TRUTIYA RATNA · STORIES OF IMPACT
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Prithvi Raj: From Teaching Under a Tree to Delhi University
A first-generation graduate who once tutored village children for a few rupees now studies at one of India’s most competitive universities.
Prithvi Raj was born and brought up in a rural village in Jehanabad district, Bihar, in a Dalit hamlet, where most young people stop at Class 12 or a local BA — and are considered accomplished for it. Leaving the state to study was not something anyone in his family had done before.
His parents were farmers with a modest income; his mother never attended school, and his father studied only until Class 5 or 6. Trutiya Ratna began supporting Prithvi Raj’s education when he was just fifteen, in Class 9 — around the same time he started tutoring younger children in his own village for a small fee, since coaching for himself was out of reach.
It was around this time that he met Trutiya Ratna’s co-founders, who were already working in his village on social change and education for underserved communities. They had earlier supported his elder brother to study in the city, and watching that journey made Prithvi Raj believe, for the first time, that studying in a city might be possible for him too.
Trutiya Ratna provided study materials and coaching fees, and encouraged him to keep teaching — a small tutoring effort that grew, within months, from a handful of children in his own village to over a hundred children from surrounding villages, taught with support from community educators Trutiya Ratna helped bring in alongside him.
“Earlier I thought caste discrimination and the unfair treatment of women were just normal parts of life. But at Trutiya Ratna, these topics were discussed openly, without judgment, and I was given books that helped me understand society far better than before.”
After Class 10, he moved to Patna for his 11th and 12th, continuing to teach — now tutoring children from Patna families who could not otherwise afford it — while Trutiya Ratna covered his coaching fees, food, and health needs. When it came time to prepare for the CUET exam, an exam he knew almost nothing about, the organisation guided him through it step by step.
The results opened doors he hadn’t imagined: offers from universities in Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Visva-Bharati. He chose Delhi University.
Today, alongside his studies in Delhi, Prithvi Raj volunteers with Trutiya Ratna in operations management — staying connected to the organisation that has supported him since he was fifteen. He sometimes thinks back to his village — to a version of himself who never expected to leave it. “My thinking, my behaviour, my whole way of looking at education has changed,” he says. “But there is still so much about society I am learning to understand more deeply.”