Shashank Mani Tripathi's Jagriti Yatra takes a train-load of young men and women into the heart of India to learn how to be job creators
It is 11 pm on December 24 at Mumbai’s Kurla station and a bunch of young people are milling around the ordinary looking blue train, searching for their berths, saying their goodbyes. But there’s nothing ordinary about this train or this journey.
For the last five years, every Christmas Eve, a group of 450 young people have been embarking on a 15-day train journey to find a purpose for their lives. During the Jagriti Yatra (literally, a journey of awakening), they visit 12 destinations across the four corners of the country, meeting entrepreneurs—‘role models’—in an attempt to learn more about the real India, its challenges, and also its opportunities.
As the 18-coach train winds through the 8,000 km route, the travellers learn to live and work with groups, adjust to a routine of sleep, eat, plan meetings, engage in group discussions and also give presentations in the train itself. They adapt to working with people from diverse cultures, experience the joy of winning competitions and also learn how to maximise usage of limited resources such as water and the ever crucial phone battery.
Singing their anthem ‘Yaaron chalo, badalne ki rut hai’, composed by Prasoon Joshi exclusively for the Yatra, the youth contingent inspires one another to keep the spirit of nation-building alive in their heart and attempt to build their own lives constructively.
The organisers’ aim behind the journey is to transform young job seekers into job creators. Together with mentorship from experts, the Yatris also build a network of friends during the Yatra, who help challenge and shape ideas.
The Origins
It all began when Shashank Mani Tripathi, now 48, first embarked on a similar train journey in 1997 to commemorate India’s 50 years of independence. The seed had been planted in his mind years ago, when he saw the 1954 film Jagriti as a child, the story of a teacher’s quest to instil pride in the country’s heritage and values in children. An entire generation remembers the film’s song ‘Aao bachchon tumhen dikhayen jhaanki Hindustan ki’.
In 1997, Tripathi, a London-based consultant with PwC, decided to act on his inspiration. He took a sabbatical, raised funds and cobbled together a plan to travel across India in a train with 200 people. His purpose was to meet interesting individuals running enterprising initiatives and who were helping build a new India.
He penned these experiences in a book, India: A journey through a healing civilization. Released in 2007, the book gained popularity and inspired his friends and many others—some living abroad, others in India. They then put together a plan for a similar journey in 2008.
Jagriti Yatra has now become an annual feature. It is open to anyone between 20 and 27 years of age; 17,000 people applied for the December 2013 Yatra. A written test and interviews helped shortlist the 450 (40 percent women, and about 55 percent candidates from Tier 2 and 3 towns). Tripathi and his Yatra team aim to create a million entrepreneurs by 2020.
The Yatra is conducted under the auspices of the not-for-profit Jagriti Seva Sansthan, registered at Deoria village near Gorakhpur. Every year a group of 30 to 40 facilitators join the six-member core Yatra team to help manage the trip. Most of them are former Yatris who volunteer. They take on the tough task of negotiating with Indian Railways to hire an entire train and arrange for caterers who serve meals onboard. An Engine Room Club team ensures the train reaches each destination on schedule while the programming team organises role model visits, and even gets sponsors for the Yatra. The fact that Jagriti Yatra has done six such trips since 2008 without any major untoward incident is a miracle in itself.
The Purpose
“During the Yatra I met Dr S Aravind at his eye care hospital in Madurai and was impressed by how it all started with just a 20-bed hospital. Meeting various other role models like Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy [founder, Barefoot College at Tilonia] at Rajasthan gave me the courage and inspiration to scale up my computer institute and now I plan to open 350 centres to reach 6,000 villages of Haryana. I also want to start a rural BPO so that villagers aren’t forced to travel to cities for work,” says Kataria.
(This story appears in the 21 March, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)