Rishabh Paliwal

During December of 2018, while I was trekking to the peak of Kedarkantha mountain in Uttrakhand, like Many before me in the midst of clean air and water, I got the opportunity to reflect on my life. The picture became clear and I decided to pursue law. Though it will not be just to say that it was entirely myself in the mountain which helped me in clearing my head but the organisations that I worked with since I graduated in Electrical Engineering from SGSITS, Indore and my childhood. It is important to understand the childhood that I have seen before my experiences in development sector. I am proud to say that I was brought up surrounded with amazing and inspiring stories of my grandfather who was honest to his job and did not shy away from fighting for independence. Moreover, listening to stories from my father about his struggle in government jobs and frequent transfers from one city to another laid the foundation for questioning everything. This was certain at that time I enjoyed social science, however, one incident in tenth class seems to have changed the course of my coming seven years. The incident was in regards to my performance in mathematics, my math teacher called out in front of the whole class and said that “look this boy failing in mathematics and has guts to show the desire to participate in maths Olympiad” and in the heat of the moment I challenged him that I will score the most. To conclude this, I didn’t score the most but I was second in the class. This made me believe that I am good at mathematics and I confused this with my passion. I ended up pursuing Electrical Engineering from one of the esteemed institutions in Madhya Pradesh. The engineering did not drive me and I was attracted to Badminton and social issues. Where I ended up being three times inter-collegiate badminton champion on the other hand worked with Greenpeace in raising issues in regards to Environment. This experience made me sure that I have to look into