Tata Group announces second edition of the Tata Building India essay competition for school students
November 14, 2007

The Tata Group, India's largest private sector conglomerate, announced the second edition of the Tata Building India essay competition starting from November 14, 2007. The national essay competition will be held among schools in twelve cities across the country — Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Jamshedpur, Darjeeling, Chandigarh, Indore, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad. The essay competition is a unique and inspiring platform to encourage young leaders of tomorrow to showcase their expressions on nation building initiatives.

In its first edition, the 'Tata Building India' essay competition attracted over 1 lakh entries from 244 schools across six cities. The competition this year will reach out to around 450 schools in 12 cities across the nation. The competition will be a two-day long activity in each of these schools with screening of the inspirational film 'Keepers of the Flame', followed by an essay writing on nation building. In addition to the individual schools the competition will also be held at a centrally located venue to provide opportunity of participation to students of other schools as well in each city.

Speaking on the initiative, Romit Chaterji, senior vice president, corporate affairs department, Tata Services, said: "After the overwhelming response received from schools last year, we decided to extend the competition to 12 cities this year from six cities earlier. We would like to reach out to a larger number of students to give them an opportunity to showcase and bring forth their vision for India. We believe that the youth of today are the future leaders of India and through such initiatives we would like to encourage them to visualise and build India as they would like to see it. With the right opportunity such as this, we are sure that the students will be motivated to make that much needed difference towards the development of the nation."

Judgement process
The judgement process of the competition involves screening at three levels:

1. Entries at school level will be first shortlisted by the schools at the school level, and school winners selected through independent judging.
2. The winning essays will be collected from across all the schools in each city and evaluated by an independent panel of judges for a city-level recognition.
3. The best essays from each city will finally be judged by an elite panel comprising eminent people, for the best essay at the national level.

Prize distribution
Winners at each city level and national winners will be awarded mega prizes ranging from digital cameras, handy cams, desktop computers, laptop computers, special Tata merchandise items, etc, along with a trophy and certificate for each. The winners at the national level will be given awards in a gala function from the hands of a national dignitary. Last year the winners got the opportunity to meet the visionary former president of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

Salient features

• The school children are required to write the essay only once, which will then be judged at all the three levels
• To ensure a level playing field, the entries for the competition are invited at three levels: junior level (std 6-8), middle level (std 9-10) and senior level (std 11-12)