AMN /
A 37-year-old mathematics teacher of a government school in Alwar, Rajasthan, who shot into the fame overnight after Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed him in his Wembley London address on Friday Nov 13.
Khan has made developed dozens of educational Apps for free distribution among poor student.
Khan had developed his first app – the NCERT Learn Science – for the Class 9 students in 2012. Of all the apps he has made so far, General Science in Hindi is the top grosser, with around 500,000 downloads.
The teacher has created 42 Android apps, and counting, in just three years. While these apps have been downloaded by 2.5 million users until now, the screen views alone have come up to 18 million.
Khan, who did a two-year basic teacher training course after his senior secondary degree, became a government teacher in 1999. He was posted in Kota for four years, before being transferred to the government school in Jaton Ka Bagh – in Alwar just five kilometres from his native village, Khareda, in Malakhera.
Imran thanked PM and said that it was a small step taken by him as a teacher. “It was a small step taken by me as a teacher. It is a big thing for me that our Prime Minister has praised me,” he said.
Khan, insisted that softwares should be provided in the regional languages if we want to spread the Digital Indian Mission to the rural areas as well.
“As a part of Digital India mission, we should provide tablets, computers and other IT tools to the rural areas. The softwares installed in those gadgets should be available in the regional languages. Many good types of software are available in English but to extend their reach to the villages, they should be provided in regional languages like Hindi, etc as well,” he added.
Prime Minister Modi, who was addressing the Indian diaspora at the Wembley Stadium in London, said that he was sure of India’s bright future because his vision of India, was the India of Imran Khan who created and gave education apps for free; and of the Sarpanch who had conceived ‘ Selfie with Daughter’. He said there are countless such people in India.
Imran learnt all about developing apps by reading books, searching online, and, as his younger brother Idrees later tells me, “from my books on computer science.” In 2012, he developed a science app for NCERT, and from then on there was no stopping him. “I have since developed apps on different subjects like geography, history, maths, and science for primary, secondary school children, and even for those appearing for competitive exams,” he says.
This year, he was invited by Smriti Irani, Minister of Human Resources Development, to showcase the apps to the ministry. “I have donated all my apps for free to the country,” he says with pride. This was under the Digital India initiative to give access to online learning material for students and parents.
As a child growing up in Khareda, a village bordering the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, Imran found himself a misfit. The 10 km distance to school from his home was never a deterrent. Rather, it was the lack of support to pursue higher education in science that he found difficult. “I wanted to be a scientist. I was passionate about maths and science. But there was no encouragement or support to help me pursue these subjects. In our country everyone places more value on getting a job, and if you get a government job your life is set,” he says.