The Better India · 1 day ago

How a Hyderabad Teacher Helped Watchmen’s Children Become Engineers From a Water Tank Classroom

When Pothukuchi Srinivas learned that a student hadn't done his homework because he spent evenings cleaning tea carts and had no electricity at home, he couldn't simply return to his corporate job and forget. He quit, began teaching from his own home, and in 2003 founded a trust that has since supported over 1,500 children of security guards and domestic workers through engineering degrees -- covering everything from textbooks to transport to laptop computers at zero cost to families. The classroom itself began in a repurposed overhead water tank, donated when his home ran out of space, an apt symbol for what happens here: something discarded, transformed into a vessel holding possibility. "We take responsibility until they stand on their own," Srinivas says, and many graduates return as teachers themselves, creating a space where a watchman's son can say he wants to work at ISRO and no one corrects him. What the trust has built is not just a pipeline to Rs 20 lakh salaries, but a room where aspiration itself becomes something children are taught they're allowed to claim.