The Mahakaushal region in Madhya Pradesh, comprising Mandla, Dindori, and Balaghat, has three of the most backward and tribal-populated districts in India. Most of them are farmer families who possess small landholdings and earn low produce from the farmlands due to inadequate irrigation facilities, and one crop farming practice. The tribal families live in abject poverty due to lack of alternative livelihood opportunities in the region.
Many tribal people thus prefer migrating to big cities. They migrate to seek jobs that would help them increase their income, but they are left with strenuous labor jobs at construction sites, factories, etc. in unhealthy conditions. Eventually making no significant improvement in their lifestyle. They are more susceptible to health hazards by living in cramped and unhygienic houses. The children of these tribal migrants suffer more than the adults. When parents migrate, their children drop out of school and follow in their footsteps, join the workforce as laborers, leave education and face adverse malnutrition.
An articulate initiative to increase developmental opportunities is a must in such regions so that children don’t have to leave their home grounds and wander on the unfamiliar streets of the cities where they are nothing but illegal immigrants.
Due to the surge rise of COVID-19 cases both in the year 2020 and in 2021, India witnessed the plight of migrant workers. Each time the cities shut down due to covid-19 hell is unleashed on these impoverished migrant workers who have to flee back to their villages because there is no place for them in the cities. The problem rises exponentially when the villages don’t accept the returning migrants as the fear of getting infected by covid-19 grips them. We do not need another ruthless alarm like COVID-19 to wake the sleeping economies who are equally ruthless to the migrant workers.
“If the mountain does not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. If the poor cannot come to education, education must reach them at the plow, in the factory, everywhere.”
Swami Vivekananda
Mrida Education and Welfare Society aims to bridge this gap between remote tribal communities situated away from the commercial mainland and education. The children of the tribal communities too should have the technical know-how to solve contextual problems in their remote geographies giving rise to more development opportunities in their region, their home instead of traveling to clustered and burgeoning cities.
Currently, MRIDA’s work is focused in Mandla district, located in the east-central part of Madhya Pradesh, entirely in the catchment of River Narmada and its tributaries. The region is surrounded by other tribal districts such as Dindori, Balaghat, Seoni, and Jabalpur. The region comes under the tribal belt with a majority of the population belonging to the Gond and Baiga tribes.
Traditionally, these tribes have been forest dwellers and hunter-gatherers and therefore, are accustomed to a high-energy, active lifestyle. Many first-generation learners who attend Government schools come from families that are adept at making tools, toys, and building their own houses and possess a solid sense of geometry.
The Narmada Valley Avishkar Labs (NVAL) is an after-school technology education program conducted by Mrida that uses the inherent traits that children of tribal communities possess to make and build things and channelize it towards the technology and automation-focused careers of the future.
Priya Nadkarni, Founder of Mrida
The approach builds on the raw talent and equips these children with the modern-day tools and programs used by urban engineers and the world – automation, robotics, and programming. Each of the projects the children work on focuses on a problem within the region and under the teacher’s guidance the children design and test solutions for these problems. Thus, the program takes the children on a journey. Right from “the problem they know and can relate with it” to “the solution” using the modern-day knowledge they acquired to build upon their pre-existing skill base.
The program is spread over four years focusing on – Thematic tinkering, programming, and locomotion methods, and tracking in Robotics. Get to know about the Narmada Valley Avishkar Labs tech program in detail.
The pilot program was instated in Phulsagar Government School, Sagar which was a great success. In February 2019, a team of students from Phulsagar competed in IIT-Indore’s Tech fest at Fluxus and won the Best Robot Design Award, among the students from 18 engineering colleges. They also emerged among the top 8 teams at IIITDM-Jabalpur’s Abhikalpan Techfest, competing with students from 16 engineering colleges across the region. However, due to lack of funding, this program was discontinued at Sagar. Currently, the NVAL program is functional at Riverside Natural School (RNS), a residential school established by MRIDA.
The challenges in running such an extensive technology education program in rural schools are immense.
- Convincing the local authorities and parents to let their kids stay after regular school hours to learn applied science. Most of the parents cannot gauge the importance of such tech-programs in building skills for their wards, over the regular field activities.
- Infrastructure in most government schools is in shackles, due to lack of funding or government funds not prioritized for technical programs. Rented spaces take away the majority of the budget allocated for basic facilities like books, and computers.
- Digital literacy is most of the tribal people have no exposure to gadgets, computers, types of machinery, etc. so grasping engineering concepts takes time.
- Constraints in communities do not let girls join in tech projects because of age-old social stigmas and norms. Thus the girl-to-boy ratio is low.
- Managing the interest and attention of the children after school. Teachers constantly have to be innovative while teaching to figure out practical ways to engage the children.
The success of an established technology education program in a metropolitan city will be measured through regular test assessments of the students or by taking practicals but here in these remote locations, these children participating in the technology education program is a prize in itself. While earlier these same middle-grade school students would run away after the mid-day meal but now they have started to stay back to participate in the hands-on project-based learning. Girls are keen to learn Science and Technology and are actively participating, giving them pertinent tools to empowerment. Both girls and boys work together in collaborative teams to understand the problem, design a solution, test it, present it to the class and rework the feedback received from peers.
The goal is to teach children to break down problems and inculcate a passion for discovering solutions, a collaborative mindset, and confidence to present their ideas. Most importantly nurture an entrepreneurial spirit, which is so vital for the development of a remote rural region.
The dream to make this program accessible to every kid willing to learn robotics and applied science is still burning with hope. Covid-19 did slow down the momentum but slowly and steadily this dream will be a reality.
Mrida is currently equipped to take the NVAL program in Mandla, Dindori, and Balaghat in the coming years but a little support is needed. A small push goes a long way. Partner with us for your Corporate Social Responsibility goals to support grassroots rural development in education via email at [email protected]
