yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Continuing with the lovely time at Rishi Valley : Would I want to chat with students in the Sociology class? Well I would - but what do I chat on? This was how the conversation on the topic started. Suggestions from teachers then made things easier for me: How about talking on meetings ( and interactions ) when you initially went to the villages in Mizoram? Also what you observed in and learnt from the villages during initial days– especially in context of your work? As I started jotting notes I was clear that I would talk of initial days in Baghmara ( South Garo Hills, Meghalaya ) and put to use neither images nor power-point. Images in this post are those scanned from the album of monsoon 2004. These I dug out only last evening and I have put in the image names I then used. As I write I recall Rama Bijapurkar in Telegraph writing that power-points hardly had power and seldom conveyed the point! In the space below I share some of these notes and questions that followed:...

During a recent trip to Rishi Valley I was asked if I would like to address the junior assembly ( which I happily agreed to ) and warned that the students asked too many questions !! I shared the story of my walk to a meeting place at a village in Nagaland I started from the foot-ball field, which also has a volley-ball court, at one end of the village I then came across young people at the amphitheatre Just nearby was a community place with painted walls Couple of pines had fallen at the corner As I walked further I saw people had stocked firewood  Reaching next locality I saw a house with a tin-roof (oil-cans) While another had beautiful carving and different colour Just besides was a house which had maximum look-alikes  Around the corner I saw the garage which looked familiar I reached the destination and saw the wooden-box which I recalled from last time; a grain storage-place Tea was getting ready at the center of the roo...

This post shares random snippets from a fascinating book I recently read. The Failure of Environmental Education (And how we can fix it) Charles Saylan and Daniel T Blumstein University of California Press ISBN 978 – 0 – 520 – 26539 - 4 Before the snippets : some thoughts on the book I bumped into online ~ Green Book Reviews Current Science ULCA   “A historical perspective is essential to informed decision making, particularly when assessing the state of natural resources, and environmental education must take the lead in providing it” “The lifeblood of community is communication. It is the social glue that holds people together. If communication falters, differences become more difficult to resolve because common ground is harder to find. News travels faster around the planet, but it is worth noting that dissemination of information is not the same as communication. There are inherent limitations to communication when people are physic...

This post shares a piece from Education For Change (Vol 9 No 1). During my association with Samrakshan (NGO working on Conservation) I was engaged with an interesting program on CE. As a part of the program I got to communicate on nature with students and their teachers as also other segments of the society – youth associations, forest department personnel and religious bodies.  In course of the journey, one that enriched me beyond my own expectations, on issues concerning nature and communications, I realized that we would need to not teach but create platforms to discuss and deliberate on conservation. This was all the more pertinent in landscapes like Baghmara (Meghalaya) and Saiha (Mizoram) where Samrakshan then had field bases. Here, there were forests around towns and villages but on account of changing lifestyles, within space of a single generation, the connect with and concern for wildlife had eroded beyond imagination. This to an extent that while an old person in...

Share a report on my Talk at BSAP s monthly indoor meet on 14 th August 2013.  This features in the September 2013 (Volume 10 Number 9) issue of Pitta (Newsletter of the BSAP). The newsletter is edited by Shanti Mani and Umesh Mani while Anjali Pande has written the text. While the images in Pitta are by Sharada Annamaraju I have  placed my slides within the text below. Many thanks to each of them as also Aasheesh and Shafaat Saab for presenting the opportunity. Title: “Birds: some tales from Mizoram and around” – 14th August 2013     On 14th August the guest speaker of our indoor meeting was Mr. Nimesh Ved, who is interested in conservation education (CE) and proved to be a good resource person for an audience waiting to hear the story behind the sad state of Amur falcons in Nagaland . With his vast experience of working with local people Nimesh could explain the socio-cultural intricacies involved in conservation conflicts such as in the case of la...