It's a rare young woman who gets admission to Harvard Kennedy School in Massachusetts, affiliated to Harvard University, and yet feel the tug of coming back "home to Jharkhand" to serve people.
Jamshedpur girl Neetisha Besra, 28, is such a person. Spoilt for choice, Neetisha is perhaps Jharkhand's first tribal girl to be selected to Columbia University, University of California (Berkeley) and Harvard Kennedy School affiliated to Harvard University.
But, she chose Harvard Kennedy School as she also won the John F Kennedy fellowship to fully take care of her expenses during the two-year master in public administration/international development (MPA/ID). Her classes begin from August 8.
Meant for grooming a new generation of leaders in international development, MPA/ID is an economics-centric multi-disciplinary programme encompassing rigorous training in analytical and quantitative methods, giving special emphasis to policy and practice.
"I am the only tribal among nine Indians to be selected for this course. My class of around 70 students will be from 39 countries," she chuckled. "I am really looking forward to interacting with people of so many different cultures."
She's already had her fair share of studying and working in different cultures.
A Hill Top School alumnus, Neetisha went to IIT-Kanpur to do her BTech in materials and metallurgical engineering and then went to Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai for a masters in development practice. She started her career with an MNC, Schlumberger Asia Services, and supervised drilling operations in Rajasthan, Tripura, Maharashtra and Abu Dhabi. Last month, she completed her three-year tenure in East Singhbhum as the Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellow.
"I was among the 10 fellows selected to present projects before Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016. I was adjudged second among all the fellows in the country for my performance," she said.
She'd have a lot of interesting anecdotes to tell her Harvard classmates. But, her heart beats for Jharkhand, she said. "I will prefer coming back to Jharkhand at the earliest with more expertise to serve my people," said Neetisha.
This love for her home state possibly comes from her parents, father Suraj Singh Besra, a former MLA, who took part in the Jharkhand statehood movement, and mother Kunti, a staff nurse at Tata Main Hospital in Jamshedpur, who have raised Neetisha and her siblings Neelam and Saurav "to feel very grounded in the realities of Jharkhand".
"I can be a global citizen but I am at home in Jharkhand," she signs off.
