Being Heard

Tuesday's in this semester had been the busiest. The two hour lecture in the forenoon session is followed by a three hour lab. in afternoon session. The Vivekananda study circle begins at 7 p.m. In between, we have meeting of neuro-signal processing groups on alternate week. The day ends with rushing back to home from study circle at about 8:15 p.m. and teaching my daughter for an hour or so.

However, this Tuesday morning I had two interesting student visitors in my office once the double lectures were over. They were two 2nd year students from the Dept. of Industrial Engineering & Management. Intially I thought that they are following up business plan development activity, one management school head asked me to help sometime back.

It was a sweet surprise when they told that they wanted to meet me for a reason-other than professional. They wanted to inform me one intiative they (a team of 10 students) are launching inspired by the activities of Mr. Anshu Gupta, an Ashoka fellow and a journalist. His aim is to channelize 'vital resources lying in excess in urban and middle-class household to far flung areas of rural India' i.e. one person's rag can be another person's riches. The organization he has lunched is named 'Goonj .. a voice an effort' and now has 300 volunteers across 20 states. It was awarded 'Indian NGO of the year' for its governance and practices. (source http://www.goonj.info)

It was nice to know about Goonj and the students' willingness to be a part of this effort. On operational issues the students said that for next three Sundays (till end-sem exam.) they would be holding camps in different halls to collect disposable garments. Goonj has some process of converting them to useful products like sanitray napkins etc. for distribution among rural masses. Post end-sem exam. they would sort the collection, pack them and send to one collection centre of Goonj.

I asked them to think about what the team members would do rest of the year. Garment collection can be done once a year or twice a year. Also, there are at least three other organizations who approached the campus community in 2008 for collection of old garments - twice for flood relief victims and once for distribution among the local poors in the neighbourhood of IITkgp campus. The previous collection drives must not have reached each of the 10000 strong campus community members and thus there is lot of scope but the expectation can be modest and the effort required, would be higher.

I also made them aware of some age old adage on new initiative like this -  they may face ridicule, opposition and even then if they stick to it the acceptance might come. People may doubt their intention - whether it is to add some brownie point in their resume, siphoning off funds collected etc. etc. It is not that such things do not happen in the name of NGO activity. Also one may ask that there are at least 5-6 other NGO arms operating in IITkgp campus - why another one?

The more than an hour interaction ended with a very positive note. I told them that I am  interested to know how this effort benefits the less privileged section of the society. However, I shall be more interested to know what effect engagements like these brings unto the team members. The ten of them at present, probably more to join - how they prepare themeselves to respond to the need of the nation that makes every act of us a service, not just one effort here, another effort there and that dissolves the invisible boundary of our selfish and unselfish selves.

It was great to know about this new initiative of the young IITians. As we have many religions, sects, catering to the needs of people of different background - we can have many such intiatives catering to the aspiration of young population. 

Let the 'Goonj' be heard in IITkgp campus. Go ahead, dear students. Our best wishes...