Tata train to educate India's future entrepreneurs

On December 24th, 400 Indian youth will leave Mumbai India on an adventure that will lead them through 13 Indian cities and over 8000 km. The students will travel throughout India to meet with business leaders and innovative social entrepreneurs in an effort to inspire a new vision for India's future.

This journey, called the Tata Jagriti Yatra 2008, is sponsored by Tata Group, India’s renown, socially minded business conglomerate, and Jagriti Sewa Sansthan, an NGO based in India that promotes entrepreneurship. (Ode covered the Tata Group and social capitalism in the May 2008 issue.)

The impact on these college aged students goes well beyond the scheduled tours and interviews. The teaching takes place on and off the train as it moves throughout the country meeting with dignitaries and villagers. Some of the stops include Trivandrum, Kanyakumari, Bhubaneswar, Jamshedpur, Delhi and Tilonia, where they will meet successful business leaders including Bunker Roy of Barefoot College (Tilonia), and Aravinda Eyecare Hospital teams (Pondicherry).

The vastness of India provides a wide array of inspiration and challenges for these young entrepreneurs. Exposure to some of the 415 unique, living languages (Wikipedia), diverse spiritual traditions and historic sites, helps to synthesize radically new understandings about modern India. Listening to the interviews of past participants from the Jagriti Yatra website, you can witness for yourself the deep impact; for some of the participants their national journey marked the first time they ever left their village area.

For more details, please log on to www.jagritiyatra.com