Santhosh, who secured admission to IIT-M’s 4 year BS degree course. (Sai Story)
Chennai: J Santhosh, a 17-year-old student with a 90% spinal muscular disability and cerebral palsy since birth, was in tears last year when he was the only student from Class XII who couldn’t visit IIT Madras on a school trip. Fast forward to Aug 2026, he is in tears again, though for a different reason: he is the only one from his class to get a seat for IIT-M’s Bachelor of Science programme.
I got to know about the course after an NGO called ‘TN Volunteers’ visited our school last year,” he told TOI . We will bear the first year tuition expenses,” said Hari Krishnan, founder of the NGO, who also heads social impact and outreach initiatives for the BS programme. Prof Andrew Thangaraj, chair, centre for outreach and digital education, said, “The course focuses on full stack development, data science and analytics.
Having cleared the qualifiers in his second attempt two weeks ago, Santhosh, the son of an auto driver, is set to start the four-year data science and applications course in the third week of Sept. “I wanted to enrol in a course that I could do from home. Engineering courses require in-person attendance and correspondence courses require a lot of money. “TN Volunteers will assist Santhosh with in-person training in the initial stages, also teaching him about AI. Several students with disabilities have taken this course and secured jobs in top firms.”
These are relevant in all major industries today.