Chennai : The Tata group has announced the launch of the eighth edition of Tata Building India School Essay Competition. A national-level contest, Tata Building India is India’s largest school essay writing competition held in different languages across the cities of India. This year, the competition is to be held in 12 languages and will reach out to nearly 3.5 million students, from 7000 schools spread across nearly 185 cities. Two new languages – Punjabi and Assamese – are proposed for the first time this year, adding to the already existing English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Oriya, Telugu and Malayalam editions. The theme for this year’s competition is ‘Happy and Prosperous Nation’ and young minds will be encouraged to express their thoughts on a topic based on this subject.

Started in 2006 as an English-language essay contest, the Tata Building India School Essay Competition is organised every year to motivate and nurture young minds across India and encourage them to think on the lines of nation building. The 2013-14 competition has started from key metros and will be conducted across the country from Jammu to Tirunelveli and Guwahati to Kutch.

Speaking about the competition, Mr. Atul Agrawal, Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Tata Services, said, “We are happy to see the enthusiastic response and the spirit displayed by the young minds from across the country. The growth in participation from just over 100,000 participants in 2006 to 3.5 million students in 2013 is gratifying, and is a representation of the support extended by schools in our effort to inspire young impressionable minds towards the positive direction of nation building. Tata Building India School Essay Competition is in line with Tata group’s ethos of commitment to society and, in the coming years, our endeavour is to reach out to even greater number of schools and students across India.”

To ensure a level playing field for students, the competition is conducted across two categories – Junior level for Classes 6-8 and Senior level for Classes 9-12. Each year a different topic on the theme of nation building is selected and participants are required to submit an essay between 500-600 words.The essays are judged on the parameters of relevance to the topic, structure, creativity and communication of the idea, and prizes are awarded for school, city and national level winners.  Further, one-time need-based special Tata Building India scholarships will be awarded to a few students from each city based on defined criteria and other terms and conditions.

The Tata Building India School Essay Competition 2013 – 14 will be a two-phase activity in participating schools. First, a motivational Tata themed film – ‘Keepers of the Flame’ will be screened alongwith an audio-visual about the Tata Building India school essay competition.  After that students will be required to write an essay on a given topic based on the theme of Happy and Prosperous Nation.

Source : B  Madhusudhanan