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PS-II at BITSunami and the latest on our proud initiative
By Sukanya and A. Shankar
Practice School II
– that famed system at BITS, Pilani, where in engineering and
science students go out into the world to apply knowledge gathered on
campus, to real-life problems. PS II at BITSunami, an NGO formed
towards long term rehabilitation of the two tsunami hit villages two of
Nagapattinam seemed a strange prospect.
All initial doubts about whether we’d be involved in social work
and what ‘projects’ an NGO could possibly offer engineering
students were dispelled during a splendid 4-day orientation, held by
BITS alumni actively involved in tsunami rehabilitation.
BITSunami is not merely an NGO. It’s the platform for the wedding
of three systems – a university, the society and administrative
organs – where technical knowledge can be applied to nascent and
hitherto unsolved problems of rural India to produce scalable and
viable solutions. The thrust areas - GIS based technical mapping of
resources of the villages of Naluvedapathy and Pushpavanam, bridging
the urban-rural digital divide, creating viable sanitation plans for
use in rural India – were exciting.
Desk research, preliminary tours of the villages, interaction with
villagers and the women’s self-help groups, scouring through huge
records at the collectorate and meeting the ‘village
elders’… it was a field worker’s delight, an
engineer’s ideal launch pad. But more than ever, even before the
end of my first module, my role in the big picture became clear.
I was doing my bit towards putting rural India on the road to
technological development, I was convinced that my work was quite a big
drop in the slowly growing pool of contributions and I was finally
gaining the satisfaction of having worked on a project that could help
change the lives of faceless people, rather than on a faceless project
that could get tossed into the bin later.
Listening to the tales of BITSians who chose to steer from the beaten
track and take roads less traveled always left me surprised and awed.
Though I had heard of computer scientists who had turned wildlife
photographers and chemical engineers who had chosen to grow orchids for
a living, for the first time I had the opportunity to interact with
such people in flesh and blood at BITSunami.
I proudly listened to the story of how well-networked alumni had
reacted to the havoc wreaked by the tsunami and come together to help
the tsunami-affected with whatever financial help, timely care and
know-how they could share, despite hectic professional lives.
And all through PS, I kept meeting or hearing about BITSians, who had
unhesitatingly shed corporate skins and their well-founded sense of
security, to help marginalized and needy sections of the society.
My project was a conglomerate one. The status of development of the
villages was to be identified. I collected and collated information
obtained from the collectorate, the state statistics division and the
local people. I moved on to the identifying of Development indicators,
which are monitoring tools in developmental programs, and their
adaptation to the rural Indian context. Further, indictors were
narrowed down to help in community-specific areas like the villages, to
help monitor the growth of the villages over the period of
BITSunami’s Integrated Development Program. Later, I studied the
potential of Village Knowledge Centers as an effective rural
communication tool and a proposal for a VKC in the villages and its
structure and content was made.
My Project Guide was Mr. Joseph Antony and BITS appointed the BITSunami
Project Manager, Mr. K S Venkateswaran, the PS faculty.
Understandably, my work took me to and from Nagapattinam very often. I
was always welcome anywhere, anytime – at the collector’s
office, the sub-collector’s office, the BDO, etc. and I was
instantly recognized there as the BITSunami girl!
And I made adventures out of every trip – whether it was trekking
with my PSmates from Pondicherry till Rauf Ali’s FERAL field
office with my PSmates, taking the bone-rattler two-hour journey to the
villages from central Nagapattinam, trying to gain access to government
records or being temporarily grounded in Nagapattinam when the river
was in spate and communication lines were zapped…
On one of my trips, I stayed an iron-willed woman, a professional
non-commercial-film maker called Revathi. She had given up her career,
to help in the rehabilitation of an extremely marginalized community
called the ‘nari-koravars’.
These people had scrambled away from their habitat during the tsunami
and did not return for a week, failing to register themselves with the
officers enumerating affected people. Revathi and some of her friends
came to know of them. They ensured allocation of temporary shelters,
are aiding their livelihood rehabilitation, and running a school for
the surviving kids.
A tryst with the local women’s self-help groups, to help out PS I
students in their surveys [which were aimed at collecting information
to help them establish small community businesses] revealed their zeal
in starting off cottage businesses, that empowered them and asserted
their importance in society. The women were skilled in mat weaving,
basket weaving, making coir products and in milk production and
distribution.
Probably the biggest learning experience for me was the tree-plantation
drive that BITSunami undertook in October, and which later became a
world record for the highest number of trees planted in 24 hours. I was
in Nagapattinam for a week. Other than interacting with the team there,
I got to learn the customs and ideologies of the village people. The
paper work, liaison with the government officials and charge of the
control room on the two days of the event enhanced my leadership
abilities!
A very inspiring BITSian I met during the course of PS is Chandra Anil who has been profiled in our cover story.
I met Chandra at the AID-Chennai office to learn about the primary
education scene in Tamil Nadu in general; she is a veteran in this
area. Her observations about attrition in middle school levels and when
girls drop out in the period of puberty, with the reasons thereof were
revelations and helpful in BITSunami’s fledgling education
programs.
As I look back at my apprehensions about my PS-II, I am more than
grateful that I had this unparalleled experience that has helped me
grow, as an individual and enhanced a facet of mine that I did not know
existed in such great measure.
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