Anand Mahindra Offers Car To Daily Wage Labourer Who Bagged Medal At Asian Games 2023 – News18

Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra has promised to offer support as well as give the medalist in the Asian Games, Ram Baboo, a car of his choice. Although Ram Baboo’s path to the international arena was not straightforward, he managed to win a bronze medal for India in the Asian Games’ 35 km race-walking competition. Mahindra took to X (formerly Twitter) on October 14 to express his appreciation for Baboo’s journey from a Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) daily wager to an Asian Games bronze medalist.

Who Is Ram Baboo?

Ram Baboo was born in Uttar Pradesh’s Sonbhadra district, the only son of a manual labourer and his homemaker wife; he has three sisters. Growing up, a household income of Rs 3,000 to Rs 3,500 was hardly enough to keep them all fed. Baboo worked odd jobs in order to follow his interest in athletics. To pay for his athletic training, he worked as a waiter. He also worked as an MGNREGA worker throughout the pandemic.

“I have done everything possible in my life so far, from working as a waiter in Varanasi to digging up pits along with my father for road construction under MGNREGA scheme at our village,” the 24-year-old medalist told news agency PTI recently. “My family couldn’t financially support me, so I worked part-time to pay for my diet and supplements,” he explained to News18 in a separate interview. “Working as a waiter was disappointing – people don’t respect you,” he went on to say in the interview.

Baboo gained a great deal of appreciation for his path from impoverished origins to the Asian Games podium. Business Tycoon Mahindra, offered to purchase the young man a car and even praised his “unstoppable courage and determination.”

Check his tweet here: https://x.com/anandmahindra/status/1713012796491809078?s=20

According to Baboo’s interview with PTI, he met coach Chandrabahan Yadav while working as a waiter in Varanasi. But his low wages and disrespect drove him back home. At the Bhopal SAI Centre in 2019, Baboo somehow managed to persuade a coach to mentor him. Then, in February 2020, just before the countrywide COVID-19 shutdown, he participated in and came fourth in the 50km race in the National Race Walk Championships.

The Bhopal SAI Centre was closed during the lockdown, and Baboo went back to his house. It was hard for his parents to obtain jobs so they could support themselves. Afterwards, he secured a spot in the Army Sports Institute in Pune by winning a silver medal in the National Race Walk Championships.

According to reports, Baboo moved to the 35 km category when the 50 km race was dropped, where he won gold at the National Open Championships and was hired by the Army.