HYDERABAD: Libyan students in Hyderabad are ecstatic about the developments in their country. For them, the joy of watching their homeland, which was under the dictatorship of Colonel Gaddafi for over four decades, returning to democracy is a moment worth living for.
27-year-old Ali Ahmed Talpie from Libya, who is an MTech IT student at the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, is happy that the autocratic regime of Gaddafi has finally been toppled. But he’s conscious of the work ahead.
“War has destroyed everything back home and now, we have to start from scratch,” he points out. In the same breath, he concedes that under Gaddafi, Libya had been self-sufficient and was fast developing. “But then, citizens did not have freedom,” he explains.
Another student, Abdrahim, who is pursuing M Tech (computer networking information systems), chips in: “Libya was a rich country but the only Libyan who was rich was the Colonel himself! It was our money which he enjoyed, our people he killed brutally and that has led to his own end.”
Abdrahim says that education was free in his country but it was not quality education. “People who had money fled the country long ago because of the dictatorship,” he explains adding that though electricity and petrol rates were really low, the standard of living was not high. “There was no scope for individual development,” he points out.
Ala Ahmed, a Libyan student in the University of Hyderabad, sees great future ahead. “Once the elections are conducted, we would have our own people’s government,” he says. For a country with six million population, which could well be lesser than entire Hyderabad’s population, it is a historic moment, he adds.
Ali and Ala, after completing their course here, wish to go back to their hometown Gailm and set up an IT company of their own. Ala sees lots of prospects for individual business start ups as there is democracy now in Libya. Abdrahim wants to actively contribute to the development of the country in whatsoever manner he could.
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