Dr. Chandrika RaiIPS (Retd.)

My career began far from a school — in the soil chemistry laboratories of Pantnagar Agriculture University, where I taught young researchers as an Assistant Professor. From there, life called me into the Indian Police Service, where I spent decades watching, very closely, what happens to a young person whose family could not afford the right education at the right age. One truth never moved: education is the key to a nation’s progress — and to the dignity of every family within it.

That conviction is why we put down the foundation of this trust over two decades ago. Eastern UP — Mau, Ghazipur, Azamgarh, Chandauli, Mirzapur, Varanasi — deserved an institution that did not ask its families to choose between a quality education and a manageable fee. We promised three things to every parent who walked through our gate: a safe campus, an accessible programme, and an affordable fee. Sixteen years later, those three words are still the test we put every decision through.

A polytechnic is not a building. It is a quiet promise made to the family that sends us their child. The promise is that three years from now, that young person will walk out with skills that earn them a livelihood — and with the self-respect that comes from knowing they did the work themselves. Our faculty take that promise personally. Our placement record — one thousand alumni now serving at Mahindra, Tata Steel, BEL, Indian Railways, Mumbai Metro, Amul, Mother Dairy and many more — is the only kind of report card we believe in.

I want to say something specifically to the daughters of Eastern UP and to the parents who hesitate to send them. A girl student at BIPE is treated with the same expectation, the same respect, and the same opportunity as any other student. We have a working Internal Committee under the POSH Act. We have faculty who answer phones at night when a parent worries. Our on-campus hostel is, at present, for boys only — a girls’ block is on the trust’s roadmap, and until it opens, our admissions team will personally help any out-of-Varanasi family find safe local accommodation for their daughter. Send your daughters to us. We will return them as engineers.

I am also keenly aware that the world your children are entering is changing faster than any classroom syllabus can keep up with. Artificial intelligence, automation, electric mobility, dairy automation, smart manufacturing — these are not abstract concepts; they will be the hands a BIPE diploma engineer will work alongside on day one. So we teach our students to use modern tools well, to question them when they fail, and to never substitute a tool for the discipline of thinking. This is what an honest education looks like in 2026.

If you are a parent reading this, considering whether to trust BIPE with three of the most important years of your child’s life: please come and see us. Walk through the workshops. Talk to current students without our staff in the room. Look at the hostel mess, the toilets, the safety arrangements. Read our fee receipts. We have nothing to hide and a great deal to be proud of. The campus is open Monday to Saturday, and we will arrange a free shuttle from Varanasi Cantt if you write ahead.

When you invest in a teacher, you invest in the future of an entire nation. When you trust a family with a child, you accept a responsibility that cannot be returned. We accept that responsibility, every admission cycle, with the same seriousness as on the day we opened our gates.

— आप हम पर भरोसा रखें। हम आपके बच्चों के भविष्य के लिए हर रोज़ काम करते हैं।