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<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, yeah.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So I'm basically a social anthropologist.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> My interests are in social theory and in anthropology, sociology of India, and with a strong focus on agrarian studies and educational studies.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> I did my Master's, M.Phil from the Department of Sociology Delhi School of Economics, and then left for the US to do my PhD at Michigan State University.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> And after that I taught for a year at Tufts at Medford, and then returned to India and I've worked for about 14 to 15 years.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Most of the time was at the National Institute for Advanced Studies in Bangalore.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Apart from that actual working experience, I've sort of been engaged with various projects on the ground level, which is from where we sort of took off the Punarchith collective started in 2011, started with a number of friends, a small group actually, trying to bridge what I thought was...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> I was engaged in research and studies on agrarian issues along with the educational issues, focusing on the youth, who we felt really were both understudied and underrepresented in both these context of what was happening in agriculture in India, about the agrarian distress that I had written about, but also looking at the problems of poor quality education, especially as India was expanding its secondary education system, and the university systems were expanding.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So trying to bridge these two by looking at youth as actors, but also looking at the agency of youth in these contexts, and what would an alternative learning program be, in contrast to mainstream formal education?

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<v Dr. Vasavi> That's what the collective tries to do.

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<v Gayithri> Really nice.

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<v Gayithri> So I'll just briefly introduce myself.

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<v Gayithri> I'm Gayithri Jayathirtha, I'm a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania currently, and my primary research area has been computing education, to have a focus, to have a disciplinary home.

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<v Gayithri> But before this I was a math teacher, mathematics teacher back in India, where I was running an afterschool program, for-profit afterschool program.

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<v Gayithri> But I was also partnering with a few nonprofit institutions to support the broader mathematics teachers in a couple of districts in Karnataka.

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<v Gayithri> I was actually partnering with Prajayatna.

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<v Gayithri> I'm not sure if you have heard of them.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, I've heard of.

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<v Gayithri> Yeah.

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<v Gayithri> So I did some work with them for a few years before I moved here for my Master's and then my PhD program.

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<v Gayithri> So that has been my training, but I'm also retraining, trying to complicate what I understand, and how I understand the world.

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<v Gayithri> And from the time we've been here, I have had my own struggles with my identity, for what it means to be doing this work here, and why am I even doing this, and what at least is not being sufficiently studied, and what doesn't connect with my own life experiences?

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<v Gayithri> And that is why this whole collective started off, like the south Asian Learning Sciences Research Collective, we call it, but it was predominantly a bunch of us Indian students coming together and really trying to understand what about our own lives are we actually parking outside our classrooms to learn whatever is being taught here, to learn the theories that we learn or study or read here.

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<v Gayithri> And that is why we started recognizing some patterns, some of the patterns in our own conversations.

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<v Gayithri> We have been engaging for over a year or two now, more than a couple of years actually.

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<v Gayithri> And then we got this little grant to do this work where we were like, "Okay, let us talk to folks and find out and capture those contextual factors for what it means to work in the subcontinent.

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<v Gayithri> What emerges, and how is work even done there?

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<v Gayithri> Is it qualitatively different, in what ways?

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<v Gayithri> What are some of the concerns that are coming up?

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<v Gayithri> So we just wanted to capture that and we wanted to talk to people who are working there, people who have studied there, people who may be doing both, just you do.

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<v Gayithri> So thank you so much for joining us today.

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<v Gayithri> So we will have two parts for this conversation.

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<v Gayithri> One would be more focused on your work, mostly Punarchith, and we will get to more of that and what you're doing there, how is it oriented towards the goals that you're planning for?

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<v Gayithri> And another would be more of your personal journey, your personal story for where did you start and how did you navigate, and how did you get to where you are now?

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<v Gayithri> And what in the process would you want to share with people who would want to or who aspire to be in your position, who aspire to do the kind of work of that you do?

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<v Gayithri> And who may be in position similar to where you are, like where you were before as a PhD student, thinking about the theories.

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<v Gayithri> So let's get started by talking about your ongoing work with the rural youth.

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<v Gayithri> For the sake of listeners, of course we will be tagging in some of the writings that you already have ,the webpage of the organization so that people get a sense of what is happening, but if you were to briefly tell them, what would be the overview of your work, for the listeners?

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<v Gayithri> What exactly is Punarchith, what do you do there?

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So Punarchith means re-think.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Basically, for us, it was a way to rethink our own privileges, the kind of privileged backgrounds we came from and the privileges we've had, but also to rethink a whole range of knowledge systems which we have just received, either in our formal education systems or the kind of formal information and kind of understandings we get from the larger society.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It was to reposition ourselves in a very complex world in which there was so much turbulence, in which we were witness to but we were also participants in that kind of turbulence that had been happening in India in the past three decades.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So, it was to rethink all this, along with a new kind of learning practices, and deliberately we didn't want to call it education, making learning, especially for the rural youths, as an endeavor, an experience that draws from their own lives, from their own life worlds, but enables them to engage with both everyday lives and the larger system in a proactive way through, by first, by making them as endowed and capable individuals, so our kind of byline was individual growth, but collective responsibility.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So basically when we started in 2011, we took a whole year.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Much of it was sort of organically evolved.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We deliberately did not take a blueprint approach, although we had some ideas as to what would be the modules and who would be the participants, et cetera.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So this was a course called the Integrated Learning Program.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It was meant for youth from 18 to 27, 28, both girls and boys, and it would be a course in which they would not...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Because we still don't have the infrastructure to house them for long periods of time but they would come in the morning and go back.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It was for all the villages that were around us in the village we stayed in.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So that was really the flagship, and has been our flagship program.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We have not done it since 2019, we've not conducted it.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Mostly 2019, we did not have funds.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> 2020 we got the funds, but-

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<v Gayithri> COVID happened.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> The pandemic restrictions prevented us, and this year we are hoping to really make up for the two lost years.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> But we continued to engage with the alumni, which really has now become a part of really the learning experience, its telling us, which I will later elaborate on, which is a big learning for us, but, of course, by in itself it's inadequate here.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> They need so much more handholding over the years because the situations are so difficult, and their own precarity in their homes, in the households, in the society, means that much more scaffolding is required.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So that continues to be part of our work, where we have alumni network and we have groups, production groups, civic citizenship action groups, et cetera, all from the alumni.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So that's the big part of the work.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> The other supplementary, in some ways complimenting this work, is we purchased seven acres of very dry loose land, dry in the sense it does not have water.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> The water that we have is harvested from the rain, and land that had been abused over several years and abandoned.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Of course,somebody sold it to us, so a restoration of land, land restoration program, restoring the soils, the biodiversity, the crops, the trees, everything.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So that has really been very time consuming.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> A big, big learning experience for all of us, but getting really into the nitty gritty of agriculture, much more than we had anticipated and much more than the kind of skills we had or the knowledge we had as a team.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Along with this, as we've evolved over the past nine years.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> As I said, we've tried to grow organically by responding to the demands of the field, responding to what we think needs to be done.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, when we saw the youth and they own such small parcels of land, agriculture does not give them adequate income, we started a small production unit, but it also fed into our whole questioning the mainstream economy, the capitalistic economy and a way to get this economy a profit making unit.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> People who have to profit versus workers, that the youth themselves formed collectives.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So right now, what is grown locally is also a value-added process and is sold by them.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So a very small collective, and it's a subgroup.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> They run the show themselves.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So that's a production unit which we also started.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Other than that we have a lot of small, small programs.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> A home gardening program, in which we emphasize ideas of nutrition and also autonomy, especially for women in the context of a lot of malnutrition in the area, but also enhancing this whole idea of food sovereignty, which is a huge issue in the rural areas and agriculture's changing very fast.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So these are some of the smaller programs.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We've recently started one, an outreach program, on understanding climate emergency, because climate change is so, so evident.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> But yet action, either from the government or from the societal level, to address extant resource degradation isn’t there, so we've been trying to work on that for the whole district.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We've done a lot of data collection and analysis.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Right now we are doing small infographics, which we are kind of disseminating to people.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> [inaudible]

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<v Dr. Vasavi> .
<v Dr. Vasavi>  And of course the COVID is a time which has forced us to situate that within the larger climate emergency context.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> And to say that unless we really take care of our ecology, our ecological systems, you cannot have [inaudible] livelihoods.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> These two are very, very integrated.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So these are, I think, very major challenges for us.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> I think we stepped in with ideas of an alternative learning program, not classroom-based but different, but what has emerged are these different programs.

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<v Gayithri> Very interesting.

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<v Gayithri> I would love to see what that expansion meant and how that actually happened.

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<v Gayithri> But before we move on, you said that you started this in 2011, and you have had cohorts of youth participating in your program.

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<v Gayithri> Just to get a sense, again for our listeners, what is a cohort size, and so far how many have...

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<v Gayithri> You recently reached out to the alumni, so what has been a sense of size, if you were to give?

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, we started the...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We've had batches of only 24, that's what...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It fits our budget, but also fits the classroom, the kind of space we have.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> 12 girls, 12 boys, that's what we would recruit for each batch.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We've had some dropouts, mostly when girls get married, they've withdrawn.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> That's been a huge challenge for us, where, the kind of, extent to which we've lost girls, although we've taken a lot of trouble to retain them.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> But every batch, the most outstanding performers are girls, although it's agriculture.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So we've been happy by that, and we continue to focus on that.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Some, of course...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We have a rule where if they don't have attendance...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Attendance falls more than… their absenteeism is high, is higher than 30%, we ask them to leave.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Mostly because no session can be understood unless you have attended previous sessions, so because of that.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So altogether right now, from six batches we have only about a hundred and odd students, of which about 60 odd are quite active, in the sense, quite engaged with us.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We have about 18 people who have formed the core of the production unit.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> They run the whole production unit, right from producing the stuff, to sending it, to looking at the monetary levels, the banking, everything.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We have another 12 people who are...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It's called Grama Sethu, the village bridge, in which they actually work with their local communities in their hamlets, bridging or catering to their civic needs, of the citizenship needs.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Getting your identity card made, your water card made, mobilizing their [inaudible] . Like new COVID… disseminating information on medical support, things like that, for which they get a small honorarium from us.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It's very part-time work, all mobilizing people for nutritious food, or any of those activities what they do.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So this is what some of them have been engaged in, and which we continue to have this sort of engagement, and mentoring and handholding continues.

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<v Gayithri> Got it, got it.

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<v Gayithri> And because you were talking about how you make your cohort of 24 try to balance at gender level, is there anything else that you look for or is there anything that you consciously try to accommodate, in terms of other demographic differences that maybe there among the youth, or do you just welcome anybody who's interested?

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> By default, most of the students are from the scheduled caste, and a few from the..

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<v Dr. Vasavi> it is a tribal area, so we tribal students also.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> There are very few what are called “general category” people in this district.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> This does have the highest proportion of scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, so we have that.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Mostly because we wanted to have an integrated classroom, we did open up to the so-called dominant caste thing, but very, very few people come.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> They sense that this is not their cup of tea, and overall there is resistance to a course like this.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It hasn't been easy, it's not attractive for them, even though we've paid stipends for that reason.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> As many have said, "To study means to go to the city, why would we want to study in a village?

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Why would we want to study agriculture?

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Agriculture's something everybody wants to abandon."

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Their parents are telling them to abandon it.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So altogether this has not been attractive, very, very few people really come out of interest.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Of the ones who have come, we would say less than 25% have come with interest in agriculture.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So these have been our challenges.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> The other issue has also been class, which we have not looked at very...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> I mean too much, because as I said, anyone who can afford it, they don't even study in the district.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> They study in Mysore or in the city, where they would definitely not not want to come.

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<v Gayithri> Yeah.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, the average holding size is only 1.2 acres.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Nobody has more than even two acres, in the whole family household, land holding size is so little.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Girls, what we have found is, they've come from mostly the Scheduled Caste.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> We've had to really, really pick and entice some of the Scheduled Tribe girls.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> One, they live in very remote hamlets and parents are very reluctant to send them.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> They always have to be escorted and they will have to come in groups, like more than two girls or three girls, in which we've also facilitated that.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> But if one girl there drops out, for example we had this case of a girl getting married, all the others also drop out.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It's like a cluster behavior.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So these are some of the challenges we've had.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> But overall I would say really, both in terms of caste and class and the household situation, very, very disadvantaged students.

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<v Gayithri> Got it.

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<v Gayithri> I just wanted it to be more explicit in our conversation.

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<v Gayithri> I think we are at a perfect point to talk a little about the social, political, and economic context in which this work is happening.

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<v Gayithri> I know you briefly mentioned that you are near Mysore.

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<v Gayithri> Mysore, being like a pretty big city of Karnataka.

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<v Gayithri> So would you want to tell us a little more about the context in which this work is happening?

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<v Gayithri> Geographic location and a little more about the social, political and economic?

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<v Dr. Vasavi> I just want to say, in the larger context, understanding the larger context of India that you mentioned, along with the ecological context, the environmental context would be very...

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So we are based in the district of Mysore, which is a Taluka.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It became a new district in '97.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It's considered, it's in the leeward side of the Nilgiris, so it's kind of a drought prone area because it doesn't get sufficient rainfall over the years and has large numbers of very disadvantaged castes.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Very little industrialization has taken place.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It does have a largish forest belt, where the indigenous people, the Soligas live.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It has large national parks which are cordoned off, where the indigenous Soligas have been dumped outside in colonies.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> This is all cordoned off for tourist purposes, where there are elephants and tiger, leopards, et cetera.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So very big tourist sites, which are really not accessible to the local people.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> Much of it, the plains are very dry, rain dependent, has what I've been calling as dry grain production, but very low production of local grains.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> It also has some kind of, a little bit of granite stone mining.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> This is the only other industry available in the area.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> So the larger political economy is not only of complexity, but also full of contradictions, and this is something that has me agitated all the time because most people don't recognize that the extent to which these contradictions in our structural situation are really the challenges we face.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> The contradictions are that since, say the mid-nineties, when the so-called global economy took off, you've had of course the rise of a middle class, what is called the new Indian middle class.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> People who profited from the rise of the IT, other industries, growth of the urban areas, et cetera.

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<v Dr. Vasavi> And you've had the rise of global, very visible, transnational millionaires and elite who are commuting between countries, et cetera.

00:21:41.470 --> 00:21:49.470
<v Dr. Vasavi> And you've had an increase in real wages in which, you know, the little boats have also been pushed up.

00:21:50.210 --> 00:22:03.589
<v Dr. Vasavi> But within that, within what is visible infrastructure improvement and visible improvement and housing, access to education, et cetera, are the more invisible disadvantages people have.

00:22:03.589 --> 00:22:23.740
<v Dr. Vasavi> Where access to clean water, to natural resources, all of these have actually occurred in the context of the natural resource base taking a hit because the economies have been so extractive across the country and we see it in our district.

00:22:26.020 --> 00:22:30.600
<v Dr. Vasavi> Lakes and forests drying up, agriculture becoming extractive, et cetera.

00:22:31.190 --> 00:22:44.020
<v Dr. Vasavi> And politically many know that the globalization of the economy has meant, not only opening of the media, but the promotion of the consumer culture, which is very significant for the kind of aspirations youth have.

00:22:44.620 --> 00:22:55.600
<v Dr. Vasavi> But along with this, what you have is the extent to which there is a welfare government mentality that has spread, where the government is providing some of these.

00:22:56.080 --> 00:23:08.960
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, the increase in the food distribution systems, et cetera, which I think is really, balancing of the economics of neglect with the politics of rescue, appeasement basically, always done at election times.

00:23:09.530 --> 00:23:27.880
<v Dr. Vasavi> But also more significantly has been the erosion of democracy because… the kind of political system that has come [inaudible] and spread of Hindutva, not only as sociocultural level, but as a political force, which has been significant.

00:23:27.880 --> 00:23:39.510
<v Dr. Vasavi> So along with the sociopolitical and economic structures, we've had, as I mentioned, are the really much more ecological devastation.

00:23:39.550 --> 00:23:52.933
<v Dr. Vasavi> Not only climate change, but the extant degradation of landscapes that is taking place.

00:23:52.933 --> 00:23:53.600
<v Dr. Vasavi> And, visibly, there is an improvement.

00:23:53.860 --> 00:24:01.760
<v Dr. Vasavi> As I mentioned earlier there may be more proper houses, the huts may have gone, and then now these concrete houses have come.

00:24:01.760 --> 00:24:20.114
<v Dr. Vasavi> There's more television, more people have bikes, mobiles everywhere, but the quality of life, for example, if you look at what people are eating, the shrinking of the food basket, the increasing malnutrition, poorer nutritional levels of people, et cetera.

00:24:20.114 --> 00:24:23.245
<v Dr. Vasavi> I think those are the contradictions, which we need to catch.

00:24:23.550 --> 00:24:29.240
<v Dr. Vasavi> And this is the context in which we are working.

00:24:29.570 --> 00:24:45.980
<v Gayithri> And what got you to thinking about this alternative, like learning for rural youth, how did you arrive at, oh, this is what we need to be doing, to actually work with this contradiction?

00:24:46.639 --> 00:24:59.562
<v Gayithri> And what approaches actually have you drawn to work with this alternative program for rural youth?

00:24:59.562 --> 00:25:07.557
<v Dr. Vasavi> So as I said we didn't have a blueprint, we tried to evolve it.

00:25:07.557 --> 00:25:16.210
<v Dr. Vasavi> Of course, when we started, there were three four approaches, which having read or interacted with people, we thought this would be appropriate.

00:25:16.210 --> 00:25:19.949
<v Dr. Vasavi> The first was we thought it would be what I called a social transformational approach.

00:25:20.419 --> 00:25:43.410
<v Dr. Vasavi> It would not, because of critiques of what the mainstream education system was, it was primarily reproducing the privileges of being already the dominant castes and the classes, but very, very disjunctive to the disadvantaged who could not fit into the mainstream system because of the poor quality of education.

00:25:43.440 --> 00:26:04.359
<v Dr. Vasavi> So social transformation in the sense of enabling learners to situate themselves within their societies, to engage with it proactively, to become aware of those structures of disadvantage that were keeping them down, to find their voice, to find the agency, to take sort of charge of their own life, to have their own scripts, which they could direct the lives with.

00:26:04.730 --> 00:26:07.379
<v Dr. Vasavi> So this was what we thought the course should be.

00:26:08.330 --> 00:26:14.340
<v Dr. Vasavi> Because of that, we gave them, we continue to give a lot of importance to theater, to performing arts.

00:26:14.340 --> 00:26:21.400
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, they're so shy and inhibited when they come, to develop their confidence, their own sense of self worth, et cetera.

00:26:21.660 --> 00:26:23.899
<v Dr. Vasavi> So that was one issue.

00:26:23.909 --> 00:26:26.660
<v Dr. Vasavi> The other was place based education.

00:26:27.110 --> 00:26:31.180
<v Dr. Vasavi> Because mainstream education system, the texts are full of things elsewhere.

00:26:31.590 --> 00:26:32.340
<v Dr. Vasavi> It's not there.

00:26:32.590 --> 00:26:33.510
<v Dr. Vasavi> It's not about them.

00:26:34.100 --> 00:26:38.859
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, many don't even know why is it that they don't get regular rainfall?

00:26:38.979 --> 00:26:40.789
<v Dr. Vasavi> What does it mean to be in the rain shadow?

00:26:44.350 --> 00:26:45.546
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why is our agriculture system this particular type?

00:26:45.546 --> 00:26:47.280
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why is it that our food is this type, not something else?

00:26:49.260 --> 00:26:57.509
<v Dr. Vasavi> So understanding your own immediate worlds, in relationship to the larger world, that was something that we placed.

00:26:57.679 --> 00:27:01.200
<v Dr. Vasavi> So understanding, for example, why is that lake dried up?

00:27:02.120 --> 00:27:05.159
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why that local hospital does not function?

00:27:06.180 --> 00:27:06.989
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why are our rituals, annual village festivals, why have they become so grand over the years?

00:27:07.010 --> 00:27:07.909
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why are marriages so different?

00:27:07.909 --> 00:27:24.169
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, to see how people are mimicking the tele serials, why are our women dressing differently?

00:27:24.980 --> 00:27:27.970
<v Dr. Vasavi> From everyday things, to wishes, so very reflexive.

00:27:30.420 --> 00:27:35.880
<v Dr. Vasavi> So understanding the place itself as a text, rather than a textbook, place as a text.

00:27:35.880 --> 00:27:41.050
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, they do walks and map things and then identify those things that they must study.

00:27:42.410 --> 00:28:02.889
<v Dr. Vasavi> The third thing we are trying to do is, where general skills, we know English or computers and accounts, these are given to see those has skills and capabilities for their everyday lives, for wherever they function, as very necessary, but also enabling them.

00:28:03.620 --> 00:28:09.193
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it doesn't mean just because you're going to be in agriculture, you should not know English or you need not know how to use a computer, et cetera.

00:28:09.193 --> 00:28:14.640
<v Dr. Vasavi> So those, some kinds of universal skills are also given.

00:28:14.680 --> 00:28:22.337
<v Dr. Vasavi> Finally we try to, in the modules we have, because it's not discipline based, we try to be interdisciplinary.

00:28:22.337 --> 00:28:34.810
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, when we do a lot of sessions on social issues, whether it's gender and caste and religion, also, we try to integrate all kinds of perspective, may not be just sociological.

00:28:34.810 --> 00:28:41.449
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, we might look at the politics of caste, not only caste system as a system of hierarchy, but the economics of castes.

00:28:42.230 --> 00:28:50.549
<v Dr. Vasavi> Or if they're doing agriculture, when you map a village, why is it only some people own large amounts of land and large numbers don't have any land?

00:28:51.039 --> 00:28:53.939
<v Dr. Vasavi> How do you understand the economy of a village?

00:28:54.170 --> 00:28:55.760
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why is it that traders only come?

00:28:56.179 --> 00:29:01.819
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it could be very, very interdisciplinary and making those into linkages constantly.

00:29:02.490 --> 00:29:13.581
<v Dr. Vasavi> So these have been our approach and what we found was something that we needed to do, which we started, right from beginning.

00:29:13.581 --> 00:29:16.579
<v Dr. Vasavi> We had told them no exams, there's no fail, no pass.

00:29:17.049 --> 00:29:24.319
<v Dr. Vasavi> And people were very confused, especially those who had come up in college level because the training system is so honed into that.

00:29:24.789 --> 00:29:37.860
<v Dr. Vasavi> And then we showed how, okay, if you have a paper, they do either at home or they do it there with us, it's correction analysis and you correct, whatever mistakes you've made, errors, you correct that.

00:29:37.860 --> 00:29:38.510
<v Dr. Vasavi> And you relearn.

00:29:39.170 --> 00:29:39.950
<v Dr. Vasavi> So relearning, also as part of learning.

00:29:43.260 --> 00:29:46.140
<v Dr. Vasavi> They are not marked.

00:29:46.210 --> 00:29:47.030
<v Dr. Vasavi> Nobody is a failure.

00:29:47.679 --> 00:29:49.005
<v Dr. Vasavi> That was very, very important.

00:29:49.250 --> 00:29:56.550
<v Dr. Vasavi> Because we found large numbers have dropped out from the system and they've been marked as failures, as failed, already.

00:29:56.880 --> 00:30:02.129
<v Dr. Vasavi> So that is what the emotional scaffolding helps that overcome.

00:30:03.389 --> 00:30:04.670
<v Dr. Vasavi> So these were the interlinked ways, some kind of pedagogies also that have been used in the learning.

00:30:10.679 --> 00:30:12.149
<v Gayithri> Yeah, that's perfect.

00:30:12.599 --> 00:30:20.880
<v Gayithri> And I just took a couple of points like notes, when you were mentioning a few, I think, like something that can be worthy of elaboration.

00:30:21.430 --> 00:30:26.320
<v Gayithri> One is you were commenting on how the Indian education system is.

00:30:26.650 --> 00:30:39.310
<v Gayithri> Of course, it's not a surprise that it is reproducing, like some of the patterns, some of the dominant patterns and facilitating or helping only like the dominant groups and not everybody.

00:30:40.260 --> 00:30:41.600
<v Gayithri> Do you want to comment?

00:30:41.870 --> 00:30:52.600
<v Gayithri> Of course, this is something that has been discussed in the broader context of educational research, but do you want to tell specifically what this has meant for the Indian context?

00:30:52.760 --> 00:31:02.980
<v Gayithri> What does it mean to reproduce status quo or the privilege or not serving the underprivileged?

00:31:04.980 --> 00:31:05.340
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

00:31:05.360 --> 00:31:21.700
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think that's been the biggest failure of the Indian education system that instead of education being a leveler or equality of opportunity, because of the highly differentiated systems that we have, which I wanted to come later, when we're looking at concept.

00:31:21.950 --> 00:31:22.190
<v Gayithri> Yeah.

00:31:23.400 --> 00:31:34.020
<v Dr. Vasavi> It enables the ones who are already advantaged to become even more advantaged and the disadvantaged to be even more disadvantaged.

00:31:34.080 --> 00:31:37.941
<v Dr. Vasavi> And that's what Bourdieu has also reinforced in his study of France, of how a hierarchical education system works.

00:31:37.941 --> 00:32:09.340
<v Dr. Vasavi> But what we see here is because the system is so punitive to the disadvantaged that it leaves you not only with the disadvantage you have from your family background, your class background, but having failed in the system, which is primarily not, if you've not passed or you've not got a job, which is the biggest goal of education, you become a double failure, the large masses.

00:32:09.340 --> 00:32:14.529
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it is poor quality mass education that marks people, the youth especially, in these ways.

00:32:16.059 --> 00:32:22.270
<v Dr. Vasavi> Are scarring them for lives, which really accounts for the large proportion of suicides we have now, among youth.

00:32:23.180 --> 00:32:34.589
<v Dr. Vasavi> So the kinds of anti-social activities, their frustration, which accounts for them to join groups that are violent and hostile to other groups.

00:32:34.960 --> 00:32:40.959
<v Dr. Vasavi> A complete lack of understanding of the disadvantage, which a larger system is creating.

00:32:41.750 --> 00:32:47.895
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think this really is the biggest failure of the Indian education system.

00:32:48.830 --> 00:33:01.560
<v Gayithri> And you were also mentioning, even in your narrative, it was kind of clear that you started off with this vision to support youth with an educational program.

00:33:02.040 --> 00:33:08.789
<v Gayithri> But then in your story, you started talking more about agriculture, like what are people eating?

00:33:09.719 --> 00:33:23.420
<v Gayithri> Do you want to tell a little about that movement from thinking about it as like a couple of modules, and one program, to now, we are going to talk about what you're growing and what you're eating?

00:33:24.850 --> 00:33:26.560
<v Gayithri> What was that movement like?

00:33:26.560 --> 00:33:31.250
<v Gayithri> What was that journey like to move from this focus to...

00:33:33.750 --> 00:33:44.270
<v Dr. Vasavi> I think I wasn't clear in the sense when we said it's an alternative learning program, it wasn't just learning all these other kinds of...

00:33:44.270 --> 00:33:59.258
<v Dr. Vasavi> Agriculture and ecology, were the key sites, key skills that they would get, which is sustainable agriculture now because right now what's practiced in much of the belt, or across India is chemical agriculture, which is the green revolution agriculture.

00:33:59.258 --> 00:34:17.909
<v Dr. Vasavi> So we were kind of looking at sustainable agriculture, linked very strongly to looking at ecological issues, but that would just be a format, as assigned kind of a takeoff site, for other kinds of issues to be brought in.

00:34:17.909 --> 00:34:24.829
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it was not something that we were not prepared for.

00:34:24.829 --> 00:34:39.860
<v Dr. Vasavi> It was just that the elaborate; in fact, for example, when we do sessions on food, the boys take over; for example, when we look at gender issues, it's the boys who have to do the cutting, chopping, and cooking and serving, et cetera.

00:34:39.889 --> 00:34:49.859
<v Dr. Vasavi> So as I say, it's interdisciplinary, but these agriculture, food, but also sense of belonging, responsibilities, these are all interlinked right from the beginning.

00:34:50.350 --> 00:34:57.450
<v Dr. Vasavi> How we did it, how much we stressed on it, why we had to redo some things, those were the real challenges we faced.

00:34:58.770 --> 00:35:00.450
<v Dr. Vasavi> But right from the beginning, we were very clear.

00:35:00.450 --> 00:35:02.230
<v Dr. Vasavi> Agriculture was a big focus.

00:35:02.259 --> 00:35:10.030
<v Dr. Vasavi> To see it has a viable likelihood rather than what is happening across the country, which is abandonment of land and abandonment of agriculture.

00:35:10.590 --> 00:35:10.930
<v Gayithri> Yeah.

00:35:13.390 --> 00:35:33.640
<v Gayithri> So what are some of the tensions that you see between the growing educational and economic aspirations of the underprivileged sections, that is the youth that you work with, and the loss of the indigenous knowledge systems or what they bring in?

00:35:35.049 --> 00:35:42.560
<v Gayithri> So what are some of the tensions that you see at that juncture there?

00:35:46.030 --> 00:36:02.479
<v Dr. Vasavi> So what's happening is, the way in which the mainstream systems, either agriculture, education, health, construction and architecture, all of those are bringing in are practices and knowledge system that lead to practices that are really not relevant for them.

00:36:08.529 --> 00:36:17.161
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, the kind of agriculture that is coming in, it's based on the wet cultivation models.

00:36:17.161 --> 00:36:17.169
<v Dr. Vasavi> It's not meant for dry areas.

00:36:17.169 --> 00:36:23.600
<v Dr. Vasavi> It's based on chemicals and new kinds of very extractive technologies, et cetera.

00:36:24.020 --> 00:36:27.430
<v Dr. Vasavi> These are marginalized, long evolved agriculture systems.

00:36:27.460 --> 00:36:31.140
<v Dr. Vasavi> Systems in which they understood the ecology as well.

00:36:31.370 --> 00:36:38.710
<v Dr. Vasavi> They knew certain crop systems, cropping patterns, cultivation systems, et cetera, and even processing and conservation.

00:36:39.010 --> 00:36:43.082
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, conservation of seeds and et cetera.

00:36:43.082 --> 00:36:45.546
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it was a whole [inaudible] play, the spectrum of activities they would've had.

00:36:45.546 --> 00:36:54.579
<v Dr. Vasavi> So we've seen that those have already been eroded, there is very little actually left.

00:36:54.579 --> 00:37:06.529
<v Dr. Vasavi> So in such a context where the mainstream education system absorbed youth into a mainstream knowledge system, but also does not give them employment in a mainstream system.

00:37:06.529 --> 00:37:18.799
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, we know from data, millions of youths are graduates or have graduated, either master's level or bachelors level, but don't get jobs.

00:37:19.380 --> 00:37:24.545
<v Dr. Vasavi> And hundreds of thousands of PhD holders are now applying for clerical jobs, et cetera.

00:37:24.870 --> 00:37:29.569
<v Dr. Vasavi> So unemployment is a huge issue and under employment is also a huge issue.

00:37:29.579 --> 00:37:30.790
<v Dr. Vasavi> So there is the biggest disjuncture.

00:37:32.040 --> 00:37:39.570
<v Dr. Vasavi> You've had an education system that really doesn't fit into the existing economy or the economy is not able to absorb such large numbers.

00:37:40.200 --> 00:37:54.720
<v Dr. Vasavi> Which is why you need, and later I want to talk about it, more you need alternative imaginaries, new different kinds of imaginaries of what economies can be and should be, and also then complimentary to that, educational and employment systems.

00:37:55.000 --> 00:38:04.500
<v Dr. Vasavi> The second is the tension between the new kinds of aspirations that the media has promoted, to what is available.

00:38:05.510 --> 00:38:11.430
<v Dr. Vasavi> There're huge gaps between their aspirations and their realities.

00:38:11.590 --> 00:38:17.000
<v Dr. Vasavi> They all aspire, for example, of course, clothes have become relatively cheap, mass produced clothes.

00:38:17.840 --> 00:38:38.764
<v Dr. Vasavi> So you see the first forms of distinction that you would have, it would be in the new kinds of styling, the clothes that they have, but also desires for motorbikes or vehicles or mobiles, either kinds of accessories, new kinds of entertainment, new kinds of food systems, foods that they want to have, et cetera.

00:38:38.764 --> 00:38:42.948
<v Dr. Vasavi> Theses are the ones have created a lot of tensions within families and households.

00:38:42.948 --> 00:38:55.619
<v Dr. Vasavi> We know, for example, conflicts between parents and children are primarily over their lack of access to getting these goods.

00:38:55.849 --> 00:39:08.549
<v Dr. Vasavi> We also know this is also one of the reasons for dowry rates to have increased so much and dowry demands are also demands of kind, you want so much gold, you want a car, you want a tractor, things like that.

00:39:10.420 --> 00:39:18.413
<v Dr. Vasavi> All of these are existing on huge gaps between people's abilities to pay for this or to afford this, versus aspirations.

00:39:18.413 --> 00:39:22.300
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think these are really the big problems of mainstream system.

00:39:25.920 --> 00:39:37.400
<v Gayithri> In that case, what are your comments on environmental and economic sustainability, in relation to these tensions?

00:39:37.410 --> 00:39:52.670
<v Gayithri> How do you see the work that you're doing, in relation to environmental and economic sustainability as addressing, or speaking to these tensions.

00:39:52.799 --> 00:40:03.419
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it's directly related to this because much of our studies have shown that current dominant agriculture model and most of the economic systems are not viable at all.

00:40:03.419 --> 00:40:09.109
<v Dr. Vasavi> The failures are already very visible, and to the victims also.

00:40:09.770 --> 00:40:11.870
<v Dr. Vasavi> But the alternatives don't exist.

00:40:13.060 --> 00:40:24.950
<v Dr. Vasavi> And that is what is really the challenge, to create those alternatives, which make it give you, viable at an economic level and also sustainable at an ecological level.

00:40:24.950 --> 00:40:34.140
<v Dr. Vasavi> But it's also a way for us to really rethink the extent to which small alternative models can be scaled up.

00:40:34.140 --> 00:40:38.380
<v Dr. Vasavi> This is something that many people ask us and I say, you know-This is something that many people ask us.

00:40:38.380 --> 00:40:42.643
<v Dr. Vasavi> And I say, "don't look at small examples of endeavors as something that they must be scaled up, right?"

00:40:42.643 --> 00:40:43.069
<v Gayithri> Scaled up.

00:40:43.240 --> 00:40:45.069
<v Dr. Vasavi> Onus shouldn't be placed on us.

00:40:45.069 --> 00:40:47.611
<v Dr. Vasavi> What you're looking at are multiple models of practice.

00:40:47.611 --> 00:40:49.190
<v Gayithri> Of those small things, yeah.

00:40:49.430 --> 00:40:49.930
<v Dr. Vasavi> What is available?

00:40:50.200 --> 00:40:53.540
<v Dr. Vasavi> What should be is viable here need not be viable for Kashmir or Kerala.

00:40:53.540 --> 00:40:54.371
<v Dr. Vasavi> Every region is going to have its dynamics and we need different kinds of work.

00:40:54.371 --> 00:40:54.462
<v Dr. Vasavi> So don't always talk about scaling up.

00:40:54.462 --> 00:40:54.552
<v Dr. Vasavi> I don't even want to scale up.

00:40:54.552 --> 00:40:56.924
<v Dr. Vasavi> The other really challenge is in working on an alternative, you have to, by default work on it on a small scale, because you don't know, you're not working on a blueprint.

00:40:56.924 --> 00:40:56.961
<v Dr. Vasavi> It has to be evolved into constantly integrating many, many factors.

00:40:56.961 --> 00:40:56.982
<v Dr. Vasavi> And many, many sources and agencies.

00:40:56.982 --> 00:40:56.999
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it must be small.

00:40:56.999 --> 00:40:57.013
<v Dr. Vasavi> It must be manageable.

00:40:57.013 --> 00:40:57.030
<v Dr. Vasavi> It must be deeply personalized.

00:40:57.030 --> 00:40:57.078
<v Dr. Vasavi> It cannot be like anything people ask us, it's like, "oh, only 24 students.

00:40:57.078 --> 00:40:57.089
<v Dr. Vasavi> It's not scalable."

00:40:57.089 --> 00:40:57.113
<v Dr. Vasavi> They would say, "it's not cost effective."

00:40:57.113 --> 00:40:57.182
<v Dr. Vasavi> "How can you have so many teachers for just 24?

00:40:57.182 --> 00:40:57.184
<v Dr. Vasavi> It's not really worth it.

00:40:57.184 --> 00:40:57.186
<v Dr. Vasavi> You must have minimum 100."

00:40:57.186 --> 00:42:06.471
<v Dr. Vasavi> I immediately say, "no, we cannot view because this has to be a personalized course and you need a small mass of students who can actually become catalysts," and this is a learning for us also.

00:42:06.471 --> 00:42:09.005
<v Dr. Vasavi> Every step, every course we have also learned.

00:42:09.005 --> 00:42:11.640
<v Dr. Vasavi> We fine tune, we change tracks.

00:42:11.969 --> 00:42:20.385
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, a big learning for us was the extent to which students don't read much because there are no reading cultures in these families.

00:42:20.870 --> 00:42:30.900
<v Dr. Vasavi> And with the inclusion of the both television and now the mobile based media, social media, the little that existed has also vanished.

00:42:31.660 --> 00:42:36.835
<v Dr. Vasavi> So, if you give them five page thing to read and come back, say the next day or a week later, they still haven't read it.

00:42:36.835 --> 00:42:41.400
<v Dr. Vasavi> So we've seen how distant, you have to teach them to actually read

00:42:42.370 --> 00:42:44.865
<v Gayithri> Making it a practice.

00:42:44.865 --> 00:42:46.850
<v Dr. Vasavi> Practice and the culture of reading itself.

00:42:48.120 --> 00:42:53.769
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think these are not only challenges, but also linked to the sustainability issues.

00:42:53.869 --> 00:42:57.539
<v Dr. Vasavi> How do you sustain the program itself?

00:42:58.850 --> 00:43:01.230
<v Dr. Vasavi> How do you sustain them through a program and how do you sustain the program over the years?

00:43:01.230 --> 00:43:07.829
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, it's only now after the six or seven batch, we're getting inquiries from other villages, of other people.

00:43:07.989 --> 00:43:09.049
<v Dr. Vasavi> It's very, very slow.

00:43:12.180 --> 00:43:15.100
<v Dr. Vasavi> So yeah, these are the multiple issues that we have to grapple with.

00:43:16.120 --> 00:43:16.450
<v Gayithri> Wow.

00:43:16.850 --> 00:43:43.799
<v Gayithri> Yeah, I can imagine because I'm also from Karnataka and I've been to some of the places that you're talking about, so I can imagine how it may be a very slow, evolving, organic process because it is so contradictory to what people are used to, what people aspire for when it is a program, what is it that they expect from a program, and how do you...

00:43:44.049 --> 00:43:52.280
<v Gayithri> Yeah, it's a constant battle because you're kind of going head on with the cultures that are existing on the ground at that point.

00:43:54.300 --> 00:44:00.730
<v Gayithri> Yeah and in your work, I know we are moving in that direction, I think this is going to be then perfect.

00:44:01.169 --> 00:44:12.190
<v Gayithri> You've often highlighted the need for educational institutions to play a role in social transformation rather than reproducing the dominant structures that we just spoke about.

00:44:13.890 --> 00:44:20.900
<v Gayithri> Can you elaborate on what kind of transformation you believe education should facilitate?

00:44:21.790 --> 00:44:39.809
<v Gayithri> And of course, I'm sure you can also draw from your own existing work for how you are doing it in your program, but what is it that you aspire or what you think educational institution should do, if what is that alternative imaginary?

00:44:42.670 --> 00:45:01.340
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, so just to define what social transformation would be is to endow learners with capacity, to not only rethink, but to, in order to be particularly aware of their conditions, to see through information, for its relevance.

00:45:01.340 --> 00:45:43.999
<v Dr. Vasavi> But also to have those capacities, to challenge systems of exploitation, of hierarchy, of discrimination, which in most conditions is accepted and internalized, as legitimate, as inevitable, but also to have deep, good understandings of how larger systems work, to understand the potential of democracy, to understand the potential of what real learning can give you, not just textbook based learning and to come out as both, not only active citizens, but also as empowered individuals within their families, within their communities and then on a larger platform.

00:45:44.689 --> 00:45:49.527
<v Dr. Vasavi> So that is what I think social transformation learning should be about.

00:45:49.527 --> 00:45:59.950
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, we've had cases, very, very small examples of how some of these learners that you really struck out, because of this course.

00:45:59.950 --> 00:46:02.850
<v Dr. Vasavi> And these speak about it.

00:46:02.850 --> 00:46:12.560
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, girls who refused to get married, saying that, just to anybody saying, "I need to know more about the boy."

00:46:12.560 --> 00:46:15.819
<v Dr. Vasavi> Or a girl who said, "I know this boy is an alcoholic.

00:46:15.850 --> 00:46:18.875
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why are you getting me married to him?"

00:46:18.875 --> 00:46:20.296
<v Dr. Vasavi> Or, even putting her foot down and saying, "okay, just let me be for a while."

00:46:20.296 --> 00:46:20.316
<v Dr. Vasavi> So just asserting themselves.

00:46:20.316 --> 00:46:20.378
<v Dr. Vasavi> To give you an example, when demonetization happened, everything was in disarray.

00:46:20.378 --> 00:46:20.409
<v Dr. Vasavi> We had not met that week.

00:46:20.409 --> 00:46:20.435
<v Dr. Vasavi> It was not a thing.

00:46:20.435 --> 00:46:20.548
<v Dr. Vasavi> And it was a week after demonetization and we knew everybody was really struck, you know, with a mess that they created.

00:46:20.548 --> 00:46:21.859
<v Dr. Vasavi> When we met after week, we always start with what had happened the previous week, just then demonetization was big.

00:46:21.859 --> 00:46:21.982
<v Dr. Vasavi> So we asked them and we were so pleased that many of them refused to give, the shops within overnight, if you took them a bill, they would give you whatever you wanted, but take like 10%, 20% commission.

00:46:21.982 --> 00:46:22.007
<v Dr. Vasavi> And these girls would go to medical stores.

00:46:22.007 --> 00:46:22.221
<v Dr. Vasavi> They said, "if you don't give us at that rate without the commission, we won't buy from you," and they walked off.

00:46:22.221 --> 00:46:22.398
<v Dr. Vasavi> And that fellow had to call them back and say, "okay, I'll just give it to you."

00:46:22.398 --> 00:47:27.600
<v Dr. Vasavi> So no, asserting themselves at those levels, in the banks where some of the boys told us, they just said, "when they asked us for commissions, we said, no, this is the government rules."

00:47:27.820 --> 00:47:30.822
<v Dr. Vasavi> So knowing about rules and regulations and asserting themselves.

00:47:30.822 --> 00:47:42.409
<v Dr. Vasavi> So we had small, small cases of people really trying to assert themselves in some ways through the new kinds of empowerment that they had.

00:47:42.409 --> 00:47:48.875
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, now, last year we've had village level elections and several of our students stood for elections.

00:47:49.160 --> 00:47:57.560
<v Dr. Vasavi> And some of the things they had learned was, of course some said, "you can't stand without a party and it's only the party that gives you money.

00:47:57.580 --> 00:48:01.785
<v Dr. Vasavi> And we have to pay people to work for us."

00:48:01.785 --> 00:48:03.222
<v Dr. Vasavi> Paying and all that, the usual corrupt systems.

00:48:03.222 --> 00:48:05.509
<v Dr. Vasavi> They said, "no, you have to challenge it."

00:48:05.910 --> 00:48:12.720
<v Dr. Vasavi> How candidates who are capable should come, how do you elect, think about if you are a candidate for [inaudible] and they've had...

00:48:13.149 --> 00:48:17.287
<v Dr. Vasavi> Of four, five who stood for elections, three lost and two won, but both of them were very proud.

00:48:17.287 --> 00:48:18.310
<v Dr. Vasavi> And even the ones who lost, they said, "we're very proud.

00:48:21.620 --> 00:48:27.749
<v Dr. Vasavi> We don't feel that things because we've lost by a few like 60 votes, 70 votes, but I didn't spend anything.

00:48:27.780 --> 00:48:29.450
<v Dr. Vasavi> I wasn't corrupt."

00:48:30.100 --> 00:48:34.820
<v Dr. Vasavi> So in a very small ways where we trying to get them also to become part of the system, to become accountable.

00:48:35.040 --> 00:48:47.685
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think that is what social transformative learning should enable us to really undo some of the systems that are higher up.

00:48:47.685 --> 00:48:52.660
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, boys now tell us that, "earlier, we never washed our plates after a meal.

00:48:53.369 --> 00:48:57.310
<v Dr. Vasavi> Now we've become so gender sensitive, we wash our plates."

00:48:57.600 --> 00:48:59.780
<v Dr. Vasavi> Some of the boys who said, "we've never carried water."

00:49:00.440 --> 00:49:02.270
<v Dr. Vasavi> They have to go to the common tap and carry water.

00:49:03.310 --> 00:49:04.461
<v Dr. Vasavi> It was always, it continues.

00:49:04.461 --> 00:49:06.000
<v Dr. Vasavi> We've seen it so much.

00:49:06.450 --> 00:49:09.039
<v Dr. Vasavi> A matter of shame for a man to be found carrying water.

00:49:09.039 --> 00:49:09.729
<v Dr. Vasavi> Its a woman's task.

00:49:09.729 --> 00:49:12.076
<v Dr. Vasavi> So you've said, "you'll, be using the water.

00:49:12.076 --> 00:49:12.630
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why should you not go and get it?

00:49:12.630 --> 00:49:15.670
<v Dr. Vasavi> Why do you see your sisters, your mother carry water?"

00:49:16.210 --> 00:49:17.950
<v Dr. Vasavi> So many boys now carry water.

00:49:18.630 --> 00:49:22.364
<v Dr. Vasavi> Some of them have told us how their friends laugh at their first time trip.

00:49:22.420 --> 00:49:25.740
<v Dr. Vasavi> And, but then they get used to it.

00:49:25.740 --> 00:49:41.549
<v Dr. Vasavi> So really challenging systems, really big struggles have been at the level of the field of doing organic agriculture, trying to get back to systems, for more sustainable systems, et cetera.

00:49:41.789 --> 00:49:59.789
<v Dr. Vasavi> So bringing about that transformation at the individual level itself, not really waiting for big macro changes to happen, but our thing is that for the big macro changes to happen you need persons, you need people to also to have an understanding, to become those agencies of transformation.

00:50:00.240 --> 00:50:00.450
<v Gayithri> Yeah.

00:50:00.969 --> 00:50:01.219
<v Gayithri> Yeah.

00:50:01.490 --> 00:50:02.380
<v Gayithri> No, that's phenomenal.

00:50:02.780 --> 00:50:11.520
<v Gayithri> And before we continue, I know we are just halfway through, is it okay if we extended our conversation for about another 30 minutes or so?

00:50:11.910 --> 00:50:12.200
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

00:50:12.380 --> 00:50:12.960
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, sure.

00:50:12.990 --> 00:50:14.399
<v Dr. Vasavi> I hope my internet holds.

00:50:14.399 --> 00:50:25.130
<v Gayithri> If you prefer, we can also we can stop our videos if it gets there, although I would love to see you as long as possible.

00:50:25.480 --> 00:50:25.850
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

00:50:25.850 --> 00:50:26.160
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

00:50:26.470 --> 00:50:27.370
<v Dr. Vasavi> We'll continue.

00:50:27.470 --> 00:50:27.709
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

00:50:27.790 --> 00:50:28.800
<v Gayithri> Yeah, thank you so much.

00:50:28.800 --> 00:50:29.290
<v Gayithri> Thank you.

00:50:29.730 --> 00:50:33.990
<v Gayithri> So yeah, no, it has been definitely phenomenal listening to you.

00:50:33.990 --> 00:50:43.379
<v Gayithri> So what have been some of the key takeaways from your program now that you've run it for these many years, you've actually faced a lot of challenges.

00:50:43.589 --> 00:50:44.519
<v Gayithri> It's not been easy.

00:50:44.519 --> 00:50:56.660
<v Gayithri> You're still constantly battling with the ongoing understanding of what it means to live a life and what is it to do so sustainably.

00:50:56.660 --> 00:51:04.649
<v Gayithri> As you're battling all these and trying to move towards social transformation, what have been some of the key takeaways for you?

00:51:05.600 --> 00:51:36.679
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, the key learnings for us has been one really big one, which we were not prepared for is the extent to which an alternative program like ours, which is really positioning itself against the mainstream and the limitations of the mainstream, is to also start with the process of unlearning because the mainstream education system has imprinted them in so significant a way that what transactions, learning transactions we engage with is not received at all.

00:51:37.489 --> 00:51:38.950
<v Dr. Vasavi> It kind of bounces back.

00:51:38.950 --> 00:51:39.340
<v Dr. Vasavi> So what is that process of unlearning?

00:51:39.400 --> 00:51:46.790
<v Dr. Vasavi> So that was something we really had to work on, especially from the second batch onwards.

00:51:46.790 --> 00:51:52.080
<v Dr. Vasavi> To cite things that they knew and then say, "okay, we think it that's really not true.

00:51:52.120 --> 00:51:54.419
<v Dr. Vasavi> That's not right or true or relevant."

00:51:54.900 --> 00:51:56.600
<v Dr. Vasavi> And then think differently.

00:51:57.170 --> 00:52:00.720
<v Dr. Vasavi> So for example, even things, that you read only for an examination.

00:52:01.510 --> 00:52:03.330
<v Dr. Vasavi> But you are not reading for yourself.

00:52:03.510 --> 00:52:16.349
<v Dr. Vasavi> So unlearning was something very, very, very important for us that they had to undergo.

00:52:16.349 --> 00:52:22.099
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, unlearning their own behavior, excessive differential behavior in front of us.

00:52:22.099 --> 00:52:27.819
<v Dr. Vasavi> Excessive exclusion, with gender exclusion, the boys not sitting next to girls or girls not sitting next to boys.

00:52:28.469 --> 00:52:42.140
<v Dr. Vasavi> So, unlearning what practices you had and the kind of habitus you came with to become something new, to inculcate a new habitus for something that we had to work on.

00:52:42.969 --> 00:52:59.420
<v Dr. Vasavi> The other big learning was that the students needed, as I mentioned very briefly, we found that the cost, which we did over by the four and a half months to five months, about 60 days stretched over all these many months, was very inadequate.

00:53:00.410 --> 00:53:08.759
<v Dr. Vasavi> So for that learning to sustain and to really become part of their lives, we had to mentor them for much, much longer times.

00:53:11.250 --> 00:53:12.770
<v Dr. Vasavi> So how would that mentoring be?

00:53:12.950 --> 00:53:27.290
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, after the first thing, we started having alumni meet once a month, they would come discuss, share, they enjoyed meeting each other where they sing a few songs, they do little thing and do fun things, but also read, think of ideas etc and go.

00:53:27.430 --> 00:53:29.930
<v Dr. Vasavi> Even then we found it very, very inadequate.

00:53:30.480 --> 00:53:35.230
<v Dr. Vasavi> So we had to make subgroups, those who are doing agriculture, what would they need?

00:53:35.520 --> 00:53:36.790
<v Dr. Vasavi> How would they share things?

00:53:37.059 --> 00:53:42.689
<v Dr. Vasavi> Or the girls who are now married, what would they do?

00:53:42.779 --> 00:53:45.930
<v Dr. Vasavi> Or the girls who are doing little bit of tailoring or some other thing, or the girls who wanted to be like, anything.

00:53:45.950 --> 00:53:47.559
<v Dr. Vasavi> So subgroups were formed.

00:53:47.559 --> 00:54:03.939
<v Dr. Vasavi> But constant mentoring and handholding, also a lot of counseling, we found, for example, some of the girls after the course, because the course suddenly had enabled them to be free, to see what they want..

00:54:03.939 --> 00:54:04.303
<v Gayithri> Liberating.

00:54:04.303 --> 00:54:05.620
<v Dr. Vasavi> Liberating, yeah.

00:54:06.190 --> 00:54:10.605
<v Dr. Vasavi> To learn, to sing, some of them started dancing, they would do a little bit.

00:54:10.605 --> 00:54:14.360
<v Dr. Vasavi> Some even they got married and they were really under lock and key.

00:54:15.030 --> 00:54:19.119
<v Dr. Vasavi> Some of them went to depression and we sensed it from just talking to them on the phone.

00:54:19.119 --> 00:54:24.180
<v Dr. Vasavi> So we actually had to intervene, visit them, get counselors to visit them.

00:54:26.240 --> 00:54:32.150
<v Dr. Vasavi> Some of them started feeling this tension of who do we choose between our families, Punarchith, and our bygroup.

00:54:32.550 --> 00:54:34.540
<v Dr. Vasavi> So we told them, "you have to choose your families.

00:54:34.540 --> 00:54:35.939
<v Dr. Vasavi> You don't have to choose us.

00:54:36.429 --> 00:54:40.560
<v Dr. Vasavi> You must choose your families, because that is really the long term.

00:54:40.590 --> 00:54:46.559
<v Dr. Vasavi> But you have to learn slowly to negotiate with them, to get these ideas with them."

00:54:46.559 --> 00:54:52.720
<v Dr. Vasavi> And where, if you actually it's the girls who really strategize better.

00:54:52.750 --> 00:54:58.230
<v Dr. Vasavi> Someone who now joined us as a team, she went, she got married.

00:54:58.230 --> 00:55:04.074
<v Dr. Vasavi> She even had two children and it was her mother-in-law who brought her back to us and said, okay, "you can take her, employ her.

00:55:04.074 --> 00:55:06.570
<v Dr. Vasavi> She can become part of your team and all that."

00:55:06.570 --> 00:55:12.877
<v Dr. Vasavi> So, because she had worked on her mother-in-law so much saying, "this is what they're doing.

00:55:12.877 --> 00:55:13.102
<v Dr. Vasavi> This is where I should be.

00:55:13.140 --> 00:55:16.390
<v Dr. Vasavi> I can do this for my children and we can do this in our house."

00:55:16.390 --> 00:55:16.490
<v Dr. Vasavi> So somehow she convinced that lady, "let's think differently" stuff.

00:55:16.500 --> 00:55:34.020
<v Dr. Vasavi> So, there have been moments when they disengage completely from us, which we don't mind, when they're these tensions, but slowly they can rework in that, but they should not have this burden of having to choose.

00:55:35.490 --> 00:55:37.790
<v Dr. Vasavi> Between sections or options.

00:55:37.800 --> 00:55:45.515
<v Dr. Vasavi> So the long-term scaffolding… this emotional scaffolding is something very, very important.

00:55:45.515 --> 00:55:58.210
<v Dr. Vasavi> One, not only gender issues, but also many of them come from such a disadvantaged past groups where family histories are of long, long generations of abuse and exploitation.

00:55:58.210 --> 00:56:04.109
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, people who come from families that were in bonded labor for years, there's complete subservient to anyone outsiders they see..

00:56:04.109 --> 00:56:04.363
<v Dr. Vasavi> to a larger system.

00:56:04.363 --> 00:56:10.060
<v Dr. Vasavi> How do they really stand up for themselves?

00:56:10.060 --> 00:56:19.030
<v Dr. Vasavi> Recognizing what are their rights as individuals, as human beings, as members of a democracy.

00:56:19.590 --> 00:56:44.510
<v Dr. Vasavi> So that I think is something one needs to work on beyond the formal sessions, very, very, one to one, very much contextualized in their situation and long term, long prolonged years, some of them, you know, from our first batch in 2012 to now also we continue to talk to people to have [inaudible] , so that's been a huge thing.

00:56:44.510 --> 00:56:44.810
<v Gayithri> Fantastic.

00:56:45.110 --> 00:56:54.970
<v Gayithri> And anything else that you want to add about your program that we couldn't actually talk about or we couldn't touch upon before we move on to the next part of the questions?

00:56:55.530 --> 00:56:55.840
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

00:56:55.840 --> 00:56:57.743
<v Dr. Vasavi> No, I think we've covered it all.

00:56:57.743 --> 00:56:58.186
<v Gayithri> Okay.

00:56:58.629 --> 00:56:59.009
<v Gayithri> Thank you.

00:57:00.109 --> 00:57:12.280
<v Gayithri> So moving on to your personal journey, you as a person where you started and where you are now and what the journey was like, getting into a few of those kinds of questions and conversations.

00:57:13.230 --> 00:57:28.870
<v Gayithri> So I'm going to take you back, way back in the time period, back then what got you interested to actually be in academia when you chose to that?

00:57:29.610 --> 00:57:31.729
<v Gayithri> What were some of the thoughts?

00:57:31.730 --> 00:57:35.149
<v Gayithri> What were some of the things that got into that decision making process?

00:57:35.209 --> 00:57:38.090
<v Gayithri> Why academia and what were your response back then?

00:57:38.570 --> 00:57:49.270
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, I don't come from an academic family and my parents had very little formal education.

00:57:49.500 --> 00:58:04.740
<v Dr. Vasavi> They were very extremely erudite and very well read people in their own ways, very economically successful in their mid life, which accounts for the kind of very privileged education I had, being sent to a boarding school, right from the time I was seven, to a very expensive colleges, et cetera.

00:58:04.740 --> 00:58:09.410
<v Dr. Vasavi> And I was a very average student.

00:58:10.120 --> 00:58:28.259
<v Dr. Vasavi> I was not a good student or one of the toppers at all and I don't think I had, kind of a purely intellectual bent of mind, maybe it was only after my masters or so, that the world of ideas opened up to me.

00:58:29.959 --> 00:58:32.210
<v Dr. Vasavi> But in the early years it was much more...

00:58:32.220 --> 00:58:35.670
<v Dr. Vasavi> From a very formative years, I was very sure that I wanted to work.

00:58:38.080 --> 00:58:45.649
<v Dr. Vasavi> I did not want to have a very conventional marriage, children kind of life, I wanted to work.

00:58:45.649 --> 00:58:47.359
<v Dr. Vasavi> I wanted to be independent.

00:58:47.529 --> 00:58:48.840
<v Dr. Vasavi> These were the concerns.

00:58:48.990 --> 00:58:59.213
<v Dr. Vasavi> I knew what I did not want, but I wasn't sure of what I wanted in terms of, I don't want to be a lawyer, et cetera.

00:58:59.213 --> 00:59:00.583
<v Dr. Vasavi> So my really...

00:59:01.040 --> 00:59:22.060
<v Dr. Vasavi> Change thing came in, when I went to the Delhi School of Economics and not only the course was very good, very well designed, very well developed over the years, but the friends in the hostel and in the school also, were just phenomenal.

00:59:22.450 --> 00:59:26.820
<v Dr. Vasavi> They came from much more sort of the urban elite backgrounds, but they'd been exposed.

00:59:27.490 --> 00:59:31.734
<v Dr. Vasavi> It was in the 80s in which many of them had come out from the 70s movements.

00:59:31.734 --> 00:59:33.700
<v Dr. Vasavi> They were very well read.

00:59:33.860 --> 00:59:37.310
<v Dr. Vasavi> They were activists.

00:59:37.310 --> 00:59:43.849
<v Dr. Vasavi> They were politically very astute, very politically aware.

00:59:44.089 --> 00:59:58.889
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it was from them that I learned the need to kind of question my own background, the kind of privileges I had, especially both my class position and my caste position.

01:00:00.099 --> 01:00:05.299
<v Dr. Vasavi> And it was from there and academia, I kind of entered to...

01:00:05.299 --> 01:00:09.540
<v Dr. Vasavi> I kind of just slipped into it as, "okay, now, what shall I do?

01:00:09.570 --> 01:00:11.009
<v Dr. Vasavi> This is the only thing that I know."

01:00:13.149 --> 01:00:22.100
<v Dr. Vasavi> It was formal education teaching or… Reading books or things, but it wasn't about chasing an idea or even a discipline.

01:00:22.820 --> 01:00:29.530
<v Dr. Vasavi> I had gotten into sociology because that just seemed interesting, that time that was available then of course it was.

01:00:29.570 --> 01:00:34.110
<v Dr. Vasavi> And in the US, the sociology became social anthropology.

01:00:34.230 --> 01:00:43.939
<v Dr. Vasavi> But to seek a life of ideas was really at much more, at the doctoral level.

01:00:43.939 --> 01:00:55.570
<v Dr. Vasavi> I think that I already started reading much more, thinking much more, but this was something to go beyond a career, that kind of set in when I was doing my doctorate.

01:00:57.220 --> 01:00:57.480
<v Gayithri> Nice.

01:00:57.960 --> 01:00:59.690
<v Gayithri> And then what happened?

01:01:00.230 --> 01:01:02.790
<v Gayithri> You did your doctoral and what happened?

01:01:03.250 --> 01:01:19.440
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, I came back to India, 93, 94, just when the whole liberalism [economic] was starting and a lot of debates, et cetera, and institutions were really in a huge crisis.

01:01:19.510 --> 01:01:29.610
<v Dr. Vasavi> Many of the known institutions, well, facing funding problems, it was very difficult to get jobs, et cetera.

01:01:29.610 --> 01:01:40.330
<v Dr. Vasavi> And so there were very few private institutions, I joined the National Institute of Advanced Studies at the invitation of Professor MN Srinivas, and I stayed on there for 14 years.

01:01:40.330 --> 01:01:48.519
<v Dr. Vasavi> I learned a lot there, in terms of institutions, but it was a difficult place to be.

01:01:48.619 --> 01:01:53.149
<v Dr. Vasavi> Because it was primarily an institution that was set up by a nuclear physicist.

01:01:53.570 --> 01:02:00.639
<v Dr. Vasavi> The key people were all men, very successful, national level kind of people, who would come there in the post retirement phase.

01:02:00.879 --> 01:02:08.440
<v Dr. Vasavi> There were some of us, 30s, starting our careers and social science people were really very marginal.

01:02:08.440 --> 01:02:11.009
<v Dr. Vasavi> Social science as a discipline, as a subject, was marginal.

01:02:11.260 --> 01:02:15.584
<v Dr. Vasavi> The really big ones nuclear physics, material studies.

01:02:15.584 --> 01:02:21.735
<v Dr. Vasavi> And we were meant to be handmaidens to troubleshoot the problems of the nation.

01:02:21.780 --> 01:02:22.759
<v Dr. Vasavi> That's how we get treated.

01:02:22.930 --> 01:02:27.950
<v Dr. Vasavi> And we negotiated constantly for your voice, to do what you wanted, et cetera.

01:02:27.960 --> 01:02:33.900
<v Dr. Vasavi> So it was very disheartening and very difficult things to...

01:02:35.370 --> 01:02:35.710
<v Gayithri> Navigate.

01:02:35.710 --> 01:02:36.300
<v Dr. Vasavi> To strategize.

01:02:36.650 --> 01:02:41.560
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah, to navigate and the doctoral program started much later.

01:02:41.560 --> 01:02:42.339
<v Dr. Vasavi> It was interesting.

01:02:42.339 --> 01:02:51.330
<v Dr. Vasavi> They were very good students, and apart there was always a [need] of having to go out, get your funding, do projects.

01:02:51.330 --> 01:03:05.380
<v Dr. Vasavi> So these project modes were very disturbing, because you put so much time and effort, but by the time you could publish or write it up and then publish it, you are already on another project.

01:03:05.380 --> 01:03:09.320
<v Dr. Vasavi> So, it was like project to publish, but really very little time to reflectively think.

01:03:09.320 --> 01:03:34.950
<v Dr. Vasavi> I was also really very, started to get very disillusioned with academia because I found that when you wanted to publish a thing, there were always these dominant hegemonic theories that were all that, that they imposed on you, that if you wanted to publish in certain magazine or journals, you had to tow that kind of school that they endorsed.

01:03:35.400 --> 01:03:41.490
<v Dr. Vasavi> I did not see much where autonomy or scope for creativity of new ideas at all.

01:03:41.610 --> 01:03:45.499
<v Dr. Vasavi> And just the whole process seemed to be very laborious.

01:03:45.810 --> 01:03:50.593
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I was really not so interested in publishing et cetera.

01:03:50.593 --> 01:03:57.319
<v Dr. Vasavi> Whatever publishing I did was something that just came easily, I did not labor over all of it too much.

01:03:59.519 --> 01:04:09.019
<v Dr. Vasavi> The other thing was also, I think for how you felt the onus of what we saw on the field versus the kind of lives one had.

01:04:09.700 --> 01:04:19.800
<v Dr. Vasavi> I was also itching towards just trying to address, as I said, all these problems we saw on the ground about agriculture versus ambience, trying to meld them together.

01:04:20.590 --> 01:04:29.659
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I just felt okay, I've had academia, but academia has a life of ideas, it's something I can always carry with me.

01:04:29.659 --> 01:04:30.350
<v Dr. Vasavi> I don't need a formal institution, I don't need to be bound by a salaried position to do what I want.

01:04:30.350 --> 01:04:50.352
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I would just brave it out and just work out of these kind of formal institutional structures and see what could be done.

01:04:50.352 --> 01:04:57.219
<v Dr. Vasavi> And I'm very pleased to say that it actually worked, I feel that my abilities to think out of these established frameworks improved because I had the freedom.

01:04:57.599 --> 01:05:01.929
<v Dr. Vasavi> I didn't have to constantly be on this treadmill of project, money, publish.

01:05:02.650 --> 01:05:03.912
<v Dr. Vasavi> Go for meetings, all this.

01:05:03.912 --> 01:05:07.720
<v Dr. Vasavi> It was a much smaller group, we were looking at issues that were happening all around us.

01:05:09.590 --> 01:05:14.680
<v Dr. Vasavi> We didn't have to fit within the theories, we had our own voices.

01:05:15.440 --> 01:05:20.020
<v Dr. Vasavi> It could be broadened experiences and the lives we saw around us.

01:05:20.280 --> 01:05:27.546
<v Dr. Vasavi> So a range of studies came out from this by just being in the field constantly.

01:05:27.546 --> 01:05:28.860
<v Dr. Vasavi> And also I also moved there.

01:05:29.300 --> 01:05:33.680
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I've been living in the village full time, returning to the city only occasionally.

01:05:34.460 --> 01:05:42.870
<v Dr. Vasavi> And also started learning from both my colleagues who were there who were working there, but also from the people, from the students, from the families et cetera.

01:05:43.600 --> 01:05:45.394
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, I have recently been trying to see the household as a very, very important site.

01:05:45.394 --> 01:05:57.669
<v Dr. Vasavi> Not only as a family but the household and the household dynamics, Which has been studied, but I feel not adequately enough.

01:05:58.240 --> 01:06:04.059
<v Dr. Vasavi> That really is now the microcosm of all the complexities and the contradictions of India.

01:06:04.770 --> 01:06:10.100
<v Dr. Vasavi> And those burdens we see and those battles are being fought within these walls.

01:06:10.760 --> 01:06:22.443
<v Dr. Vasavi> Also I think that is something that I've come to only because I'm there maybe to watch it but to participate in so often.

01:06:22.443 --> 01:06:22.842
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I'm glad I left the citadel of academia in this.

01:06:22.842 --> 01:06:33.190
<v Dr. Vasavi> But the ideas, the life of ideas has been there and I think it's all been facilitated by new kinds of technologies, for example being able to talk to you...

01:06:33.580 --> 01:06:38.130
<v Dr. Vasavi> have many webinars, meet students, we have lectures online now.

01:06:38.759 --> 01:06:40.710
<v Dr. Vasavi> So, I think we've been very fortunate.

01:06:41.850 --> 01:06:41.870
<v Gayithri> Yeah.

01:06:42.490 --> 01:06:56.790
<v Gayithri> Maybe one question I had as an aspiring scholar scholar, not in the sense of somebody who will sit in the ivory tower of institutions, but somebody who aspires to make these differences.

01:06:56.890 --> 01:07:03.340
<v Gayithri> You mentioned that publishing and running behind that whole thing was kind of like limiting you.

01:07:03.910 --> 01:07:20.310
<v Gayithri> So, and I know you kind of moved out of that, but what would be your alternate, what is that other alternate reality that you kind of hope to see in academia or what you actually left academia for?

01:07:23.059 --> 01:07:27.089
<v Gayithri> If not publishing, if not being limited in those frameworks.

01:07:27.479 --> 01:07:35.526
<v Dr. Vasavi> You need to publish, but you don't need to publish to make it as a part of your CV.

01:07:35.526 --> 01:07:40.649
<v Dr. Vasavi> You need to publish because you have something to share and something to say.

01:07:40.649 --> 01:07:42.099
<v Dr. Vasavi> You say that is substantial.

01:07:42.540 --> 01:07:46.610
<v Dr. Vasavi> So you need to also, for example, I publish much more on popular media now.

01:07:46.610 --> 01:07:52.680
<v Dr. Vasavi> I mean, it's newspapers, Kannada newspapers or online, English magazines, things like that.

01:07:53.080 --> 01:07:54.377
<v Dr. Vasavi> Which I was not able to do earlier.

01:07:54.377 --> 01:07:55.953
<v Dr. Vasavi> So you need to, I want to keep the importance of publishing.

01:07:55.953 --> 01:08:02.229
<v Dr. Vasavi> But where you do it, how you do it also is important.

01:08:05.590 --> 01:08:22.809
<v Dr. Vasavi> But I think academia then, for example I mean just to answer to what you had asked me to list out as things, what kinds of transformation should we see at the educational institutions or researches.

01:08:22.809 --> 01:08:29.320
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, against the new educational policy that's been promoted since last year now, already being implemented.

01:08:29.930 --> 01:08:34.790
<v Dr. Vasavi> Of course they do say mother tongue education is important, so that's one thing positive you need to pick up on.

01:08:35.590 --> 01:08:44.250
<v Dr. Vasavi> But for most scholars to also become multilingual, because that's one of the ways in which we can address the divides we have.

01:08:45.020 --> 01:08:49.200
<v Dr. Vasavi> I constantly, I myself was schooled in Kannada.

01:08:49.400 --> 01:08:53.479
<v Dr. Vasavi> I was schooled into the, you know, the Delhi ICSE is what I did.

01:08:53.779 --> 01:08:55.944
<v Dr. Vasavi> I did Hindi, although Kannada was my mother tongue.

01:08:55.944 --> 01:08:59.549
<v Dr. Vasavi> And it was much later when I was thinking that I said, no, this is my mother tongue.

01:08:59.580 --> 01:09:04.389
<v Dr. Vasavi> I should read it and write it and I forced myself, I could choose things, I took courses.

01:09:04.389 --> 01:09:09.026
<v Dr. Vasavi> But now I constantly meet people who are very proud, they say, oh I don't know the language.

01:09:09.026 --> 01:09:20.002
<v Dr. Vasavi> I want to give you an example now during the COVID crisis where we do online support, we get people who are under home quarantine to talk to certain doctors who are very generously giving their time online.

01:09:20.002 --> 01:09:27.995
<v Dr. Vasavi> And then I was just shocked that these are Bangladesh doctors, Kannada speakers, none of them can read and write Kannada.

01:09:28.160 --> 01:09:35.749
<v Dr. Vasavi> So when these people type on their mobiles for WhatsApp, they're telling them--write it in Roman script, we cannot read Kannada.

01:09:38.220 --> 01:09:41.069
<v Dr. Vasavi> And this I tell you is just an example of the divides.

01:09:41.069 --> 01:09:50.129
<v Dr. Vasavi> We have other students who come who are speaking Kannada or other languages in their home, but they said we don't know these, we cannot read and write in these.

01:09:50.129 --> 01:09:53.080
<v Dr. Vasavi> So they cannot speak formally, you know.

01:09:53.700 --> 01:10:05.020
<v Dr. Vasavi> So unless this divide, this constantly we've been dropping the Indian languages, in our right up from nursery, from elementary school.

01:10:05.430 --> 01:10:11.580
<v Dr. Vasavi> Unless [inaudible] as both part of your cognitive development which is very good.

01:10:12.150 --> 01:10:21.300
<v Dr. Vasavi> And then of course, you can pick English up from middle school, but I think so bilingual capacities or multilingual capacities which are very important.

01:10:21.420 --> 01:10:23.420
<v Dr. Vasavi> Which older generation scholars had.

01:10:25.139 --> 01:10:30.829
<v Dr. Vasavi> This is what the increasing growth of private schools which are primarily English medium has done.

01:10:30.919 --> 01:10:36.559
<v Dr. Vasavi> So you have large numbers of people who don't know their mother tongue, they can't read and write in it.

01:10:36.600 --> 01:10:41.010
<v Dr. Vasavi> They speak it, but they can't, they're not sufficiently good even in English.

01:10:41.350 --> 01:10:43.263
<v Dr. Vasavi> In large numbers of students this is so.

01:10:43.469 --> 01:10:45.919
<v Dr. Vasavi> So this language problem needs to be addressed.

01:10:46.650 --> 01:10:49.400
<v Dr. Vasavi> Second, what is it that you study?

01:10:51.190 --> 01:10:53.840
<v Dr. Vasavi> Researchers need to look at issues that are not fashionable.

01:10:53.840 --> 01:11:01.270
<v Dr. Vasavi> Even now, I get proposals from the universities and associated be it the doctoral proposals or even Master's.

01:11:01.730 --> 01:11:06.039
<v Dr. Vasavi> They just pick up an idea from some key theorist and maybe want to check it out.

01:11:06.459 --> 01:11:11.559
<v Dr. Vasavi> But you forget to look at your vicinity, to look at your immediate surroundings to see what are those issues.

01:11:11.560 --> 01:11:22.516
<v Dr. Vasavi> And there are hundreds of issues that are calling attention to, that need to be studied.

01:11:22.516 --> 01:11:22.610
<v Dr. Vasavi> So that is one.

01:11:22.610 --> 01:11:26.910
<v Dr. Vasavi> The third is, I think, a lot of time, this is something that I also faced, is the lack of an intellectual community in India.

01:11:27.809 --> 01:11:34.290
<v Dr. Vasavi> There are large numbers of people who are [inaudible] , but they need a community of people to hand hold, to support each other.

01:11:35.710 --> 01:11:37.470
<v Dr. Vasavi> In academia it’s missing.

01:11:38.139 --> 01:11:46.450
<v Dr. Vasavi> Very, very few people support each other.

01:11:46.450 --> 01:11:50.330
<v Dr. Vasavi> Build up a corpus of work together or pursue something over the long term et cetera.

01:11:50.620 --> 01:11:54.230
<v Dr. Vasavi> You see very, very little collaborations taking place within India.

01:11:54.230 --> 01:11:57.780
<v Dr. Vasavi> People will collaborate with international scholars et cetera, but not within.

01:11:58.609 --> 01:11:59.440
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I would say that.

01:11:59.469 --> 01:12:01.629
<v Dr. Vasavi> And finally, I think interdisciplinary.

01:12:02.009 --> 01:12:04.538
<v Dr. Vasavi> Questioning this disciplinary bar, so boundaries and divides is very important.

01:12:04.560 --> 01:12:11.620
<v Dr. Vasavi> More and more has to, because all knowledge need to be questioned.

01:12:11.620 --> 01:12:21.360
<v Dr. Vasavi> One of the things I always talk about is, right now the way we brush our teeth to the way we use toilets are the kinds of toilets are being questioned.

01:12:21.850 --> 01:12:29.270
<v Dr. Vasavi> So why not look at all knowledge systems and say it's not just sociology versus political science.

01:12:29.559 --> 01:12:33.789
<v Dr. Vasavi> It has to be issue based, then bring in the others' knowledge systems.

01:12:34.899 --> 01:12:39.759
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think multidisciplinary is very, very important.

01:12:39.810 --> 01:12:40.670
<v Gayithri> Yeah, for sure.

01:12:42.090 --> 01:13:02.130
<v Gayithri> And so, coming back to working, I know you mentioned earlier and even now when we were talking about language, it kind of felt like you were talking about how the current institutions, the current systems do not necessarily support the disadvantaged or the underserved communities as much.

01:13:02.750 --> 01:13:20.390
<v Gayithri> So what would be some key ideas and issues that you think that needs to be redefined or rethought about for it to work for these marginalized, underserved, minoritized communities?

01:13:23.239 --> 01:13:31.509
<v Dr. Vasavi> I would say it's in terms of the structural system, the Indian educational system that is highly differentiated needs to be challenged.

01:13:31.990 --> 01:13:38.390
<v Dr. Vasavi> We cannot have such a differentiated system, which I've elaborated on, some nine different types of schooling systems.

01:13:38.740 --> 01:13:42.690
<v Dr. Vasavi> They really correlate, correspond to different classes.

01:13:43.540 --> 01:13:51.342
<v Dr. Vasavi> So if not an absolute, one type of schooling system, you need somewhere where there is a commonality.

01:13:51.342 --> 01:13:52.480
<v Dr. Vasavi> Where everybody's got to a platform and then check.

01:13:53.259 --> 01:13:53.570
<v Dr. Vasavi> That is one.

01:13:53.790 --> 01:13:59.929
<v Dr. Vasavi> Secondly I would say that expansion of the educational system on a mainstream mode.

01:14:00.370 --> 01:14:01.219
<v Dr. Vasavi> A mass mode.

01:14:01.639 --> 01:14:14.402
<v Dr. Vasavi> Without attention to quality has been devastating and just produces a huge pool of people who just really cannot fit into the mainstream economies of the system, nor can they fit into the existing societies and culture.

01:14:14.402 --> 01:14:14.650
<v Dr. Vasavi> So that is something.

01:14:18.440 --> 01:14:24.289
<v Dr. Vasavi> So that learning loss that is taking place at multiple levels needs to be questioned.

01:14:24.299 --> 01:14:47.110
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think there I would say that to address the issues for marginalized communities, it's very inadequate to have a formal system of reservations or systems in which the system is only formally accepted but within institutions disrespected and distorted in so many ways.

01:14:47.380 --> 01:14:52.450
<v Dr. Vasavi> So there's a need to really review that in a very substantial way, to go beyond that.

01:14:52.450 --> 01:14:59.509
<v Dr. Vasavi> To look at how inclusive education has to happen in a much more integral way.

01:14:59.509 --> 01:15:04.450
<v Dr. Vasavi> It will be an endowment coming across people.

01:15:04.539 --> 01:15:12.010
<v Dr. Vasavi> So for example, as part of the socio transformational learning I've also talked about how the privileged also have to be part of socio transformational learning.

01:15:13.240 --> 01:15:28.330
<v Dr. Vasavi> The privileged also have to take critical perspectives like we have done about the type of privileged backgrounds we've had, kind of privileges we continue to have and therefore it places a huge onus on us to not only question it, you go beyond it.

01:15:29.260 --> 01:15:41.760
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I would say that education for marginalized and disadvantaged communities needs to be both, structurally we need different systems, and content and orientation also it has to be very different.

01:15:42.240 --> 01:15:44.120
<v Dr. Vasavi> Inclusion cannot be just reservation.

01:15:44.120 --> 01:15:57.627
<v Dr. Vasavi> And also opportunities, kinds of education systems, a plurality of all the systems need to be endorsed and redone in a very significant way.

01:15:58.390 --> 01:15:58.590
<v Gayithri> Yeah.

01:15:58.960 --> 01:16:00.110
<v Gayithri> So much of work to do.

01:16:03.040 --> 01:16:20.090
<v Gayithri> So what theories or schools of thoughts or works have informed you or shaped your work as you have actually taken this journey, as you have done the work that you have been doing?

01:16:21.679 --> 01:16:21.699
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

01:16:24.109 --> 01:16:41.000
<v Dr. Vasavi> Early years, when I read Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, that is something that really struck me and later of course I read his work on medicine, on energy.

01:16:41.420 --> 01:16:43.769
<v Dr. Vasavi> And more recently on the mediality.

01:16:43.839 --> 01:16:49.389
<v Dr. Vasavi> And I think the whole concept of mediality is something that I really think much more.

01:16:49.400 --> 01:16:56.328
<v Dr. Vasavi> I think that it's an alternative to this whole development paradigm we've had, to the neoclassical economics that the societies are fit into.

01:16:56.328 --> 01:16:56.673
<v Dr. Vasavi> So Ivan Illich has been very significant.

01:16:56.673 --> 01:17:07.280
<v Dr. Vasavi> In India, I've always been, not always, been kind of an admirer of Tagore.

01:17:07.460 --> 01:17:20.859
<v Dr. Vasavi> Tagore's ideas of holistic education, I've been a huge admirer of his writing and his, of course, his attempt in Shanti Niketan, which is really not a model anymore.

01:17:21.089 --> 01:17:24.280
<v Dr. Vasavi> But you know the politics that has disrupted it.

01:17:24.340 --> 01:17:29.050
<v Dr. Vasavi> But the idea is still something worth looking at and respecting.

01:17:29.560 --> 01:17:46.780
<v Dr. Vasavi> More recently, I've been very impressed with Ganesh Devi’s work, the linguist who has also worked with enough tribals where he has also talked about how our loss of languages has led to a collective amnesia where we've forgotten our cultures, our identities.

01:17:47.430 --> 01:17:58.845
<v Dr. Vasavi> Not only he makes a call back for it, it also talks about the end of critical consciousness, expansive, that learning really should be a way to expand our consciousness, therefore has forms of inclusion.

01:17:58.845 --> 01:17:58.920
<v Dr. Vasavi> So Ganesh Devi’s work is something that I really do respect.

01:17:58.920 --> 01:17:59.110
<v Dr. Vasavi> So these have been some of the seminal works I touch base on.

01:17:59.110 --> 01:18:19.130
<v Dr. Vasavi> Of course, John Dewey and the others, several US writers are people I read.

01:18:19.130 --> 01:18:29.883
<v Dr. Vasavi> But I think ideas are from Illich, which is going beyond learning, really questioning the other systems that exist around us.

01:18:30.429 --> 01:18:32.569
<v Gayithri> Yeah, for sure.

01:18:32.739 --> 01:18:43.630
<v Gayithri> And what do you envision the role of research and academia moving forward in education, moving forward thinking about education in India?

01:18:44.120 --> 01:18:52.560
<v Gayithri> We mentioned and we discussed so many things that need to change, but how do you see academia playing a role in it?

01:18:54.959 --> 01:18:54.979
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

01:18:55.360 --> 01:19:04.179
<v Dr. Vasavi> I think as I mentioned with the need for academia to have a new community, both a community and a collaborative responsibility.

01:19:04.559 --> 01:19:08.650
<v Dr. Vasavi> Illich would describe it as, that needs to come on.

01:19:09.009 --> 01:19:15.670
<v Dr. Vasavi> I think our current situation where there is a lot of censorship, there is a lot of fear.

01:19:16.940 --> 01:19:20.158
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, over the past two days we've been getting messages of how WhatsApp is going to be monitored and the government is going to look at everything.

01:19:20.158 --> 01:19:20.179
<v Dr. Vasavi> That's really a way to silence us, and I have said, okay, is this a way to silence us?

01:19:20.179 --> 01:19:20.185
<v Dr. Vasavi> And that is not outrageous.

01:19:20.185 --> 01:19:37.630
<v Dr. Vasavi> We are not all going to go off WhatsApp, let us continue to do what we should do, we want to do.

01:19:38.470 --> 01:19:40.813
<v Dr. Vasavi> And say what we want to say.

01:19:40.880 --> 01:20:01.135
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think, under especially this situation of the growth of totalitarianism, of really authoritarianism, academics have a huge role to play and we all, each of us, as individuals and also members of our general disciplines in academias, institutions, really have to be at the forefront.

01:20:01.135 --> 01:20:05.370
<v Dr. Vasavi> We have been too silent so far.

01:20:05.370 --> 01:20:08.976
<v Dr. Vasavi> We've been in the back seat too long.

01:20:08.976 --> 01:20:09.504
<v Gayithri> Stepped aside, yeah.

01:20:09.680 --> 01:20:10.130
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

01:20:10.610 --> 01:20:15.386
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think courage, along with ideas and strategies, collaborating with others.

01:20:15.386 --> 01:20:15.405
<v Dr. Vasavi> For example, supporting the farmer's movements.

01:20:15.405 --> 01:20:24.750
<v Dr. Vasavi> Now, looking for alternatives to the huge ecological mess we are in.

01:20:25.250 --> 01:20:25.985
<v Dr. Vasavi> Argue now, very importantly to have a good public health system which is what we're seeing with the whole COVID crisis is not a surprise.

01:20:25.985 --> 01:20:26.070
<v Dr. Vasavi> It's not a collapse of the system, it's because those system existed, no public health system exists.

01:20:26.070 --> 01:20:26.085
<v Dr. Vasavi> The privatized systems.

01:20:26.090 --> 01:20:49.089
<v Dr. Vasavi> There are no decentralized democratic health systems available.

01:20:49.650 --> 01:20:53.709
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think these are issues which are not disciplinary based.

01:20:53.979 --> 01:20:57.259
<v Dr. Vasavi> I cannot say, you know I'm not a doctor, this is not an issue for me.

01:20:58.070 --> 01:21:00.360
<v Dr. Vasavi> These are issues about democracy, about rights, about wellbeing.

01:21:00.360 --> 01:21:02.969
<v Dr. Vasavi> All of us as academics have to engage and take stance, we can't hide under this, under all the threats that are being deployed that work against us.

01:21:06.740 --> 01:21:24.130
<v Dr. Vasavi> So I think this is really the immediate challenge that we academics have to face.

01:21:24.430 --> 01:21:24.740
<v Gayithri> Yeah.

01:21:26.770 --> 01:21:33.449
<v Gayithri> They do sound already very daunting, but at the same time, yeah, it also kind of feels very urgent.

01:21:35.020 --> 01:21:46.719
<v Gayithri> Do you have any specific advice for young scholars or researchers who are not yet there, but who would want to be a part of this transformation in Indian context specifically?

01:21:48.570 --> 01:21:48.940
<v Dr. Vasavi> Yeah.

01:21:51.219 --> 01:21:54.110
<v Dr. Vasavi> I would say that they need to persist.

01:21:54.110 --> 01:21:59.970
<v Dr. Vasavi> I've seen people who just say okay, academia is now so hollow and we just become activists.

01:22:01.580 --> 01:22:05.400
<v Dr. Vasavi> They don't seem to, at least there's no recognition maybe because they're younger.

01:22:05.400 --> 01:22:11.337
<v Dr. Vasavi> You need good academia, good knowledge systems to also influence or direct your actions.

01:22:11.337 --> 01:22:14.930
<v Dr. Vasavi> So you have to have your eggs in both worlds.

01:22:14.940 --> 01:22:17.620
<v Dr. Vasavi> That is very important, they need to do that.

01:22:18.120 --> 01:22:22.319
<v Dr. Vasavi> Or there are some people who actually just abandon everything and go away.

01:22:22.319 --> 01:22:22.399
<v Dr. Vasavi> Literally going [inaudible] . That is not something advisable.

01:22:22.399 --> 01:22:41.705
<v Dr. Vasavi> Secondly is for them to really be ready to face the challenges at the moment, but to understand that leading an engaged and meaningful life is much better than being trapped in certain kind of [inaudible] of privilege that many, many upper class people have in India.

01:22:41.705 --> 01:22:55.880
<v Dr. Vasavi> And I know that there is great satisfaction that lies after we meet these challenges.

01:23:00.090 --> 01:23:02.320
<v Dr. Vasavi> To persist, it's not an easy game.

01:23:02.740 --> 01:23:07.259
<v Dr. Vasavi> Persistence is required in these kinds of situations.

01:23:07.849 --> 01:23:10.500
<v Dr. Vasavi> But they should also know that there is a community out there.

01:23:10.530 --> 01:23:14.460
<v Dr. Vasavi> Nobody needs to feel alone and abandoned.

01:23:15.540 --> 01:23:17.809
<v Dr. Vasavi> There is a community, you just need to reach out.

01:23:17.809 --> 01:23:22.360
<v Dr. Vasavi> Really there is a very, very active civil society in India.

01:23:24.350 --> 01:23:26.529
<v Dr. Vasavi> Extremely engaged, committed, driven.

01:23:27.330 --> 01:23:32.950
<v Dr. Vasavi> You just need to reach out and they will be there for you.

01:23:32.950 --> 01:23:34.222
<v Dr. Vasavi> And to know that it's only a lonely journey if not.

01:23:34.222 --> 01:23:41.339
<v Dr. Vasavi> It will be hard at times, but most very satisfying, meaningful, but people will be there with you.

01:23:41.639 --> 01:23:43.410
<v Gayithri> Thank you, that was very reassuring.

01:23:45.360 --> 01:23:50.320
<v Gayithri> Anything else that we didn't touch upon that you want to?

01:23:50.410 --> 01:23:52.120
<v Dr. Vasavi> Not that I can think of.

01:23:52.290 --> 01:23:52.483
<v Dr. Vasavi> No I think we've covered good ground.

01:23:52.483 --> 01:23:52.510
<v Dr. Vasavi> I can see my internet already still going on the blink.