To help students from east and North-East India crack the IIT entrance test, a group of IIT-Kharagpur alumni has launched a programme called ‘Edudigm’ to train the aspiring students from the region.

Four alumni of the 2008 batch — Rajiv Agarwal, Nishant Sah, Lokesh Verma and Manish Shankar — have even quit their jobs to work on expanding the programme. Apart from them, there are many students from various IITs who are associated with the programme as mentors or resource persons.

“Over the past 3 to 4 years, the number of students from West Bengal joining the IITs has gone down considerably. Ranchi, Patna, Jamshedpur and Bhubaneshwar account for more than 90 per cent selections from IIT-Kharagpur zone,” said Rajiv Agarwal and added that the work on launching the programme had started in 2008.

According to the members of the core team, the programme is a “social initiative” where the emphasis is laid on building concepts and developing skills that could help the aspiring students to crack the entrance test.

Moreover, the programme is “cheap” as students have to pay a monthly fee of Rs 100 for each subject, they said.

Apart from study materials, web-based tests and classroom coaching, the students can also get in touch with students from various IITs, the mentors, to clear their doubts on a given topic. “It is because of individual effort that a student gets into the IITs. What one needs is clarifications on certain topics when he/she faces problem,” said Agarwal. Around 35 students from five different IITs are associated with the programme as mentors.