
Bangalore: From being a newspaper delivery boy to making news himself, 23-year-old Shivakumar has got through to the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) - Calcutta. Shivakumar, an engineering student and the only educated member in his family, has fought hard to make his dreams come true.
For the past ten years, N Shivakumar's day has started at the crack of dawn, sorting newspapers and heading out to deliver them in his neighbourhood. But come June 16, this 23-year-old will begin his day on the campus of India's premier B-school, IIM-Calcutta.
"If you want to make a bigger life, then you have to take that extra step and push yourself. I had to wake up at 4 am, work till 8 am, then go to college and again come back to do my part time job. It was very difficult but I was determined," Shivakumar said.
The son of a truck driver, Shivakumar began selling newspapers as a teenager to supplement the family income. A good student throughout, he secured a seat in an engineering college in Bangalore. Determined to study further, Shivakumar juggled work and academics all through college and cracked the CAT in his first attempt. "I never thought he would excel like this, he would work so hard and go almost the whole day without eating any food," his mother said....
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08:49 AM, May 24, 2013

Savarkundla: Thirty-two-year-old Komal Ganatra from Gujarat is the only woman from the state to have cracked the UPSC exam this year. After four attempts, the hard work has finally paid off. With a 591 ranking on the national merit list, she is an inspiration. But what makes Komal's feat even more valuable is her spirit to make a difference. Within a fortnight of her marriage to one Shailesh Popat in...

10:19 AM, May 21, 2013

Thiruvananthapuram: A man in Thiruvananthapuram is on a mission to ensure the poor do not go hungry. Feeding over a 100 people every day for the past 30 years, Suryalayam is known as the messiah of the hungry. Every morning in a small restaurant on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram, a 100 meals are cooked, packed and then handed over to Suryalayam Raveendran. He then takes off on his bike looking...

02:32 PM, May 17, 2013

Banka: Cracking the UPSC is a difficult proposition, especially for aspirants who live in Naxal-infested areas, with no access to proper coaching facilities. But all that has changed in Bihar's Banka district due to the efforts of District Magistrate Dipak Anand and his deputy Sub-Divisional Magistrate Mithilesh Mishra. Together, they conduct free coaching sessions for students taking the UPSC exam from this region. With no proper guidance, the youth in...

11:02 PM, May 15, 2013

New Delhi: A special chattai therapy is providing some relief to little children suffering from cancer. CanKids initiative at AIIMS Delhi helps children undergo treatment by helping them with motivational and self esteem talks. Chemotherapy sessions, frequent hospital visits, long waiting hours, hair loss - are images associated with cancer. Battling the disease is a painful process for every one. Poonam Bagai was no different. The government officer's life was...

11:28 AM, May 14, 2013

Mumbai: Whoever said that celebrities don't care about what's going on in the real world, Salman Khan will make them rethink that. He has promised to donate 2,500 water tanks to drought-hit districts in Maharashtra, which is facing its worst drought in 40 years. Across Maharashtra, it has been a devastatingly dry summer as more than 11,000 villages grapple with the worst drought in four decades. But there might be...

10:09 AM, May 13, 2013

Banka: Two bureaucrats are paving the way for a better, brighter life for others in Bihar's Naxal-hit Banka region. They are providing UPSC aspirants free education and coaching sessions. Cracking the UPSC is a difficult proposition, especially for aspirants who live in Naxal-infested areas, with no access to proper coaching facilities. But all that has changed in Bihar's Banka district due to the efforts of district magistrate Dipak Anand and...

09:58 AM, Apr 29, 2013

Watch India Positive for the good stories from across the country. ...

04:28 PM, Apr 13, 2013

Jorhat: Green warrior Jadab Payeng never forgot the devastating Assam floods of 1979. For three decades, Jadab Payeng has been instrumental in planting trees nurturing a 1,000 hectare forest in a Brahmaputra sand bar. For the past thirty three years of his life, he has been crossing this river, walking along the sand bars and planting trees and even talking to them like there was no tomorrow. Three decades of...

03:12 PM, Apr 12, 2013

Khamhariya Damuan: A 13-year-old is acting as a catalyst of change not just for his home, but for the entire village community in Uttar Pradesh. Omkar Dubey took up the issue of sanitation forcing his village heads to set up public toilets. More than 70 per cent Indian homes have no access to a toilet. India has more cellphones than toilets. More than half a million children in India die...

10:58 AM, Apr 11, 2013

Madhubani: A call centre is proving to be quite a lifeline for farmers in Madhubani in Bihar. It is an initiative by Delhi-based Drishti Foundation and is proving to be central to the economy of agriculture in the region. It is a lifeline for the farmers of the Madhubani district, addressing their queries and problems on farming, seed selection, what fertiliser to use and using new-age techniques. The call centre...

09:56 AM, Apr 10, 2013

New Delhi: An NGO called Navjyoti has given a new ray of hope to underprivileged children. An after-school centre that provides activity based learning, it nurtures their ambitions and dreams. An alcoholic father, a dependent mother and a younger brother who has already quit school is life for 13-year-old Ram Nivas. But in the classroom, he does a 'Taare Zameen Par' with his latest achievement, an electric swing. Helping him...

10:07 AM, Apr 09, 2013

They might seem like any other girl band but when it's showtime the Tetseo Sisters bring folk from the hills of Nagaland all the way to the stage. The siblings have been performing in India and overseas for more than a decade now. They are not just folk singers but are also the cultural ambassadors of Nagaland. .. ...

12:30 PM, Apr 05, 2013

Girls from the desert villages in Rajasthan, which infamous for female foeticide and child marriages, are benefiting, thanks to residential education camps. From would be child brides, they are now looking at financial independence. ...

10:36 AM, Apr 02, 2013

Mangalore: One of the country's biggest medical camps for people with facial deformities is being held at the KS Hegde Medical Academy in Mangalore, after the hospital received over 1,400 responses to its free surgery initiative. After CNN-IBN telecast a report in December 2011 on the free face-changing and life-changing surgeries that Dr Vikram Shetty and his team does, over 1,400 patients have thronged the hospital. Most of them have...

10:31 AM, Mar 26, 2013

A band in Kolkata has found inspiration in young Pakistani girl and hero Malala Yousufzai. Not only are they singing for the young Pakistani who survived the Taliban attempt on her life, they're also funding children's education projects. ...

10:12 AM, Mar 07, 2013

The age old 'guru-shishya' tradition is still going strong at the Dhrupad Sansthan in Bhopal. Students come in from around the world, looking to learn classical music and they are handpicked by the Ustads. ...

09:01 AM, Mar 06, 2013

Students from the prestigious Sri Ram College of Commerce aren't just about number-crunching. They use social entrepreneurship to help underprivileged people in the national capital from facilitating micro-credit for autorickshaw drivers to reaching out and arranging vocational training to puppeteers, manual scavengers to helping manual scavengers earn a decent living. ...

09:20 AM, Mar 05, 2013

On this episode of India Positive, CNN-IBN brings you stories of people who are an inspiration to the society. ...

08:05 PM, Mar 02, 2013

Amit Chaudhuri, an author, has taken it upon himself to preserve the rich cultural heritage of the 'city of joy' Kolkata. The city of joy and teeming millions has been Amit Chaudhuri's muse for his three novels. His love for the city and its neighbourhoods has made him fight for a new heritage law to preserve its history. ...

01:39 PM, Mar 02, 2013