These outstretched arms

When we reach his home in Kandukur village in Andhra Pradesh, 21-year-old Nukathoti Kondaiah serves us bottled mineral water, freshly cut fruit and cold drinks in plastic cups. That may not seem such a big deal but earlier in the day Kondaiah had trudged a couple of hours in the sweltering heat to the nearest grocery store to buy these luxuries. Next month he will begin work with Wipro as a trainee in its software department, taking his mentally-challenged mother with him for treatment.

We talk under the shade of a banyan tree surrounded by a crowd of villagers who treat Kondaiah like a celebrity. An eight-year-old fidgeting with the photographer's camera says he'd like to be Kondaiah when he grows up. The odds couldn't have been less in his favour when the teenager's father died young, followed as suddenly by the deaths of his siblings. "She went mad," he says of his mother's ill-health, "I'm her only hope." Life wasn't kind to the family. "My parents earned Rs 40-50 a day as coolies at a farm," he says. On his father's death, he moved in with his uncle, also a coolie. "I ran errands along with my studies to earn some money," he recalls.

The family's annual income was Rs 12,000, but Kondaiah's job at Wipro will fetch him a package of Rs 3.5 lakh. "It's the beginning of a beautiful dream," he smiles, "I can't wait to join." He will leave behind his uncle and the one-room house that measured all of 80 steps when I walked around it. And a prayer for the Jawahar Knowledge Centre (JKC), an initiative of the Andhra Pradesh government which, in 2005, began to pick up enterprising students from rural backgrounds to offer them training in IT hardware, software and networking. Set up as labs with high-end computers and software systems in rural colleges in Andhra Pradesh, these centres are especially attractive because they offer on-campus recruitment.

In a country where education is still considered a matter of good fortune, the concept of JKCs with campus recruitments by renowned IT companies is an unimaginable hope for youngsters from the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. In his matchbox sized house in Nellore's slum area, Prasad Chintala hugs his mother who washes utensils and clothes in people's homes for a living; his father is a rickshaw puller. "My parents are illiterate but my mother wanted to educate me. She would enquire about private schools from homes where she worked and supported my education," Chintala tells us.

The 100-sq ft, one-room house is simultaneously bedroom, study, dressing room and puja room for all three of them. Chintala's clothes occupy one shelf, right next to his books; his parents' clothes are bundled in an old trunk. "My mother got me new clothes but wore second-hand sarees herself," Chintala says, itching to earn his first salary so he can buy her a new kanjeevaram. The 21-year-old engineering student whose family income is Rs 14,000 per annum, will be able to afford it when he joins Infosys next month on an annual package of Rs 3.5 lakh.

"He's my only strength, my only wealth," his mother tells us, "I was willing to do anything to educate him." His father recalls the neighbourhood rickshaw pullers scoffing at them for wasting their hard-earned money on his education. "Today they praise us for our efforts," he says, while Chintala's brother-in-law, a pest control worker at a local cinema hall, frow