Minal Deshmukh has learnt that you reap what you sow. The 23-year-old from Umraj village in Junnar, Pune district, looks back on her growing-up years when, as the eldest of five siblings, she began her day working her father’s fields, hitting the hay late in the night after catching up on her studies. Topping her class every year in school, Deshmukh went on to become the first from her village to earn a B.Tech degree. In August she will join Hewlett-Packard in Bangalore as a software engineer.

Just 100 km away, in Markal village in Alandi, 21-year-old Kiran Lokhande has reached a similar milestone. In a fortnight, Lokhande, also hailing from a family of farmers, will walk down the hallowed portals of Infosys in Mysore as a programmer. Deshmukh and Lokhande are not the only young ones to transcend the boundaries of their villages to enter the corporate world. Maharashtra is witness to a growing movement led by the children of humble peasants, who are taking the first faltering steps in corporate streets, steps that will soon become confident strides.

Ask Ashwini Dere, a 22-year-old from Vaishnavdham near Junnar, who is now a year into her first job. Like Deshmukh, she studied in a Marathi-medium school till class X, before pursuing a B.Tech in Computer Science from Cummins College for Women, Pune. A software engineer with TCS in Mumbai, Dere is contemplating a shift to Sydney, where her engineer-husband—who hails from Junnar and has traversed the same path—is now based.

... contd.