shifting sand dunes by NID banglore

Hello everyone 
Hope everyone had happy return journey. Shanu and me are missing all of you guys. Day after the gurkul i received an documentary made by my friend from NID banglore just check it out.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJaoEtKOVyc

24th August session

Continuing with the issue regarding with farmer and agriculture we have came up with some points
1) Developing learning spaces in villages
2) Involvement of the next generation of farmer
3) Utilization of women workforces in villages
4) Negative promotion of urban areas in context of  daily living
5) Promoting farming as profession

Further it has been decide during USID Gurukul  TEAM 7 will be working  towards development of the policies for this issue.Team members can comment if i have skipped any of the point

Developing bonding between villages and cities

After going through yesterday's discussion and after reading the mail i have come up with some ideas

1)      Astronomy in villages ( Taken from swades )

This will be service for the village students where the astrologist from astronomy club in small town or cities will go to villages on weekend night and will build up their interest in astronomy. As such not heavy investment will be needed service can be setup up with single telescope and some books. Also every child is always curious of such instrument so they will also take part enthusiastically. We will have to work on money issue involved in this service

2)      Table fans

In my recent visit to my native village I have observed that summers are really hot. As villages are victim of long power cuts during day time the cooling fans are totally useless.

I would like to develop a table fan which can run on manual power because the hand fans are not that efficient. Also worked upon the mechanical parts the energy can be generated during day use and stored in batteries which can further be used for lamps.

3)      Gramin tourism

I have observed many of urbanities have interest in gardening but they lack the knowledge of it also there is lack of space.

The Gramin tourism will encourage such enthusiast to join a club where on each weekend they will be taken to the villages and will be taught gardening. Space will be provided by villager where they can grow flower and other plants.

Agriculture needs better innovation, not technology

Ref: Agriculture needs better innovation, not technology

Andy Hall and Susanna Thorp

We live in an era of unprecedented technological advancement. So why does technical change in agriculture continue to be slow and patchy?

One possible explanation is that the importance of farmers' capacity to access and use information for innovation has been overshadowed by the conventional view that change is driven primarily by new technology and farmer-led technical improvements.

Similarly, insufficient attention may have been given to the fact that the capacity for innovation in agriculture is influenced not only by farmers' skills and resources, but also by the wider network of links and relationships in which farmers are embedded, which help ideas to diffuse and find new uses.

Interaction of urban and rural

On the similar lines of Srinivas Sir (multiplex in a village) apurv and ashwini, we can try to develop recreational space in villages that can connect it to people from industry and urban areas. These activities can promote cultural programs, exhibitions, conferences, organic food production and other interactive sessions with villagers and people from different field. We can think “how to bring people from industries to villages

Creation of food transportation Hubs.

A better solution for transportation of vegetable or agro- products from villages to cities can develop competitive thinking, which can further result to better quality products. If we provide or develop some solution in existing interstate or intrastate transportation system i.e. buses, train etc.

Use of biogas plant

There is a village near Kanpur, Bhauti. They are using Bio-gas plant for their daily requirement i.e. electricity cooking etc. and had developed a system where they can use biogas even in their cars. In many villages in U.P whole village have some series of 15-20 biogas plan that provides electricity in village, as power cut is a big issue in villages

Apurv! Thank you for sharing the thinking hat system with us. So right.. i’m going to adopt the green hat here.

But before that we need to be sure if we want our project to end at Kanpur or can we look at some way in which we can carry forward this project individually after the session at Kanpur. in that case i was also thinking of whether or not we could as a group, continue this webinar sessions from time to time and keep updating our progress through our projects.

In this regard i was thinking of 3 things:

1. Adopting a small farming community or a farmer-family at a village/town/place close to us and building a self sufficient ‘community system’ in the village. This community system may include a biogas plant or mud ovens for each house/farm. Although the area of biogas has been explored before and many projects have been carried out successfully throughout the country, a trip to a farm in a small town called Doddaballapur in Karnataka made me realise that this was still an alien concept to many farmers there. the aim here would be to create alternative options for them to generate more income, reduce investment and expenditure so on... but even though it looks like a very nice concept, unless we have a concrete way of building on this idea , it still may not be a feasible/doable concept. Which brings me to my next idea of

2. Creating a creative learning center in the village which could be a place where children and women are educated on these practices through unconventional mediums like puppet shows, educational toys( this again opens up another topic of educational toy designing.) like apurv mentioned, the concept of using toys that they use everyday to convey important social messages,agricultural practices and other information is a wonderful idea and we could actually consider that as one of the other list of topics areas that we could possibly work on.

This learning center would host a variety of activities from time to time and the main aim here would be to generate an interest and create awareness among these families about the existence of such practices and make them more self sufficient.

It could be in the form of a library/ museum of educational learning tools/learning space where activities could be held and organised. A space like this would also encourage the next generation of children to look at agricultural practices with a fresh perspective and not get disillusioned by it instead and Etc... we could organise activities initially and then slowly involve the community to participate and organise these activities themselves.

Will contribute more ideas by this evening.

usid GURUKUL : team 7

hello people ..
i see that only one post is up .. as of now .. here's my point of view.
i hope formatting is not that necessary as long as the idea comes through .


before i begin on the topic itself I'd would like to share a few other things just my point of view , and a suggestion. when i heard about the concept of "multidisciplinary co-op learning event" i thought we'd definitely have one student from each discipline ... however we are again 5 designers and one engineer. and are ending up 'generating ideas' same thing we've been doing as a part of academics.

to bring in the different viewpoints (i believe) as intended i propose a modified six thinking hats system (search - edward de bono ; if wondering what thinking hats)....

where each hat would hold the thought vector of a stream (design management socials engineering) and discuss using the six hats system (or whatever number of hats)
also two more stakeholders namely govt and the users

now back to our topic ... agriculture and food shortage .
from the brief participation in the meeting yesterday .. i gathered we are also considering the medium of knowledge transfer to the base of the pyramid an important touch point .. apart from food storage mechanisms .. here are some of the ideas i got


1. written data to the farmers is like taboo ... they've seen it and put into their chulhas before ...
as sir suggested ..make it into a song or something my idea is to find ways to make our message stick to their heads.

the talking earthen-pot -- you put your ear to the "matka" to hear the message .... the activator or the switch to the voice message is toggled by shaking the matka . so you use it like this ... you pick it up shake it vigorously and put your ear to it ... the message (best around 30 secs) starts and ends .. shake again for next message.


2. board game ... maybe ludo ..very famous in the villages ... or that shell based game i dont remember exactly ... each participant starts with a hand full of grains/gravel ... penalties can be exchanged with some grain but the grain rots with each cycle of the board so use it in time or you lose it anyways ... details can be looked into .



3. maybe some social activities modeled into info sessions .. like hookah for the farmers
(male) some thing that can be done along with it .. a game where in order to get the hookah mouthpiece you have to complete some thing .. incentive based.

will bring some more probably to the meeting tomorrow.
pardon me for anytypos ..bad formatting !! till our meeting ...........

USID Team 07: Brain Storming Session

Welcome to the TEAM 7 Blog.

Thanks Abhitosh for putting this up. I always believe that we should think about an issue without any preconceived notions and any limitations. Only after having done that, we can choose of the idea and work on them. For this you have to allow yourself to think freely and adventurously and keep putting them on a piece of paper. may be we will have a huge collection of ideas.

Let us start with some real creative thinking:There are only idea to start with.

a. Films as a medium to find the problem and solution:

I would like to propose a method of identifying problem and its possible solution by taking clues from some of the outstanding feature films.

I will demonstrate few examples:

i. Lagaan: Issues related to paying Lagaan- concept of penalty, 3 times that of legitimate one, due to failure to pay the earlier instalment on time.

ii. Swades: Weather forecast, dependency of mansoon/rains for cultivation [ the village guy looking at the sky and forecasting as opposed to the NASA scientist doing it scientifically

iii. Swades: gandhian philosophy of self help and invention, setting up of hydel power generating unit etc.

iv. Peepli Live: Concept of borrowing and mortgaging land- Govt. Programmes to support farmers, committing suicide as a tool to benefit incentives.

v. Do Bigha Zameen: Concept of land ownership and land reforms in India

vi. Sholay: Influence of Local Decoit and mafia, Gabbar men [Kalia and team] collecting the produce from farmers [Kasiram and others] as a matter of right and as a fee for protecting them from other mafia and govt. Diktats.

Can somebody volunteer to see the following films and make a quick montage of clippings in which something related to the farmer or related issues have been spoken about.

b. The integrating railways with agriculture/farming sector

A thesis of a student of architecture from SPA; from the film “In which ANNIE gives it those one” by Arundhati Roy”

All passengers will be supplied with fruits [at subsidised price] when boarding the train. The train will be fitted with water sprinkler system which will water the land along the tracks, where the seed [of the fruits ] thrown [after eating the fruit] by the passenger can be cultivated. Once the tree grown taller and bigger they will provide shade to the train thus making it cooler and reducing the requirement of air conditioning, effectively consuming less electricity. The human waste mixed with the toilet water will work as required manure for the trees to grow.

I have to sign off now, will keep writing in during the day.

With best wishes

SMG