I am working for the betterment of students of my home town: Dipen Gadhia

I come from a town where there were very few schools under CBSE and undoubtedly, I was not a student of those schools. But I was surely the topper of my school whether it was the fancy dress competition, mono-act competition, school exams, essay writing, etc. But I never got exposure beyond the school competitions and this was the drawback. Then, I topped the town in 12th grade examination and moved into my dream college for further education. There I got to know something called Model United Nations. Now this was something very unique that I came across. As I said, there were no other competitions that I had participated beyond the school campus.

I won’t explain the whole concept of Model United Nations (MUN) in detail, but I would surely say something in brief. MUN is a model of the United Nations' Committees and it works in the same way as the real United Nations. MUN is the reel of United Nations' Committees.

Now I was very much interested in this because debating has always been my comfort zone and I did not have stage fear anymore. I attended the first orientation that our seniors organized for what MUN was.

They played the video of the previous year’s HLCC MUN Conference. The first thought that struck my mind was, “What have I done throughout my school life?” Like literally, I was feeling inferior looking at my seniors. But then, I thought to take this as an opportunity. I told my mind, “Yes, I may be from a small town's school, but now I am in a big town's dream college so this is the best thing that could happen to me.”

Now, the name of my college is HL College Of Commerce (HLCC) and the name of the MUN conference is the HLCC MUN, one of the oldest MUNs of Gujarat.

So in my first year, I participated as a delegate in the All India Political Party Meet (AIPPM) Committee of the HLCC MUN 2015-16. It was a three-day event and in the whole event, I just spoke for 3-5 minutes in total. One of my seniors guided me inside out and tried to make me believe that I can be the one out of the three winners, but I didn’t make it. Then, as I was preparing for UPSC, I didn’t take part in the second year. Then, in the third year, I had completed my coaching classes for UPSC and the MUN was approaching. This time I thought about registering as the Organising Committee (OC) member and not as a delegate. As an OC member, I availed every kind of exposure. I contacted a lot of corporates for sponsorship, I visited a lot of schools and colleges for inviting them for the MUN Conference, and even took an orientation in various schools and colleges. In a nutshell, this OC member experience changed me inside out. And this turned out to be the Largest MUN of Gujarat for 2017-18. After that, I attended almost 3-4 debate competitions related to the Parliament in Ahmedabad and Rajkot and won all of them. I also participated in the mock MUNs that were organised before the actual MUN conference took place, and performed well there too. So you can now assume that how this had changed my life totally.

One day, I was chilling out and I got a call from my friend and he asked, “Do you want to be the chairperson of MUN?” Now the Chairperson of the committee is the counterpart of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. I was like “Of course, it is a yes”. Finally, I ended upon being the Speaker of Lok Sabha for the Delhi Public School MUN Gandhidham (Kutch-Gujarat) for its second edition of the MUN. So finally, my dream became a reality. In addition to this, I also became a part of the TEDx HLCC Organising Committee which has only 15 members from the total of around 1800 students of our college. This was the cherry on the cake for me.

But still, my goal was not achieved which I had set when I entered the OC committee in my third year of college. The goal was to organise an MUN in my home town; Junagadh (Saurashtra, Gujarat). On that very day, I had decided that I will organise an MUN conference in my town which will be organised by the Trust whose school I had studied in i.e. The Patel Kelavni Mandal.

I have started preparing the foundation for the same and I am planning to organise the MUN Conference next year. In addition, I have even started to spread the knowledge about MUN in Junagadh and I am happy that students are liking the concept and are giving a positive response. I am playing my role for the betterment of the students of my town which I believe is my responsibility.

To sum up, I would just like to state that- do what you like. But if you are not clear what you like, just grab the opportunity that is in front of you and find the points in it for liking it.

You will think I had just shared the experience of MUN throughout the article, but this was the thing that changed me inside out.

Additionally, the basic college life is what we all have or will experience, so it won’t make an effect on you. But, the role of youth is very important for the betterment of the nation and MUNs are one of those platforms which provide you with not only contributing to our role as a youth for our country, but also for the world as a whole.

About the Author:

My name is Dipen Gadhia. I have completed my Bachelors degree from HL College of Commerce, and I am also a UPSC aspirant. I am interested in politics of India and that of the world as well.