Three decades after walking out of GNDEC's gates together, you came back to the same campus — this time as decision-makers — to set the rules for how the 1996 batch scholarship will choose its students.
Every one of you who voted brought your own lived experience to the ballot. The NRI in Toronto thinking about the kid in Tarn Taran. The Ludhiana engineer remembering the classmate who couldn't pay the term fee. The Singapore-based batchmate weighing pure meritocracy against the realities back home. The Delhi alum thinking about the working student whose marks slipped. You all showed up.
The verdict that emerged is unambiguously about lifting people up. Need beats merit. Working students win. Orphans, widow-mother households, disability, agrarian distress — all weighted heavily. Punjab connection matters. Spread the budget broadly. Build a culture of giving back through encouragement, not contract. Don't punish backlogs. Support the student whose marks are slipping — they're the symptom of family stress, not the cause of it.
That's the rubric you wrote — together — for the first cohort of our scholarship recipients. Every selection from this point forward carries the batch's collective conscience.