Each year, we witness numerous stories of students cracking India’s toughest medical entrance exam—NEET. But some impactful stories go unheard.
These are those Stories not of privilege, but of perseverance. Not of coaching giants, but of candlelit nights and YouTube video based learning on second-hand phones.
This year again, many students from West Bengal’s so-called backward districts—Murshidabad, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur—have cracked NEET.
These are children of farmers, masons, daily-wage workers. With minimal resources and maximum grit, they’ve shown the world what raw dedication can achieve success.
But while this should have been a celebration of merit, a strange discomfort hisses among the so-called elite class of society.
Does Success from the Margins Makes Some Uncomfortable ?
Some questions how come Malda and Murshidabad are topping in an all India Test ? What are they doing that Kolkata or Urban areas can’t. Others twisted it further and give some communal color —insinuating that the rise of students from minority communities somehow signals a political or religious agenda .
Most of them prepare in cramped muddy or poorly built homes, study beside their parents’ daily survival struggles, and attend government schools or low-cost coaching centers. Many can’t even afford tuitions.
We didn’t even bother to question government why they can’t provide them same level quality education a Kolkata based elite Private school students get !
If you ask them, they will tell that Their classrooms were YouTube videos and borrowed notes.
Their sacrifice is real : no outings, no weddings, no cricket, no overtime enjoyment
Just one goal : to become a doctor work the hardest of all…
Because a failure to achieve a NEET Rank means going back to the same cycle of poverty.They didn’t get anything for free. They earned it in the most hard and difficult way.
When ‘ Privilege ’ Clashes With Determination
Let’s be honest : the discomfort comes from a deeper fear—the fear of losing monopoly, loosing so called classy elite faces around a sphere. That so-called underprivileged people are no longer just selling vegetables or fixing cycles or leaving school before teenage or becoming day labour . They’re entering prestigious medical colleges. They’re wearing white coats. They’re becoming equals.How on earth this is possible ?
And this challenges the long-held idea of Elites that opportunity belongs to a select few.
If you wake up and find someone succeeded overnight, know that they were not sleeping all this time 🌱
These students have earned their seats, not through privilege, but through pain, persistence, and purpose.
To the boy who studied under a dim lamp while his mother worked as a domestic help…
To the girl who didn’t have a bed but had a bookshelf filled with borrowed dreams hidden in pages …To the students who walked miles for school, skipped meals for books, and still ranked high—we salute you.
You are not products of favoritism. You are proof that merit doesn’t wear a surname or speak perfect English or belongs to a handful of high societal people .
It’s about how education becomes the most powerful weapon for social change.Let’s stop questioning how they made it, and start questioning why we didn’t expect them to.
Because when the underprivileged rise, it’s not a threat—it’s hope.It grows in the shadows, ashes of Poverty and rises with fire like a Phoenix .
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