|
The
idea of Gyan shodh came into being when Tejaswini Reddy,
a student of BITS, Pilani approached Prof Anil Gupta
for providing an opportunity for a group to spend a
month of their inter-semester holidays in social work.
Since most of them are from AP, Prof Gupta referred
them to Honeybee AP. We found it as a unique
opportunity and commenced working on it.
We at
Honeybee AP, decided to identify an objective, which
should appeal to all the stake holders in the
activity, namely, the students, the villagers,
the society and other supporting agencies. In the
last three and half years of my association with
Honeybee AP, I found a silent admiration in the society
when we talk about the wealth of knowledge in rural
and unorganized sector. We were always
supported and encouraged. We were also respected for
the unique task we are pursuing in highlighting the
rural knowledge in the form of “Palle Srujana” - a
quarterly published in Telugu. As the knowledge was
being acceptable universally, we decided to name
the event as “GYAN SHODH" - A Social Internship. We
defined the objective as:
“To
provide an opportunity for young engineering students to
interact with the rural environment, and create database
pertaining to the villages visited comprising of the
creativity, traditional knowledge, problems solved and
unsolved and suggest approaches and solutions."
We prepared a paper on the objectives, methodology and
work schedule and sent to NIF for consent. Prof Anil
Gupta and his team have promptly approved the plan and
extended their assistance by providing resources
and resource persons. Paper submitted to NIF is
enclosed.
As we went through the "Gyan Shodh” during June 09 for
10 days, we have learned much more than we ever
expected. Students were ecstatic about the experience
and we were amazed at the effect it had on
their thinking and approach to life. My simple
observation was, all the students were more humble than
they were prior to the event. One student went
straight to meet her grand parent to seek
knowledge from her without wasting any more time.
Students’ feedback was very encouraging and each one of
them assured us that they would return in their next
holidays for similar exercise, with more friends.
Interactions with students in the beginning, between the
visits to the villages and during the final
presentation and feed back sessions was very lively,
energetic, honest and enriching to each one of us. Our
experience is inexplicable but we felt that we found a
way to informally yet firmly and permanently link the
youth of this Nation with rural knowledge.
As we
evolved ourselves along with the “Gyan Shodh”, we
found many spin offs form this event. We discussed
amongst ourselves and shared our thoughts with many
students, Educationists, parents, Govt. officials,
elders of the society etc. We found Encouragement
from all quarters.
Honeybee AP conducted “Gyan Shodh” during Sep'09
for 16 students of PG Diploma in IPTMA
(Intellectual Property and Technology Management in
Agriculture) from NAARM, Hyderabad. This involved a
visit of 4 groups each consisting of four
students to four different Chenchu villages located in
Srisailam forests of AP. Again the results were very
encouraging. Students accepted all the hardships,
though some of them had visited villages for the
first time, but they valued the experience a lot.
This time students paid for the entire duration.
Reports
prepared by the groups of students during Gyan Shodh I &
ll are compiled and placed in this book.
Reflections of the participant's post -Gyan shodh
are also appended.
In our
view, "Gyan Shodh" should be conducted for all students
as "National Duty" for at least seven days in l
or 2 villages while they are in college. This
should be voluntary yet should be treated as part
of their obligation to the country. Purpose of Gyan
Shodh should be:
-
To familiarize students with
rural environment, knowledge base, concept of
development, connecting with people who are in
harmony with nature
-
To
capture and document the knowledge base of the
village
-
To
create database of village knowledge for the entire
country.
-
To
mentor local entrepreneurs.
-
To mentor children of the village by the
students for life time in an emotional
relation. We found this happening already in 5-6
cases without prompting.
-
To provide the students a factual, first hand
perception of the Development plans initiated
by the Govt, their impact and influence on
the villagers. This would be a dispassionate
feedback for the Govt.
-
To build a linkage between the youth of this
country with people in informal sector
-
To
link the youth with nature through first hand and
practical understanding and comprehension through
experience. This hard earned knowledge etched in
the minds of these students will always help them
in their life time to arrive at more village and
nature friendly decisions wherever they would
be. Qualitative decisions would emerge in the
process.
-
Knowledge captured will be made available as "open
source" to all.
NIF under its mandate will pursue the
knowledge so captured for validation, value
addition and incubation ensuring the rights
and benefits thereof to the knowledge owners.
-
To organize a Nation building
activity.
Among the many spin offs of the
“Gyan Shodh”, mentoring of children by the students
has come as a pleasant surprise to us. While the
students stayed in the village for 2-3 days,
children called them as “Anna or Akka” and
build an emotional relationship in that short
duration. There were tearful farewells when the
students left the village finally. This emotional
relationship built on a foundation of pure human
value of compassion can be up scaled and
sustained for life long by communication between
the student and the child from village. Imagine
a situation where, a bright engineering student of
this country mentors 2-3 children from the villages
and shares
his exposure and knowledge for years on a
continuous basis. The change and the growth will
be immense, exponential and it would come silently.
The
knowledge of the villages captured by the students
during the Gyan Shodh, has a great potential when we
place knowledge of entire 3.5 lakh villages on the
internet for free access. We feel that the growth of
villages would be faster as their presence is felt
universally. There would not be any village which
is not visited and its knowledge captured and placed
in open source for access by everyone. This is
possible to achieve in period of 5-7 years if the
activity is scaled up and spread over the country with
certain intensity and passion. Creation and management
of such data base would also result in considerable
employment.
If the duration of
“Gyan Shodh” is kept longer, the students will also
highlight the appropriate technologies required by the
villages. We can assign such technological voids and
needs to the Engineering colleges, research
establishments, to incorporate them in the specific
development plans of the region etc. Provision of
appropriate technologies to each village will enhance
the productivity of the Nation substantially as it
amounts to optimizing the effort and least
utilization of resources at village level, which is
not attempted by anyone now.
Honeybee AP is
fully convinced that "Gyan Shodh”
can
bring silent knowledge revolution in the society by
exposing the Nature and the villages to the young minds
of our country in a voluntary manner. We propose to
conduct the "Gyan Shodh” events in AP through out the
year for the college students. Support and
resources are required to pursue this mission form
NIF and other Govt agencies.
We sincerely hope that our dream to build
linkages between the young minds
and Nature, villages, and rural knowledge of this
country will become true sooner than later.
Sincerely yours
Brig P Ganesham, VSM (retd)
Coordinator, Honeybee AP
Hyderabad |
