UNDER THE ARC LIGHTS
Grassroutes: take a road trip for a change
Pilani Team
Grassroutes (www.grassoutes.in): social journalism as a vehicle for bringing social and environmental issues to the forefront.
India is a very accommodating country. We are very pliant, sometimes to the point of being lackadaisical, in our approach to life. Whether it is foreign policy, civic sense or social awareness, Indians have always been at the bottom end of the respective world indices. The crux of the problem lies in the upbringing and moulding of our youth, which is a product of our attitudes and mindset. Societal and environmental issues have rarely perturbed the typical Indian, who is much embroiled in the daily rigmarole of life. This coupled with a lack of opportunities for participating in social change makes us blissfully unaware of the problems that plague our society. Grassroutes (www.grassoutes.in) is a novel venture by a bunch of recently graduated BITSians that will use social journalism as a vehicle for instilling awareness among India’s youth about social and environmental issues. To achieve this, Grassroutes is hosting a National Fellowship Program that sponsors teams of motivated youth for touring locations where social activism by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) is readily witnessed and providing them the means to study, document and publicize their experiences.
Grassroutes is the virgin project of YoFa or Youth Factor – a non-profit organisation started by a bunch of young BITS alumni – Abhilash, Sriram, Keerthikiran, Gowtham and Shravya. For the first edition of Grassroutes this December, three teams of 4-5 people have been chosen to visit three locations in South India for a period of about ten days. In an attempt to deconstruct the Grassroutes program, the Sandpaper Pilani Team spoke to Abhilash Ravishankar (’03 EEE), Co-Founder of Grassroutes about the dynamics of the program. “The program is extremely flexible and simple for the Fellows. Barring a few deliverables, the Fellows will have complete freedom to plan their activities. The teams are expected to travel extensively with the activists at the respective NGOs, reach out to the local community, and interact with the activists and the beneficiaries alike – in short, understand the issues from a grassroots level. They are also expected to develop a documentary-style video footage of the challenges and solutions via interviews and personal experiences. To cap it off, the teams will devise three ways in which the society in general and the youth in particular can help the NGOs and the local community alike.” The Grassroutes program will take care of all the costs involved and also provide logistical support in the form of video equipment and travel arrangements to the teams. “We have organised an orientation program in Bangalore for briefing the teams before they embark on their trips. We have also arranged for a documentary-making workshop to enable the Fellows to be comfortable with the filming equipment”. The Grassroutes Team has collaborations with Flaunge, a Bangalore -based short-film Production House and the organizers of Bangalore/Chennai RoofTop Film Festivals (BRTFF) to help create quality documentaries.
So what are the societal and environmental problems that the Grassroutes Fellows
will tackle during their road-trips? “We have three assignments for this Winter
Edition– Environmental protection in the Nilgiri Mountains, Rural health in Chhattisgarh
and the Weaving Industry in Pochampally, Andhra Pradesh”, quips an enthusiastic
Keerthikiran, Co-Founder of Grassroutes. “The parent NGOs at these three locations
are WWF India, Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS) and Aksharakriti respectively. These organisations
will accommodate the Fellows and spend time with them, sharing their trials and
tribulations, as well as their achievements. The Fellows, in turn, will help document
and film the ground realities with the express aim of sensitising the larger society
to the problems afflicting the local community and the NGOs“. After the road-trip,
the Fellows are expected to help the NGO and the community by implementing the aforementioned
three targets. “The Fellows, with the use of social media and alternative tools,
will strive to build a dedicated community of passionate people that, we hope, will
snowball into a social revolution. This community, in the long run, is aimed to
work as a hub for ideas, resource sharing and inspiration for more youth to get
involved in on-ground social work,” says Abhilash.
Any new initiative requires a solid support system. For Grassroutes, it is in the form of two advisors – the ever-enthusiastic former editor of Sandpaper 2.0, Dilip D’Souza, and the first female Students Union President of BITS, Aditi Pany. “One man that we admire a lot is C S Sharada Prasad who works for Arghyam, a NGO in Bangalore. CSP, as he is called, travelled from Kanyakumari to Kashmir on a motorbike studying water issues across the length and breadth of India. An engineer by profession, he quit his job and travelled for months on end to do his bit to contribute to change – he epitomizes what Grassroutes aims to subtly imbibe in its Fellows. CSP has helped bring to Grassroutes, a wealth of experience regarding the link between travelling and social change. Many BITS alums have also chipped in with invaluable support and advice,” quips Abhilash.
Now the big question: where does Grassroutes go from here? Keerthikiran is upbeat about the future, “The first thing that we always remind ourselves and our community is that this Winter Edition is a pilot. We spent very little time in publicizing beyond our existing network mostly filled with BITSians. We made no fancy advertisements, no attempts to reach the mainstream media and no extra effort to reach out to colleges; all of which we have shelved for our expectedly better and bigger Summer Edition in 2009.” The abundant and exclusive