to give up all the facilities she has been brought up with and go to an area where even mobile phone reception would be difficult, seems like a rather tough task. Well, not for Anusha. “I had thought about all the possibilities before I applied for the fellowship. It’s all about the passion. Often, people say that though their career is in software, their passion is something else. I didn’t want that to happen to me. In fact, I don’t want any youngster to settle for something that he or she is not passionate about,” she says.
And she is heading to the village with no particular agenda in mind. “I have to come up with a complete plan and structure that works for their development. I need to be there to know the ground reality and then start working for their betterment,” she says.