WHY NAME IT EKLAVYA? 

Many years ago, when Core was very small, good people would not join us, so what to do? After many failed attempts at attracting people we decided to "produce people from within". We evolved our own philosophy and concepts of HRD (Human Resourcess Development) which was based on the premise that the management / owner of the company is the "father" and "mother " of the person.

We used to relate a story at the beginning of each HRD programme. A sculptor is chiseling a statue out of a raw stone and when asked "What are you making ? Is it Ganesh? Is it Lakshmi? Is it a man? Is it an elephant?" He replied " I do not know; there is ALREADY a statue inside and i'm only removing the extraneous material and it will come out on its own!"

A few years down the line, we saw a most fantastic statue in Akshardham Temple in Gandhinagar. This is the statue of a boy, half-carved out of raw stone and half still inside. The most fantastic thing about it is that the boy has a hammer and chisel in his two hands and he HIMSELF is carving HIMSELF out of the stone. Thou art the maker of thine own destiny.

This experience came as a very big revelation in our HRD concept. So far we were thinking that we are responsible for removing the extraneous material and developing people. Now we realised that this responsibility is also with the person himself and we are only the providers of an opportunity and facilitators.

We tried to hunt for one name from many religious texts which can sysbolise this philosophy. We searched the Bible, the Gurugranth Sahib, the Ramayan, the Mahabharat and the most suitable name to us was "Eklavya".

This is the story of a young, "middle class" boy, who lives in the forest, asks the great Guru Dronacharya to accept him as a pupil; Drona refuses saying he teaches only the sons of Kshatriya Kings; disappointed Eklavya goes to the forest, makes an approximate statue of Guru Drona out of mud and prays to the statue, derives inspiration and teaches himself archery.

In management we are taught that if a man is hungry, do not give him fish, but teach him how to fish. Now-a-days we are taught that do not even do that, but "enable" him how to learn how to fish or how to do anything else. 'Enabling' and 'empowering' are the fashionable words today. Eklavya symbolises this appropriately.

Not only did Eklavya became an archer greater than Arjun (the favourite pupil of Guru Drona), but also had the humility to acknowledge Guru Drona as his teacher and pay his debt of Gurudakshina, however cruel was the demand of Drona, (of course we are not much concerned with last twist of the story).

So, Eklavya is the name given to our educational foundation and to our proposed school with the aim that each boy and girl who passes out of the school should have "become an Eklavya". Then they are enabled to becoming dynamic change agents and bring a rapid improvement in our society and nation by providing enterprenrurial and transformational leadership coupled with a deep rooted sense of patriotic fervor.