IPS officer behind Poorna’s success now hopes to inspire more children
Poorna Malavath, a tribal girl from Nizamabad district of Telangana, is eagerly awaiting the release of the Bollywood biopic on her on next Friday with a lot of excitement. So are her parents, Devidas and Lakshmi, both of whom are farm labourers.
The biopic, titled ’Poorna’ with the tagline — Courage has no limit — made by actor-director Rahul Bose, is about the young girl’s journey from a tribal hamlet to the pinnacle of Mount Everest, which she had scaled on May 25, 2014, at an age of 13 years and 11 days. This made her the youngest girl in the world to reach the top of the mountain.
“I am very much excited. I am going to watch the premier show of the film with my daughter and other family members,” Devidas Malavath told HT. “My daughter has already become a celebrity and has been shuttling from one city to another,” he said.
However, the man behind Poorna’s success —RS Praveen Kumar, an IPS officer — is quietly working on grooming more Poornas at the Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society, which he heads. Incidentally, Rahul Bose is playing the role of the IPS officer in the film.
Praveen, who preferred to forego plum postings in the police department to volunteer for the job of transforming residential schools for Dalit and Adivasi students into institutions of excellence, believes that given an opportunity all these students can excel in any field.
“Sky is the limit for our students irrespective of their social backwardness. That is why I have been insisting our students take part in various training camps, including sports, mountaineering, arts, crafts, theatre arts, and even films. We have also started camps for students interested in pursuing civil services as their career,” Praveen told HT.
Poorna is a classic example of Praveen’s faith in the ability of his students. He took personal interest in providing extensive training to some enthusiastic students in mountaineering under the Operation Everest scheme, of whom Poorna and another Dalit student, Anand Kumar, were short-listed.
“And they made it to the Mount Everest, creating a new record,” he said.
Praveen hopes that Poorna’s biopic would give inspiration to the students of all underprivileged sections. Already, many students from his institutes have evinced an interest in mountaineering and some of them have scaled major mountains across the world.
An alumnus of Harvard University, 49-year old Praveen, who was given an extension for another five years to serve underprivileged students, says that only modern and English education with progressive values can change the lives of the marginalised sections of the society.
“I have introduced 10 commandments for my students, the first of which says: I am inferior to none. All my students read out these commandments before going to their classes every day,” he said.