A Bollywood star has presented a La Trobe University postgraduate student with a scholar- ship as part of a program that encourages Indian migrants to make a difference in
their homeland.
Amitabh Bachchan last week presented master of international business graduate Roshan Kumar with a $200,000 scholarship to be used over four years.
Mr Kumar, originally from Ranchi in northern India, moved to Australia in 2005 to complete his undergraduate studies.
He graduated in 2010 and went home to India but returned in November last year to further his studies in a bid to improve the health standards of people in his homeland.
Mr Kumar will use his scholarship to undertake a PhD into how to best communicate health messages to India’s estimated 80 million social media users. He said he wanted to empower Indian people to make educated decisions about their health.
“Social media has immense potential to act as a powerful communication tool to share health information with millions of people, but the information needs to be accurate,” he said. “This type of communication is gradually making information more accessible to people in India, but there is still a long way to go.
‘‘My dream is that there will one day be a model of healthcare that will reach millions of people not only living in the main cities but also in rural areas where education is low.”
Mr Kumar grew up watching Bachchan in Bollywood movies and said receiving the scholarship from the film star was an amazing experience.
The La Trobe scholarship is presented to a different Indian citizen every four years to fund a thesis related to media, digital technology and communication.
