We have been very busy in the last three days visiting ITI’s and are super impressed with the ITI’s in Himachal Pradesh. On 21st we had just walked into ITI Mandi and there started our interesting discovery. We found everybody at ITI Mandi very helpful and eager to help the students. We found out that the Director (Technical Education) infact sits in Sunder Nagar, just 22 kms from Mandi. So we sent him an email and within 30 minutes we got a call from his office asking whether we could meet him the same day or the next day. We opted for the next day.

April 22nd was packed for us – starting with addressing the 8.30 am assembly at ITI Mandi and then driving over to Sunder Nagar for the meeting with the Director. We were met promptly at 11 am and Mr. Goel was again deeply committed to the cause of education. We explained our plans for ShikshaDaan and he immediately asked us to send him a proposal of how many scholarships we could provide. He was keen that we visit as many ITIs as possible and to be honest, all our assumptions about “government” institutions being slow to respond evaporated !! Even in the corporate world, the response to an email takes a while and here we were getting an audience with the Director (Technical Education) within a day of sending him an email. Responsiveness at its best.

Mr. Goel asked us to meet Mr. R. K. Sharma, Principal of the Polytechnic college, on our way out and even sent a person alongwith us. Mr. Sharma was just as eager to help students from financially weaker backgrounds and he reminded us of Krishnan’s father because of his love for teaching. Just as we were returning to Visco, we got a call from the Deputy Director who was at ITI, Mandi and we managed to meet him as well.

Lata ma’am already had a set of requests from the students at ITI, Mandi and what was really heartwarming in all our interactions was, the concern shown by every faculty, or office staff or Directors that the scholarships from ShikshaDaan must go only to deserving students and shouldn’t get wasted. No wonder these ITIs are centres of excellence !

On April 24th we got the opportunity to visit one of the oldest and probably the largest ITI, at Shahpur. The Principal, Mr. Lakhanpal, is again perpetuating the culture of excellence. The ITI Shahpur campus is spread over 18 acres and what was great to know was the number of placements they managed to do for their students. Last year 33 organizations hired from ITI, Shahpur and these are big well known organizations – Cadburys, Maruti Suzuki, Honda, Abbott, P&G to name a few !

The companies that recruited from ITI Shahpur in 2014. Isnt it an impressive list ?

Watch the placements done – 1854 … How many colleges can boast of this record ? ITIs in Himachal are truly centres of excellence ! The students do well and that’s why the placement is so high. These are world class organizations and they won’t recruit if the quality of students is not good. Guess what, just from ITI Shahpur there are 64 students placed at the Dubai campus of Ashok Leyland – our PM’s dream of supplying quality manpower to the world has been happening for a long time in Himachal.

We got a chance to address the students at ITI Shahpur too and we are quite sure in Himachal, ITIs would be a great partner for ShikshaDaan.

Striving for excellence pays rich dividends and there are government institutions striving for excellence and succeeding ! The HP model will soon be in vogue.