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.
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