Fought 'Long Battle' For Community Certificate: TN Tribal Girl Beats All Odds To Crack NEET

The 20-year-old Sangavi Muniyappan comes from a place where community members of her tribe have been working as farmhands for decades. She claims that it was a 'long battle' since the village administration rejected her community certificate on various grounds several times. Nonetheless, the conditions are set to change as the young woman cracked the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) in her second attempt by scoring 202 marks. The score is well above the cut-off mark for the students belonging to the unreserved category.

Previously Missed The Chance By Six Marks

The Indian Express quoted Muniyappan saying, "Coaching and syllabus were not my concerns. I appeared for the NEET exam in 2018 after I completed my HSC in Pichanur Government Higher Secondary School. But I lost the chance to become a doctor by just six marks. Later, I joined Narayana Guru Polytechnic college for a diploma. Without a community certificate, I couldn't get all the facilities the state assured for the tribal students under the ST reservation. It was hard for me to leave the college within a week. I applied for a community certificate right after I finished my SSLC".

Living Condition Of The Community

She also highlighted that nobody had completed higher education in her hamlet; therefore, nobody had a community certificate. For the medical aspirant to obtain a community certificate, either her parents or relatives should have had one. Nobody from the entire community had no official document mentioning that they belonged to the Malasar community and had lived in Nanjappanur for generations. The government bodies had provided them with the land without naming their community. Currently, four students in the community are in Class 10, and 20 of them are in middle school. After achieving her feat, Muniyappan expects more people to come forward and enrol their children for school education.

Sangvi mentioned that she used to study in the light of a lantern because 49 families in the hamlet lived without electricity until two years ago. During the first wave of COVID-19, when volunteers turned up in their locality to provide relief material, they became known, and development projects for streetlights and better roads began in the area.

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