A son of a daily wager, Barnana Yadagiri, said that for him serving the country is more important than earning money in the corporate world.
Keeping service to country before everything else, Barnana Yadagiri of Hyderabad, India, decided to join the Indian Army than going to the US to work in a software company.
“I had the option of sticking to the corporate world and making a lot of money but that was not where my heart lay,” Yadagiri said, Defencelover reported. “The kind of mental satisfaction one gets by working for the motherland cannot be replaced by any amount of money.”
Yadagiri’s father, a daily wager who sometimes makes less than Rs. 100/- (about $1.55), first thought that his son was making a wrong decision. “My father is a very simple man. He thought that I was getting into the Army as a soldier. In fact, he told me I was making a huge mistake by leaving a highly-paid software job to join the Army,” Yadagiri said.
A software engineer from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, Yadagiri was offered a job by Union Pacific Rail Road in the US. Another option was to join IIM Indore. But, Army it was.
Yadagiri remembers the hardships his parents went through to raise him. “I have seen days when my father earned only Rs. 60 [about $.93] after a day’s hard work and my mother who is afflicted with polio clean office tables to make both ends meet,” he said. He completed his studies by receiving government scholarships.
A recipient of Indian Military Academy’s (IMA) silver medal for coming first in the Technical Graduate Course, Yadagiri shared his future goals. “The basic character of hard work is already there in my genes. I will ensure that I fulfill my duties in a manner that makes the country proud by working in the defence [defense] research and development stream,” he said.