Campus Diaries The Magazine - November

campusdiaries THE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 8 | NOVEMBER 2013 | RS. 50 campusdiaries.com

@campus_diaries

INSIDE BJP, Social Media & Youth S avera: Fergusson’s favourite restaurant 1 Story 100 Authors #TheNextLine Internships of the month

CA M P U S D I A R I E S SAMATA JOSHI HEAD,CONTENT

E X P R E SS I O N

S TO R Y T E L L I N G

SOCIAL NETWORK EXPERIENCE

SUMIT SAURAV CEO RAJ CHOURASIA CTO NISHAN BOSE HEAD, BUSINESS & PRODUCT OPS. NANDINI VARMA SHANTANU ANAND EDITORIAL INDRAJEET ROY PALLAVI NEGI TANYA KOTNALA DEVESH PANT KASHMIRA SARODE DESIGN SHASHANK SHEKHAR DATA & ANALYSIS SONIC PRABHUDESAI HEAD, BUSINESS PRITISH MOHAN BUSINESS & MARKETING

BLOGGING 3.0

VIVAN KAMATH COVER ART

outreach TEAM CAMPUSES

AKSHAY CHANDRA, akshaychan@gmail.com TRISHA CHOUDHARY, trishachoudhury7@gmail.com NIKHIL KUMAR, nikhil7kumar@gmail.com DELHI SANIKA DHAKEPHALKAR, sanidhakephalkar@gmail.com PUNE

MAGAZINE

VIJAY REDDY, reddypvijay@gmail.com HYDERABAD BENNET NATHAN, bennett.polarist12@gmail.com MUMBAI

FRIENDS

P L AT F O R M To advertise in the magazine, contact sonic@campusdiaries.com | +91 9916474368 Published by SUMIT SAURAV Printed at PRINTMEDIA.COM, #3, Wheelers Road, Frazer Town, Blr 5 | 9901989615

SANJAY KUMAR RAJ, sanjayraj4211@gmail.com ARJUN MANOHARAN, arjun.campusdiaries@gmail.com BANGALORE SIDDHARTH AJWANI, ajwani_siddharth@yahoo.co.in VARUN BHAT, varunbhat94@gmail.com MANIPAL AKSHAY KAMATH,akshaykamath08@gmail.com SURATHKAL KARTHICK M, finishchampster@gmail.com VAJRESH BALAJI, me@vajresh.in COIMBATORE

CAMPUS DIARIES

COMMUNITY MANAGER PROGRAM

JOIN THE MOST REWARDING AND ENRICHING STUDENT WORK EXPERIENCE OUT THERE

SALES / MANAGEMENT / CONTENT STRATEGY / DESIGN / DIGITAL / MARKETING / COMMUNITY

CM STIPENDS UPTO

Rs. 6000 / MONTH

LEADING THE BIGGEST YOUTH AND COMMUNITY PLATFORM IN THE COUNTRY. NOT FOR THE ORDINARY. BUT WE DON'T WANT ORDINARY

MAXIMUM

2

pEr COLLEGE

INDIA’S BIGGEST YOUTH, CONTENT AND STORYTELLING PLATFORM. EVER. Applications open samata@campusdiaries.com | facebook.com/campusdiaries | +91 9819370761

CURATOR’S NOTE “I can’t believe you’ve not seen it!

Seriously? The fox video? Dude, everybody’s seen it.”

“Oh man, I was visiting my grandmother, I didn’t have Internet access all of Sunday. 3G toh don’t ask…”

“Kya yaar.” *** “So, I am walking down the street, right? Minding my own business and all that. And from nowhere this guy starts following me and I am like whaaaat?”

“How late were you partying ya?”

“It was 7 in the evening!” *** “See, the problem is you. People like you. You don’t want to stand up to your rights and ask for what you want, for what you deserve. You want everything to be spoon fed to you!”

“Dekh, it’s not like that. What difference do you think it makes in a vast, corrupted country like ours, if I, a single individual, doesn’t want to vote?”

“Well, nothing. Except that you’ll always live in a vast, corrupted country, like ours.”

“I am flying to the US in six months man, I don’t care.” *** “I was watching the new episode of The Big Bang Theory yesterday and the power went off for like two hours. TWO HOURS, MAN!” “Yeah yeah, first world

problems. I am studying in a village where they have power for only two hours. So, please, spare me the drama.”

“Who asked you to study in sucha faraway land, huh?”

“Your mom, bloody.” *** “Oh my god, no. Shit. DAMN IT. I MISSED IT, I MISSED THE DAMN THING!” “What, what, what?! Calm down!”

“The Zara sale, Zayesha, THE ZARA SALE!” “...” *** “Kewl. Ill meet u thr at 5 na?”

“Ya. V will go 2 the bigger coffee chop 2day” “I dnt mind, I hav my pocket money” “Kewl (Y)” *** “So, I was flipping through the pages of the Times and I realised, whatever happened to all those rape cases being reported last month?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I saw just one case reported. Have all the rapes suddenly stopped? Have the men of our country found salvation?

“No, ya. These media guys are like that only. Yesterday, a friend told me that her maid ki daughter was raped…”

“Oh. Sad ya…”

“Yaa… Oh. Did you watch Big

Boss last night?” *** “Checked Facebook?”

“Yeah. It’s flooding with BBM pins! I can’t believe it’s back.”

“This is the nightmare I was telling you about. When the world had stopped thinking for a long time and we were reduced to a mere spew of nothingness.”

“I don’t get it. Do these guys read and share anything else but trivial chat applications?”

“Ask them about who the IB Minister of our country is. Ask any one of them about how to vote, where to vote, when to vote. I could make memes out of their dumb expressions and circulate that on their BBMs or whatever they call it these days.” *** “Do you remember that drummer guy from our batch in first year?”

“Who?” “Arrey, the one who would always lecture us about getting the girls toilet in the college fixed?

“Umm, the fat one?”

“Yeah! He’s not fat anymore.

Like, he lost all this weight and now he’s gay and he’s standing for the student union election thingy. Stalk him on Facebook like right now.”

“Ooooh, he’s so hot. Why is he gay ya? And standing for the elections also. Too cool he thinks he is?”

*** Conversations. We make so many of them, but talk so little. Our society is stratified in so many sections, so many discussions. Which conversation are you a part of?

IN THIS ISSUE The people who made it to this issue of Campus Diaries —The Magazine

RITIKA CHAWLA AZIM PREMJI UNIVERSITY BANGALORE

VRINDA BATRA LADY SHRI RAM COLLEGE NEW DELHI

Being an absolute workaholic, she also works as a Happiness Consultant with Oye Happy. She loves travelling and reading and her first love is icecreams!

An avid reader and chocolate addict, Vrinda loves Holden Caulfield, Bharatnatyam, socks and dogs. Her novel was published when she was in class nine.

SAMEER KULKARNI FERGUSSON COLLEGE PUNE Drama, poems, arts, literature is something he cannot live without. A budding writer with big hopes, he loves sharing what he sees, through whatever he tries to scribble.

SOURABH KAUSHAL KURUKSHETRA UNIVERSITY KURUKSHETRA The Elon Musk of India, Sourabh Kaushal is an engineer and a space enthusiast. He wishes that one day our country should become a super power in the field of science and technology.

NOVEMBER The storytellers, writers and artists who were the best of campusdiaries.com

OJASWINI BAKSHI MIRANDA HOUSE NEW DELHI Dogs, food, slumber, music and writing: they are her love. inquisitive and quirky, she looks into everything that catches her eyes. And white flowers on dewy grass are what absolutely make her day!

ANDREW KORAH CHRIST UNIVERSITY BANGALORE Likes eating chocolate, reading and composing poetry alone in his bedroom, in the company of his imagination and many insecurities.

KANAK RAJADHYAKSHA TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES MUMBAI Blogger. Amateur photographer.

Coffee connoisseur. Karaoke singer. Superwoman by day, Johnnie Walker by night. Poet. Artist. Experimental chef. Beer lover. Travel enthusiast. Armchair philosopher.

NOT.

SHUBHAM LODHA KIRORI MAL COLLEGE NEW DELHI He is a contemporary photographer based in Delhi. If photography’s a form of story telling, then he is a master story teller who whimsically plays with the visual and the emotional.

CONTENTS CAMPUS DIARIES EXCLUSIVE 59. India 2.. 0

EXPERIENCES 31. The Tale of the Dhaakis 21 .Savera

PROJECTS 44. An Idea Can Change Your Life

SOCIETY 65. Not Your Typical 26-Year-Old 18. 3.2.1 10. Now The Show Is Over

POETRY 74. Swing Swing Drip Drop

IN FOCUS 24. Smart Vote 68. Mood Indigo

CAMPUS SPARK 36. Startup Jam 2

to a lot of residents and they promised Ispoke to resort to violence if they have to

NOW, the

s

O hw

is

OVER

Kathputli Colony is an artist’s colony based near the Shadipur Depot. Recently, the government has sold the land to Raheja Builders and the colony is being torn down. Though the talks are still ongoing, the residents don’t have high hopes Shubham Lodha Kirori Mal College New Delhi #dearth

Society

campusdiaries november

11

All the kids go to a special arts school of the colony.

Every little kid you will meet in Kathputli will be an artist of some kind

Outside the one-room health care centre

Space

is a big problem in Kathputli, families of four and five reside in a one-room house

Kids show their pet rat

Radha, a mother of

two talks about how she has been living at Kathputli since birth and was satisfied that she atleast had a roof above her

Shankar, a puppet artist shows a photo album of his dad, a performing artist himself (in the background is his son) R adha (once was, MAYBE ) 00

campusdiaries november

Now, the show is over campusdiaries.com/picture-stories/now-the-show-is-over

Residents listening to their leader talk

Society

3.2.1

Here’s the story of Gaurav Singh, who runs a public charter school in Mumbai - a school that proves that the best quality education does not need exorbitant fees

18

KANAK RAJADHYAKSHA Tata Institute of Social Sciences MUMBAI #education campusdiaries november

T

he MBA entrance exams were a month away. Gaurav Singh (28), an engineer, was working for Accenture, Hyderabad.

Singh and one of his friends took the trial exam just to see how they fared. Both did really well. On the way back home they stopped to eat at a roadside eatery. Singh suffered from food poisoning and stayed at his friend’s place until he got better. His friend gave him the previous day’s newspaper to read when he was there and a Teach for India ad in the paper caught his eye. He looked up the website and secretly applied.

His friends claim it was the fever. He knows it wasn’t.

That was 2008. Singh made it to Teach for India, quit his job at Accenture and joined their first batch in 2009. “I really never saw the teach part in Teach for India. I always saw the India part. We need to fix something so why not me?” he asks.

Teaching came naturally to him. He had always been a great student, but for him, the fun in studying lay in teaching his friends whatever he studied.

His friends knew this and a week or two before the exams, gave him the books so that he could teach them. “I took to teaching very quickly. I didn’t know that that’s what I was doing as a child and it took me time to figure that it was what I loved. I have realised that activating potential and helping someone become the best they can be makes me really happy,” says Singh.

As a Teach for India fellow, Singh taught in a low income school for two campusdiaries november

years. At that time he had no intention of starting a school. “I didn’t know what I was going to do but starting a school was definitely not on the agenda,” he says. Some time right then, he happened to speak to someone who was telling him about a kid who went to an elite school and needed extra coaching as well. “I wanted to prove that you don’t have to go to an elite school for a great education. It can be done in a cheaper way for everyone.

And I decided to start a school. I didn’t know how I was going to start one but I knew I was going to do it and so I skipped the Teach for India placement process in December 2010,” says Singh.

In January 2011, he met someone from Teach for America who had come here. He told him about the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Public Charter Schools. KIPP is one of the largest networks of free, open enrollment public

“We want to prove that you can provide the best education even if you’re not charging high fees,” says Singh. charter schools in the United States. KIPP also takes on Fellows every year and takes them through development and coaching to start public charter schools.

Singh wanted to apply for the Fisher Fellowship but there was a problem – KIPP didn’t take on international fellows. “I relentlessly mailed the CEO of KIPP. He eventually got back and said they would take me on as a Fellow but that they would be unable to fund me. I asked him how much funding I would need and when he told me the figure, I pretty much fell out of my chair,” says Singh. He started looking for sponsors. “I made a list of sponsors and started contact19

good school. He also plans to have an impact on scale. “We could be scaling the network of schools or providing teacher training. The plan is to focus on quality, scale and sustainability,” says Singh.

If you’re thinking of starting your own enterprise you might want to take a look at these tips that Singh has to offer: 1) Have a lot of clarity on the big thing you want to do.

-ing them but no one was ready to sponsor the whole thing. When one of them finally agreed to fund me, I was so stunned that I repeatedly asked him if he was really funding me, just to make sure,” says Singh.

Singh went to the States for the fellowship, came back, and founded the 3.2.1 Education Foundation, a public charter school, in May 2012. But starting your own school isn’t as easy as it sounds. “We got the building at Crawford Market from the BMC 16 hours before school was to start,” says Singh. The school gets funding from private investors and uses government owned space to run its classes. Singh believes that the quality of the class lies in the quality of the teachers.

3.2.1 tries to pay its teachers remuneration that is at par with the private schools in the city. “We want to prove that education can be universally available, high quality and free,” he says. 118 children from low income backgrounds joined 3.2.1 last year. They have 20

now moved up to grade one and 120 children have joined the kindergarten class.

Singh says that the best thing about being a startup is that you can do things your way. “We are not working with the existing system so we can be nimble and change things. The hardest thing about doing this is knowing how slow the change is and still doing it,” he says. The plan for the future is to change the definition of a

campusdiaries.com/stories/3.2.1

2) Spend time on getting the right people. Good teams always achieve more than what an individual can.

3) Be clear about the kind of culture you want at your organisation.

4) Be realistic. Nine out of ten startups shut by the fourth year. There is a very high chance that you will fail.

5) Figure out all the problems you want to solve and then prioritise.

campusdiaries november

EXPERIENCES

We dare call ourselves regulars, but it is the place that makes us feel so

N

ot that the concept of leaving Fergusson after Third Year is less daunting, but the idea of not being able to spend the late morning hours, doing absolutely nothing in Savera

campusdiaries november

#Familiar Sameer Kulkarni Fergusson College Pune (a restaurant opposite our college) is daunting more.

We sit here, practically every morning, doing hardly anything, ordering something which costs the least in the menu, which ultimately gives

us the permission to sit there till we finish the food — in short — as long as we want to.

Technically, no one really drives us out even if we sit there hogging a table, with nothing ordered. It is not so because of the laid back attitude the hotel propagates, but it is our relations with the Annas and the Dadas, which enables them to make us feel at home. They know us well.

After a rainy day, a coffee does not necessarily have to be ordered — the Annas sense that our young bodies are craving caffeine in the morning. Lo and behold! A coffee; piping hot; served in a 21

glass, with sugar stuck to the edge of the glass presents itself deliciously.

After a tiring lecture, it is the Annas that suggest an iced tea, served perpetually in the lemon flavor.

It is they who, without any instructions whatsoever, bring along ketchup to be eaten with my customary toast butter (YES I EAT KETCHUP WITH TOAST BUTTER AND IT TASTES AWESOME).

Be absent for one day, and they’ll enquire what’s wrong. It’s ironic that the professor fails to notice your absence, but the Annas don’t.

One such person, who handles Savera’s orders during its first shift, is our dear, Shyam Anna.

For those of us belonging to the drama circle, he appears as a true messiah.

We show up at odd hours after long hours of practice with the stomach growling loud. It demands food of various sorts which the hotel normally doesn’t offer. But on the other hand, we are so driven by hunger that we deny satiating our hunger by the regular foods. Enter Shyam Anna. He shall, as per our wishes, combine the weirdest of the flavors and present it to us, with the same smiling face.

“Anna, ek idli sambar... uspe butter daal ke dena!”

“Anna ek palak rice… usme jara chinese twist kar ke dena!”

“Anna! Ek masala papad… pudina hoga to who daal ke de sakte ho?”

“Anna! Ek jaljira… sweet banake do na please!”

“Anna! Who mini thali ka butter milk coke ke saath replace kar

ke do na please!”

Our erratic demands do not fall on deaf ears. Shyam Anna hears them out, executes everything to perfection, and we end up eating a lot, too stuffed to carry on with the practices.

We dare call ourselves regulars, but he is the one person who makes us feel so!

He likes being around us, treats us like we are his friends and we reciprocate.

It has been around four years since I have known him personally and Savera doesn’t feel the same without him.

I remember my mother (also a Fergusson pass out) telling me about how they had a caring Anna at Vaishali (Another restaurant opposite my college) when she was in college. Well, time has passed and prices have risen to such levels that our generation, today cannot afford being regulars at that place. And frankly, we are glad that it is so. Had we been regulars at Vaishali, we would have never stepped on the threshold of Savera, and in turn we would have ended up never meeting Shyam Anna. The point is, that someday, I too can tell my kid about a caring Anna I had at a restaurant in my college days.

Knowing Shyam Anna has turned nearly into a rite of passage. Our seniors introduced him to us and now we find ourselves filling the shoes of our seniors, when we introduce him to the new kids with bright eyes who have entered the Drama Club. He responds, making them feel at home, asking about the

practices and for a ticket for our upcoming production.

Not only has he seen every production we have put up but also knows everyone by their names.

He has seen many generations pass through college. Next year, he shall see me graduate. Like the many people who have spent time, more at Savera than at college, hopefully, I too shall make a mark in his mind.

When I was coming up with this article, I could not even conceptualise using the word “waiter” anywhere in the article. The reason is that all of the staff working at Savera, especially Shyam Anna, really stands up to the suffix of Anna — the elder brother. The elder brother who asks how you are, who questions what is up, who suggests a million things, who warns when something is going wrong.

It would seem stupid to many that a college kid would write about his infatuation about a restaurant opposite his college. But according to me, the infatuation is justified.

I found my ‘Café Central Perk’ and ‘McLarens’ at Savera. It holds a special place in my heart for it is where my stomach has been fed with some delicious food and my mind with some beautiful moments.

It’s nearly 13 hours to my next visit to Savera — tomorrow morning, where my mind will cut out the sleep — with a coffee and toast butter — and a chat with Shyam Anna.

campusdiaries.com/stories/savera 22

campusdiaries november

in focus

Get Smart SmartVote was envisioned by a group of active citizens from Bangalore to ensure better participation of citizens in the run up to the 2009 Loksabha elections. The candidates contesting from Bangalore were profiled and all the details were uploaded to the SmartVote website in a new style of bridging the gap between the voters and the politicians

Partha Mohapatra | SmartVote #citizens

24

campusdiaries november

I

n the following year for 2010 BBMP (Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike) elections, SmartVote started a campaign aiming at increasing voter turn out and helping residents make an informed choice. SmartVote started a mass outreach program through door-to-door campaigns, RWA meetings, college awareness and meetings with various other social organisations to enroll more people as voters as well as to come out in large numbers on voting day to exercise their right in Kormanagala, Bangalore, ward 151.

With the door-to-door campaigns, volunteers of SmartVote reached almost 1/5th of the registered voters in Koramangala. When SmartVote volunteers started the door to door campaign, they didn’t expect much from the people. But the response was tremendous with people thanking SmartVote for the initiative to help them register their name in the electoral list.

SmartVote also organised debates among the candidates and helped voters interact with them to make an informed choice. Apart from enrolling voters and candidate profiling, SmartVote helped the CEO (Chief Election Officer) Karnataka in pointing out errors in the electoral list, hence removing erroneous data in the list. With more than 100 volunteers, the campaign helped many hapless citizens who had failed earlier to register themselves as voters. Most importantly, SmartVote put all the data of voter list in searchable format extracting the data from the scanned PDFs from CEO website which were uploaded for the sake of uploading. Appropriate use of technology helped make the voter list searchable and with a call centre, addressed the queries of voters during 2010 elections.

campusdiaries november

25

SmartVote is, purely, a volunteer driven organisation with a few people giving direction to the campaign. An entrepreneur (Amar Krishnamurthy), an ex-Naval Officer (Commander PG Bhat), an ex-investment Banker (NitinJagtap) and a Software Engineer (Manas Kumar), managing a campaign which involves managing 100 volunteers and thousands of citizens

After a volunteerdriven successful campaign for 2010 BBMP elections, Smartvote ran a similar campaign to register voters for the 2012 MLC elections.

Volunteers not only publicised about the unknown MLC graduate elections but also, like previous campaigns, helped many to enroll as voters although there was a separate list for graduate elections.

During 2012, when around 15 lakh names from the voter list were erroneously deleted

by EC, Commander PG Bhat from SmartVote along with other NGOs filed a PIL asking EC to restore the erroneous names without proper verification. The PIL resulted in partial restoration of the deleted voter data. The odds and challenges of democracy had started to open up with new challenges every day in electoral politics.

The challenges and the campaign became bigger in the 2013 Karnataka elections.

SmartVote joined hands with BPAC (Bangalore Political Action Committee) to register one million new voters before the assembly election.

With Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Mohandas Pai, SmartVote got a breakthrough in entering 26

major corporate houses, colleges and RWAs in Bangalore to maximize voter registration. Manas Kumar, a software engineer by profession led the campaign in major corporate houses by making presentations and finding leaders in companies to take the campaign to the next level. Major IT firms like Infosys, Wipro and Mahindra Satyam allowed SmartVote to conduct workshops as well as flash mobs to publicise the importance of registering as a voter and vote on the day of elections. This being a completely new phenomenon, SmartVote was bridging the gap between government agencies like Election Commission and private firms like corporate houses to work towards strengthening democracy. SmartVote sent many mails to the CEO, Karnataka during pre election days to rectify mistakes in the CEO website hampering the registration process. All this worked temporarily but people at SmartVote still feel that with the use of proper technology, things can be simplified further.

SmartVote believed in the power of the youth today towards building the future of our Nation. Many colleges came forward and partcampusdiaries november

-nered with the campaign for change in enrolling students as voters. New Horizon, Mount Carmel, Don Bosco, Indo Asian College and HSR Govt colleges are few of them that pushed the voter registration numbers by few thousands and played a very important role. Today it is very important for our youth to understand the power of a vote in building a new India. Recenlty, SmartVote has tied up with CII - Young Indians for college campaign. SmartVote is working with students of Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research and M P Birla Institute of Management for development of strategy for enrolling youth for voter registration.

-orporates, RWAs and other social organisations, SmartVote helped in overcoming the challenges for a citizen to enroll their name in the electoral list and vote on the election day.

After making a significant impact in Bangalore, SmartVote is all set to expand its operations in Delhi to improve citizens’ participation in the upcoming elections.

SmartVote’s agenda of greater participation of the citizens of this country continues in Delhi with an eye on 2013 Delhi elections. With volunteers willing to help out people to enroll as voters and by helping them make an informed choice, SmartVote is willing to act as a complementary force along with the other institutions for realising

SmartVote joined hands with the CEO, Karnataka in getting processed forms for voter registration directly delivered to the CEO’s office for faster processing of ordered data. With this approach, SmartVote was able to enroll around 1 million new voters in a span of three months.

SmartVote also worked with ADR (Association for Democratic Reforms) India for profiling of candidates before 2013 assembly elections.

With this volunteer driven approach and after making numerous presentations in colleges, c-

the goal of a fully participatory democracy.

With the support of the CEO Delhi, SmartVote will reach out to the unregistered voters and help them understand the power of their vote in this election. SmartVote will target the corporates, colleges and RWAs to maximize voter registration in Delhi.

The ride has not been smooth, there had been hurdles in every path pursued by SmartVote.

As the old English proverb says “Where there is a will , there is a way.” SmartVote continues to prove the same.

campusdiaries november

27

In focus

Smart vote The Welingkar Institute of Management and Research, Bangalore (WeSchool) along with CII YI (Confederation of Indian Industry — Young Indians) supported SmartVote for the Lok Sabha election 2014 initiative

T

he objective of this initiative is to get maximum citizens from the Electronic City vicinity to get registered as valid voters and then convert these votes for the upcoming elections.

Its main aim revolves around promoting a good quality of life for all citizens of the metro polis. We School, Bangalore aims to contribute and support SmartVote’s mission in registering voters (corporates and campuses) in Electronic City as an area of operation.

The Core Committee is supported by around 30 students for various drives across several corporates and campuses. The core committee under the guidance of Prof. Sudeshna Reddy has been working on a marketing plan for the propagation of SmartVote. The initial blueprints of the plans for taking this drive forward and for ensuring successful conversion rates are being designed by this team.

There is a huge emphasis on making use of the digital medium to take the drive to a viral level. Also there are plans of conducting flash mobs to sensitize the general crowd in the area of the drive. The drive should get active and operational in another couple of weeks.

Siddharth. V from CII YI is involved in all the major planning, organising, directing and the action stage to facilitate and guide the team.

From the SmartVote wing, Manas Kumar will be guiding We-School on registration process for the elections. He will also be guid-ing on the dos and don’ts in this regard.

The SmartVote campaign was created to encourage citizens to vote and to provide information regarding candidates standing for elections at various levels, enabling citizens to make an informed choice. Bangalore which has one of the highest

migrant and young population in India faces major problems during elections due to low voter turnout and youngsters having a “Not interested in Politics” ideology.

We-School, Bangalore thus aims to provide a helping hand to SmartVote which is supported by BPAC (Bangalore Political Action Committee) spearheaded by the likes of T.V Mohandas Pai, Charu Sharma, Vani Ganapathy among other prominent members. We-School, Bangalore with its strategic location in the heart of electronic city aims at launching a campaign targeting people working in electronic city with its aware-

The team comprises of

Prof. Sudeshna Reddy faculty in-charge

And the core students committee of

Ashwin Menon, Megha Baluja, Anant Maini, Deepak Gupta, Vipul Agarkar, Richa Pal

With ample support from Dr. Anil Rao Paila, dean and director of Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Electronic City, Bangalore -ness-driven programs. It aims at targeting this segment of the city by focusing on providing them with detailed information about registration, constituency awareness, and regular updates about regional political parties.

It is the responsibility of successful people to act on behalf of everyone else.

We thus believe that effective leadership can evolve a city and ensure overall development of the society. The perquisites of a developed city are that it nurtures and ensures holistic progress of each individual as-

campusdiaries november

-sociated with it. Though the initial motive behind BPAC was to focus on development and governance, but it also aims to drive more youth into the entire voting process as the success of a nation certainly rests upon the leaders who lead it. Thus BPAC aims at bringing about a revolutionary change in the entire process without being affiliated with any political party. And, WeSchool, Bengaluru wishes to thoroughly support this noble cause through its sincere efforts and contributing to the society.

India being the largest democracy in the world relies on its citizens to be vigilant and action-driven in order to see a remarkable change. Bangalore being India’s “Silicon-Valley” and contributing a major portion to India’s booming Information Technology based economy and state economy, relies heavily on its youth for its growth and revenue.

Thus, We School believes in contributing to this ideology framework because “WE need to be the change WE want to SEE.”

29

Experiences

The Tale of the Dhaakis

Dhaakis, the creators of the mystical aura of Durga Puja. Here is a little peek into their musical lives

Ojaswini Bakshi Miranda House | New Delhi #music

A

As the Durga Puja Utsav comes to a close today, it got me thinking “What is it that makes it so different from the rest of the pujas that happen all year round? What is that one thing that makes it so special?”

The first word that came to my mind was ‘aura’!

The aura of durga pujo is one such thing that never be emulated.

Something that makes it what it is but, what is it that makes the aura?

Well, my first guess would be — The Dhaak!

D

haak is something used to define Durga Pujo from time immemorial. It is a kind of a dhol that is played throughout the four days of Pujo incessantly. Add a little smoke of burning camphor and dried coconut to it and voila!

There you have it! A durga pujo in the making.

As I sat through the pujos, my mind wandered off to the man who was playing away the drum to glory nearby and it made me wonder, “What does he do the rest of the year?” And thus, I got up and started asking him all about his life.

Music runs in his blood, he says. Ratan Halder, a father of three daughters, started playing the dhaak just out of curiousity. His father played the flute and had passed on the talent to his son without any reservations.

“I can play five kinds of flute” Ratan adds proudly. As a kid, he would watch people play

the dhaak and one day, he tried his hand at it and that’s when he realised that there was no looking back. He’s been at the job since last fourteen years and says he’s going to keep doing it until his last breath.

On asking about his family, he replies that reality is not that easy for him. It is for no one, in fact. He is a mason by the morning for the main income that he gets out of playing the dhaak is only around this time of the year and that too, it’s only somewhere around six thousand rupees per season. Not enough for anybody.

He does play in other pujas as well but it’s not enough. His main priority is his daughters’ education. He wants them to complete schooling more than anything else.

With his daughters in class twelve, ten and seven respectively, he says he has to keep his foot on the ground to keep it

steady.

But even then, he has his breaks. He has a band of his own where he plays the flute and performs in weddings all year long. “Well, music is something that I never want to escape from. It was and is the main love of my life and there’s nothing, not even poverty that can take my magic away from me” he concluded quietly.

We’ve all met old people in our lives with one too many regrets in their lives. Regrets are something we’re all scared of and many movies even teach us how to just go for it, never looking back and I guess, this man is just the right example of that.

Shanti is a man in in his sixties but does not look a day older than forty. He wanted to play the dhaak ever since he was a kid but somehow, he never really got around to it. He watched his friends play and learnt his way out from them initially but over the years, he got married

and had kids and priorities changed.

He got a job as a van rickshaw puller and he’s been doing that since last forty three years.But things changed over the last ten years when he found his nest empty. His son and two daughters were now married and settled elsewhere. Finding a little time to himself, he campusdiaries november

renewed his childhood fantasy. His found his love in playing the Dhaak.

He found a dhaaki in his locality and befriended him and started practicing with nothing to hold him back, and now, he is professional with gigs all around the country.

He’s been to Delhi, Pune, Baroda, Indore. He always wanted to see new places

and says all of his dreams have finally come true only because of music and without it, he would’ve continued to be the lost soul he was for a major forty years in his short life.

Seeing so much passion and enthusiasm burning within them even after all these years made the real meaning behind 33

the phrase ‘it’s never too late to start’ come to life. Living a drab concrete city life every day has made us so mechanical in its own way that somewhere along the rush of the tide, we lose out on the little things and their beauty all around us.

The way they rose above all the adversities to follow their passion is something really admirable and makes all the excuses we use to delay stepping out of our comfort zone as much as we can, look naïve.

Right now, as I lay on my bed, typing away, I can still hear a dhaaki play his tune, probably the last tune of the season, somewhere far away and it seems like another year long wait for our puja has already begun. And the only thing I can say right now is

“Asche bochor abar hobe!”

(It’ll happen again next year) - The thing that everyone says to end the festival in spirits so high that it lasts an entire year, until it’s time for the dhaakis to return and fill our days with music, like it never was before…

34

campusdiaries.com/stories/the-tale-of-the-dhaakis

campusdiaries november

TANIA JAIN GRAPHIC DESIGN NEW AGE DESIGN An upcoming designer in the field of New Media, she is determined to explore the power of design to make learning fun for kids.

You can hear her speech on the 8th of December at TEDxGateway, Mumbai

SHASHANK MANI CHAIRMAN JAGRITI SEWA SANSTHAN Shashank Mani is the Chairman of Jagriti Sewa Sansthan and is recognised as an industry expert in finance and accounting outsourcing. He is going to present his speech at TEDxGateway this year!

HAVE YOU BOOKED YOUR SEAT YET? SUPPORTED BY

CAMPUSDIARIES

tedxgateway.com

8TH SEP

NCPA MUMBAI

campus spark

Startup Jam II

S

tartup Jam II, a panel discussion — on ‘support structures right at the outset’, basically a look into what the “ecosystem” has to offer to a young entrepreneur — was moderated by Shashank, an Investor and Bessemer venture partner. The panel featured notable persona and two successful Indian entrepreneurs. They were — Revathy Ashok, coordinator for Indian Angel Network and COO B.PAC, Shashikaran, TiE Incubator, Uday Bhaskarwar, co-founder of Thinking Hut solutions, Rajnish, Microsoft Accelerator, Priyadeep Sinha, co-founder of Gyan Labs.

The discussion began with the two entrepreneurs, Priyadeep and Uday. Priyadeep 36

spoke first, narrating his experience of startingup as a final year student in Manipal, 2011, the only student company at the time. They did not, he said, have much know-how of businesses at that time. With time, however, his company had grown quite successful. He works with around 2000 children spread over Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and is currently based out of Bangalore. Priyadeep then spoke about the biggest lessons he learnt, discipline being one, especially since students have far more to learn than experienced people.

He personally has given up several luxuries, and currently sleeps on a mattress in his office.

He also mentioned that getting good advisors campusdiaries november

is vital for a start up company.

Uday said that he was a late entrepreneur, beginning only at the age of 40. He advised that students begin as soon as possible. He said that his story was more of something you should not do. Don’t be afraid to begin now, there are enough opportunities.

The discussion moved to Shashikaran, who talked about how much of the present education system is trying simply to make people employable. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs are unemployable people, example, himself. An important observation he pointed out was that there is a great difference now, from 2008. Now, you can literally start without money, especially since ecosystems have grown to be extremely beneficial.

Networks connect investors and people with great ideas. He ended by saying that the campus is the best place to start, not any later.

The next person to speak was Rajinish. He said that until a few years back, the ecosystem was rather immature. Now, there are several support structures. His job in Microsoft Accelerator is to turn students who wish to be entrepreneurs and leader to developers and eventually aid them in their start-up. He talked about a software tool, Dream Spark, as an example of the present available resources, that enables students to easily create apps. Speaking from personal experience, he talked of the innovation centres at Microsoft Accelerator (MA). They make an attempt to put ideas into practice, and deal with issues like cost problems in start-ups. Often, high potential start-ups are handled directly by Microsoft Accelerator. It aids in funding and has many success stories.

One of the advantages Rajinish mentioned was that MA did not take equity.

The next panelist, Revathy stated firmly that an entrepreneur cannot survive on his or

her own. The ecosystem, she said, is vital. When she herself began many of her ideas were not well thought out. This, she explained, was why ecosystems of incubators and accelerators are vital. Mentors are able to refine ideas so that they are perfect and marketable.

One of her recurring statements was that when investors look at startups they don’t just look at the ideas but also at the people behind the ideas. She said that an entrepreneur required so much more than an idea — guts, persistence and patience is very important, because that is what will get you ahead. She stressed that entrepreneurs should not expect instant gratification.

While there are a few who did receive immediate success, this cannot be the case for all. This is where patience and persistence play an important role. There are constrains, like lack of money, and only passion can overcome them. The ecosystem, she said, is definitely improving yearly. From experience she said, that many ideas that are found are excellent but need refining and require more mentorship before they are ready.

Mentors are able to refine ideas so that they are perfect and marketable. One of her (Revathy) recurring statements was that when investors look at startups they don’t just look at the ideas but also at the people behind the ideas

campusdiaries november

37

She said that mentorship programs need to give an entrepreneur time and space to learn and develop. Mentors help greatly, but one must never let them take over the business, she advised.

Next, Shashank directed the discussion directly to the support structures present in the ecosystem. The panel went on to discuss its vital components, incubators (provide things like office space, mentorship, and some amount of money), accelerators (aid in converting startups to scale) and mentors. Priyadeep began by saying that many ‘Tech’ startups don’t need incubators. An accelerator would be a better place to go. Incubators play more of a primary role. Revathy warned that many incubators provide office space. Unfortunately, this is the least important element of incubation.

She advised young entrepreneurs to look for incubators that provide mentors, possibly the most important cog in the entire process.

Mentors make up for years of lack of experience and when the idea is ready to scale, they will be of great help in acquiring contacts and funds.

Uday agreed, saying, mentors are definitely important, but it is important they keep an amount of distance. Never let them take over your idea. Shashi mentioned that portals like MA, help greatly when it comes to advice. Sharing ideas, aspirations, etc. with mentors is vital. And these days, thanks to organisations it is far easier to find mentors.

Tap into these networks, he advised and start differentiating between belief and actual work.

Many people, the panel unanimously said, do not start up because they believe their ideas are not million dollar ones. Put effort into making it a business, they advised.

Uday said that ideas can be very simple and anything can work out, only and only if, it is well planned. Try presenting to a wider stage, a larger audience, he advised. The panel again stressed on the importance of mentors.

Rajinish said that many successful start-ups became successful due to good leveraging of mentors. Mentors look into scaling solutions and customer validation. When a target customer base is acquired, mentors help refine the system and the ideas. The panelists spoke from personal experience of young students with brilliant ideas coming to them, but had to undergo a lot of fine-tuning before their ideas became feasible.

38

Mentors, said Revathy, take an entrepreneur through the journey of the startup. They look for ideas that have a good market place. As a 1st time entrepreneur a lot of commitment is needed, and therefore, customer validation is necessary. If it is possible for customers themselves to fund your enterprise, never go for investors. This shows how much faith the market has in you and your potential. This is the best validation, and provides far better opportunities when it comes to investing.

Priyadeep, who had difficulty getting investors because he dealt purely with hardware, learnt that one must never chase after the investors, but always chase after the customers. Try to put in as much funds from your side, attempt to “bootstrap” as far as possible. Rajinish emphatically said that a business should never be built to make money.

A business must be built which can stand on its own. If it can, investors and money will flow in automatically, especially with accelerators and ecosystem support.

campusdiaries november

Rajinish said that many successful start-ups became successfule due to good leveraging of mentors. Mentors look into scaling solutions and customer validation. When a target customer base is acquired, mentors help refine the system and the ideas... Mentors, said Revathy, take an entrepreneur through the journey of the startup. They look for ideas that have a good market place

The session came to a close with a final question and answer session, interacting with the audience, and answering the questions of budding entrepreneurs. One question was, with the present ecosystem that is quite well developed the problem of choice occurs, how could a new entrepreneur choose the right incubator or mentor? The panelists answered saying that it was entirely up to the entrepreneurs themselves. Do your homework, they advised. Look at things like success factors, interact with mentors and find the one most suitable for you as a person as well as your idea and market space. Visit places that provide such services, this allows you to make the right judgements.

Big names are not necessary for good startups.

Priyadeep was then asked to elaborate on his venture in hardware. He said that it is indeed difficult. Make sure, he advised, to get some financial backing, preferably parents on whom you can depend. He spoke of how he did a lot of product testing, with schools, students,

teachers, parents. It took over a year before the product grew into a well-designed product that was market-worthy.

The panel was asked as to what advice they might give youngsters on getting ideas.

They said that it can be done by simply looking around at your environment. There are hundreds of social situations, they used as an example, that require efficient management.

An entrepreneur is one who can deal with these things in an innovative manner. Keep a diary was a suggestion, note down things of your environment and use this to develop ideas. Look at societal issues and don’t restrict yourself to a small market or space, go international.

With this the session came to an end. The invigorating discussion was received with great enthusiasm and had innumerable pointers for young entrepreneurs. One aspect of it was its informality that allowed the audience to relax and enjoy the discussion. The panelists were great when it came to audience interaction, noting difficulties in understanding and making sure all points were put across completely. The question and answer session was well received as well.

This session, on admission of the audience themselves, was extremely beneficial and informative to the students.

campusdiaries.com/stories/support-structures-right-at-the-outset-a-panel-discussion campusdiaries november

39

#SCIENCE

AN IDEA CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE Sourabh Kaushal Kurukshetra University 44

campusdiaries november

Project

I am Sourabh Kaushal, 23 years old, an Engineer and Space Enthusiast. I graduated in engineering in Electronics and Communication (Hons.) from Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, Haryana, in 2012.

I believe that the phrase ‘an idea can change your life’ has proved true in my life too. I never thought that my life would take such a great twist after we started research on Space Debris.

In fact, I never thought of achieving so much from our research when we started it. I belong to a middle class family with no background in space technology.

But, yes, I am passionate about space science and technology.

I remember, when I was in class 12th, I was very passionate about space science. Moreover, I was really interested in learning about life in space and always wondered if there’s pollution in space, if there’s transport system in space. I really wanted to become a space/aerospace engineer.

Yet, unfortunately I was not able to crack the most prestigious examination of India i.e IIT Exam. I secured a seat in a private university near Delhi in Aerospace Engineering but when I came to know about the fees structure, which was too high, I dropped that option and my dream of becoming a space/aerospace engineer was lost.

After that in 2008, I got admitted to another engineering college in electronics and communication branch but not in my favorite branch i.e. Space Engineering.

After my college hours or in free hours, I would go to my college internet lab and search about things related to space science.

It was during my second semester

campusdiaries november

of B.Tech. that one day, I bunked my lecture and was passing time in Internet lab of my college. As I was driven by the mysterious world of space, I started searching for some latest news regarding space technology and came across somethng known as the Space Debris.

I read that Space Debris is the hottest topic and a major concern in the field of space technology nowadays.

I started accessing its history and recent growth. On the flip side, even I didn’t know how to start the research work, or how to write the research papers and proposals. Initially, I faced many problems in my research work as I am from a small town called Yamunagar.

There were no labs or professors for Space science there.

In fact, I was even dissuaded by many people including my c h a i r m a n , faculty members of my college and friends. They always said, “If you’re studying electronics engineering why are you wasting your time in space research.

Concentrate on your degree or you will fail in semester examinations...”

They would always laugh at me and my work. But, I concentrated 100% on my research work because I am passionate about my work and proposed some new techniques to clean space junk from space. Moreover, one of my classmates, Nishant Arora, joined me and helped me a lot in my research work and later we wrote research papers together too.

We explored a lot of history, documents and papers on space debris so that we could get an exact idea about it.

45

After two months of reading and exploration, we found that there aren’t enough effective mitigation methods of space debris proposed around the world.

So, we decided to expand our research by proposing some new and effective methods for space debris mitigation. This took more than three months and a lot of research to think about the methods.

We finalised three methods and started working on them theoretically.

We found that, Space Debris/ space Junk or waste material in space has become a growing concern in recent years, since collisions at orbital velocities can be highly damaging to functioning satellites and can also result in more space debris. Some spacecrafts, like the International Space Station, are now armored to deal with this hazard. Armour and mitigation measures make satellites or human spaceflight vehicles like the shuttles very expensive and heavy.

This example should help you understand how dangerous space debris is. On February 10, 2009, the Iridium 33 satellite collided with the defunct Kosmos 2251 satellite at a speed of 26,000 miles per hour, creating 2,000 additional pieces of space debris. And as more objects

46

accumulate, more of these collisions are likely to occur.

Almost 5,000 launches since the beginning of the space age have left orbits littered with defunct satellites, parts of rockets, fuel tanks, tools lost by astronauts and other fragments which threaten to damage and destroy active spacecrafts.

There are approximately 25,000 pieces of space debris in Earth’s orbit that are larger than three inches and can be currently detected. And there are probably millions or even billions of smaller pieces of space debris that cannot be detected.

While this cascade of raining space junk sounds menacing, the objects actually pose little risk to humans. Smaller objects usually burn up during re-entry and pose a larger than 1 in 10,000 risk to humans.

Despite the size of these objects, they all have the potential to be fatal because of the speed that they are travelling at, especially since most space debris travels at hundreds or thousands of kilometers per hour. “Small objects can do a lot of damage to a spacecraft if it’s not adequately protected. If a five centimeter piece of debris were to hit any spacecraft, it could cause very severe damage and loss to the mission.

campusdiaries november

Space debris is basically all space objects non-functional and human made, that include fragmentation debris (42%)-break ups of satellite, unused fuel, dead batteries, rocket bodies (17%), mission-related debris (19%), nonfunctional spacecrafts (22%).

After a fleet of initial problems, I proposed the first technique to mitigate space debris i.e. use of nanotube mesh technique using laser and nanobot in 2008-09. Even at that time I didn’t know how to write the research paper or the format and pattern of the research paper.

But, still I wrote my very first research paper at the age of 18 and submitted it to the International space elevator consortium, USA and it received a runner up Jerome Pearson Award 2010 by ISEC and that was just the beginning of my journey. In that method, we can make a mesh with the help of Carbon Nanotube because CNT is one of the strongest materials yet discovered in terms of strength. Whenever any tiny particle strikes with the mesh, immediately the coordinates will be activated and will send signal/command to nanobot and laser and then the nanbot captures the pieces of junk and puts it into junkyard.

After receiving this award, people who had dissuaded me earlier, now appreciated me. That was a very proud moment for me and my family. We’ve done a lot of research work on this after that and proposed some new techniques on how we can use space debris for some useful purpose. We also started our research work on space elevator system i.e. the transportation system from earth into deep space and proposed that we can make this structure either with the help

campusdiaries november

47

of CNT by using Railgun Levitation and Meglev Gap technology and we submitted our paper at the EuroSpaceward Conference, Luxembourg, Europe and our research paper got selected in that conference too. After that in 2012, we received the prestigious Dr. Kalpana Chawla Young Scientist Award, presented to us by Dr. Kalpana Chawla’s father for our research work on new techniques to mitigate space debris. In our other techniques, we proposed recycling of space debris and energy production from space junk. As most of the space junk is metallic in nature we can easily convert it into energy by using the concept of fuel cell and use it for radiation protection of satellites or ISS or we can make a structure on the Moon or Mars, using that recycled space junk that will also reduce the budget of space mission.

This method was appreciated by Dr. Angel Abbudd from Centre for Space Resources, USA. I remember, in 2012, I was selected as the INK Fellow in association with TED and I was among the only 22 fellows selected from all over the globe for this fellowship. I spoke in front of great people including Director of MIT Media Lab, editor of Wired, Javed Jaffery, actor and many more. After that in 2012, I received the Young Innovator Award for my research work in the field of space research and was also one of the

48

finalists of MIT TR 35 Young Innovator 2013. I also spoke at TEDx and other events including one at IIT. When I was in class 12th, I really wanted to become an IITian but I couldn’t able to crack the exam and now I was giving a talk at IIT as a guest speaker. In 2013, we also received Youth Revolutionary Award for our work.

Our research work was appreciated

by The Vice President of India Sh. M.H. Ansari, Sir Donald Kessler (Ex-NASA Scientist), Padamshri Dr. V. Adhimurthy from ISRO and many more. All these appreciations, awards and recognition really motivated and inspired me. In addition to that, I wrote many research papers and got selected in more than 25 International and National conferences organised by NASA, ISRO, JAXA, ESA, IEEE, AIAA, IAF and many others. In 2013, I also worked with the NuVu Studio (INDIA/ BOSTON) where I taught students about innovation and creativity on different projects related to space science.

After my graduation, I worked with two MNCs but I left my job for my passion, the company always said that ‘you are working for us, stop all your personal work, research and talks’. But, I love my work so I resigned from the company and started work on my own project. Currently, I am also working on a new project i.e. De-Orbiting Kit Technology to mitigate de-activate or Defunctional satellite or debris from space with Mr. J.P.Coadou and Kellen McNally,

campusdiaries november

of Nova Shell Material Technologies, Canada. In this technique we can use Micro-satellite for taking payload i.e. de-orbit kit using robotic arm. As there are 4500 satellites which are already non-functional in space in LEO (Lower Earth orbit), our target is to detect them first with the help of radars. Then our kits will plug-in on those satellites using robotic arms.

Once, the kit will be plugged in, the whole kit can be activated and then it’ll deorbit into Earth’s orbit. As while re-entering, the temperature is too high, equivalent to 1000 degree celsius, the debris or defunct satellite vaporises.

No doubt, I have faced many problems during my research work, I have seen lots of ups and downs in my life but I never thought of them as obstacles in the way of my research or success. Instead I thought of them as speed breakers and I jumped over them very smartly and carefully.

As we are living in the 21st Century — the century of new technologies —we are still dependent on the technologies of other nations. The youngsters of our nation still face many problems like mentorship, proper guidance, finance, in addition to no proper labs in our country. So, people are now moving to other nations for their research work or higher education and they support and help us in our research work. In India, government bodies and institutions only look at academics. I have been doing research work for the last five years and have done a lot of work in the field of space science but still before joining any company, government or private, they asked for my grades in numbers of percentage in degree college and they didn’t care what I have done or achieved so far. On the flip side, international universities give preference to your research work, extra activities, instead of one’s number or academics.

campusdiaries november

49

That’s why the USA, Japan, Germany, Russia etc. are in a better position in terms of research and development than our country.

Every year India produces approx. 7.5 lakh engineers and when compared, China produces about half of that number. Now, if you see the world domination in terms of the number of research papers and patents, then China stands next to us with a world share of 11% and India is far behind with a share of less than even 3%”.

To overcome these problems — there should be proper labs in India as

well as research oriented institutes and if anybody wants to continue his/her research activities, we should be able to give them a chance without asking for their academic marks. If he/she is passionate about their work, we should give them the opportunity to work in good labs or research institutes. If we do this and promote the research and development activity in our own country, it will help in growth of the GDP as well as the economy of our country. And one day, our country can become the super power in the field of science and technology.

It is rightly said, “An Idea can change your life” as this phrase proved true in my life. I never thought that my life would take such a great twist after we started research on Space Debris.

We never thought of achieving so much from our research when we started it. We belonged to middle class families with no background in space technology. We were just ordinary B.Tech students who were just carrying on with their studies, but a click or an idea in our mind changed our life

campusdiaries.com/stories/an-idea-can-change-your-life

50

campusdiaries november

DR. SHASHI THAROOR MINISTER OF STATE MINISTRY OF HRD GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

An elected Member of Parliament, former Minister of State for External Affairs and former Under-SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations, Dr. Shashi Tharoor is the prize-winning author of fourteen books.

He served the United Nations during his 29-year career

ANGAD DARYANI MAKER CHILD PRODIGY, INVENTOR

Built a Rep Rap 3D Printer at the age of 13. Currently doing research on Desktop Prototyping with Tree Labs.

Invented Virtual Brailler, a device that converts digital text from Roman to b braille in real time to give tactile braille feedback to the tracked ďŹ nger of a visually challenged person

HAVE YOU BOOKED YOUR SEAT YET? SUPPORTED BY

CAMPUSDIARIES

tedxgateway.com

8TH SEP

NCPA MUMBAI

in India

internships

a e d I h c t i w S ovating internships Inn

Aritri Chatterjee College of Engineering & Management, Kolaghat

52

campusdiaries november

I

know a certain B.Tech graduate who completed his engineering studies three years ago and is extremely skilled and talented.

He has been attending innumerable interviews, group discussions, etc. but nothing has availed him the opportunity of a professional career as of now. He has tried registering with the reputed online job portals but no fruitful result has been obtained.

He is not the only person who is suffering from the unavailability of a proper medium of connecting the employer with his prospective employees. There are many others like him who are unsure of how to manage their social and professional life in an expert manner.

What most social networking sites miss out is filtering profiles on the basis of interests, skills, educational backgrounds, etc. And what job portals miss out is making the resume and job searching procedure more interactive and attention seeking.

This is what makes Switch Idea stand out and helps it achieve a completely innovative status. The idea of using simple vCards that are

campusdiaries november

virtual resumes giving all the necessary information about a job aspirant to the companies that are willing to hire such people.

The specialty of Switch Idea’s vCards is that it gives no unimportant extra information.

It provides the ability of reviewing the entire resume consisting of claimed skills and talents, educational background and employment history. There exists an easy option of contacting the vCard user by leaving behind a message. Even the non-users of Switch Idea can send messages to the vCard holders.

Therefore, Switch Idea is an aspiring team of innovative and creative people working hard to create a great platform for bridging the gap between the employers and the students, thus making it easier for employers to look for the right sort of interns they wish to hire. Switch Idea makers have implemented the simple idea of swapping information among people wonderfully. A great combination of social profile along with professional life is what makes Switch Idea a hit among the current generation.

53

campus diaries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Company

INTERNSHIPS OF Location

Internship type

Blueswan Integrated Media Solutions Private Limited

Hyderabad

Full-time

National Human Rights Commission

New Delhi

Full-time

Geetha Foundation

Chennai

Full-time

inBetween

Mumbai

Full-time

Bangalore/Delhi NCR/ Mumbai

Full-time

Debuggify

Bangalore

Full-time

Enventure Technology Services India Pvt. Ltd.

Bangalore

Full-time

Utthishta

Hyderabad

Full-time

New Delhi/Mumbai/ Kolkata/Chennai

Part-time

Pune

Full-time

Chennai

Full-time

Pune

Part-time

Online Prasad

Evelyn Learning (P). Ltd

Wisebrats

Venture Intelligence

The Pint Room

THE MONTH Job Description Skills preferred

Stipend Rs. 10000 p. m.

PR Intern

Fresher in MBA, Communication Skills and Market Research.

Law

Students of the 4th and 5th year pursuing 5 Years Integrated Law Course, Students of the 3rd year pursuing 3 years LL.B. Course and Students pursuing LL.M. Course .

Rs. 8000 p. m.

Growth Hacker Marketer Blogger

Excellent Communication Skills, Blogging, Social Media Marketing and Interfacing.

Rs. 3000 to Rs. 5000 p. m.

Executive Sales and Marketing

Good Communication Skills, Marketing, Computer Skills and Interpersonal Skills.

Rs. 8000 to Rs. 14000 p. m.

Graphic Designer

Graphic Design, Animation, Creative Thinking, Management Skills, Communication Skills, Knowledge in Hinduism and Photgraphy.

Rs. 10000 to Rs. 12000 p. m.

Ruby/Javascript Ninjas

1 year of experience in any web stack, Prior experience in MVC Frameworks in JavaScripts OR Rails, Good understanding of HTML/CSS and looking forward to work in latest web domain.

Rs. 25000 to Rs. 50000 p. m.

Inside Sales Executive

Excellent Communication Skills, Management Skills, Willing to work in U.S. shift timings and Marketing Skills.

Rs. 10000 to Rs. 20000 p. m.

Career Councellor

Excellent Communication Skills, Good knowledge of Counselling process and Management Skills.

Rs. 10000 to Rs. 150000 p. m.

Subject Matter ExpertComputer Science

Good at teaching and good communication skills.

Rs. 5000 to Rs. 8000 p. m.

Graphic Designer

Web Development , Graphic Designing , Art Work , Mascot Designing , HTML CSS , Photoshop and Corel Draw.

Rs. 1500 to Rs. 4000 p. m.

Business and Marketing Executive

Excellent Communication Skills and Marketing and Management Skills.

Rs. 4000 to Rs. 8000 p. m.

Hotel Management

Excellent Communication Skills and Good Analytical Skills.

Rs. 3000 to Rs. 5000 p. m.

Choose an exciting career.

Make a difference.

Study at the

best journalism college in India

Excellent curriculum; practical training.

Award-winning, experienced faculty from India and abroad.

On campus recruitment; practically 100% job placement.

POST-GRADUATE DIPLOMA in Print (Newspaper & Magazine) Broadcast (TV & Radio) Online & Multimedia Journalism

Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, Bangalore IIJNM Admin Office: No. 502, 5th ‘C’ Main, 5th Cross, 2nd Block, HRBR Layout Kalyana Nagar, Bangalore –560 043; Phone: 080-2545 2564 / 2545 2565; Fax: 080-2545 2563 e-mail: admissions@iijnm.org; Website: www.iijnm.org

THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM How sound are you

I

ndia is currently experiencing extraordinary media expansion, with media houses opening new channels or newspapers on a regular basis. The pool of skilled and qualified journalists is not able to keep pace with the demands of the industry. Without a sufficient number of well trained reporters and editors, the media industry in India has considerable employment scope these days.

Though print media continues to be popular and profitable, Indian news organisations are now also using online technology to deliver the benefits of the Internet ­— the most current and up-to-date information, ability to search for content and instantly share information with others.

All major newspapers and TV stat-

campusdiaries november

technologically?

-ions in India have launched their own websites to supplement their traditional forms of news delivery. Some are also applying multimedia technology, integrating text, video and audio in news reporting, and in some cases, real-time. Users are able to obtain information on their computers, cell phones and several other hand-held devices.

In this media environment, aspiring journalists will benefit most from training on a concentrated, hands-on curriculum designed to familiarise them with each and every aspect — theoretical, practical and technical — of digital reporting.

As never before, India needs more

57

There are many well-meaning, sincere journalists in the field but many lack adequate training, especially in digital reporting skilled young journalists who have the ability to cover the story well. There are many well-meaning, sincere journalists in the field but many lack adequate training, especially in digital reporting. This suggests a considerably broader mission for journalism colleges to fill that need. Breadth of curriculum, background of faculty, resources available at the institution, and job placements and awards received by graduates are obvious indicators of the quality of any J-school.

Among the dozens of journalism colleges in India, there are only a few that have an adequate curriculum, and currently only one stands out for excellence in all areas of the profession: the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media (IIJNM), Bangalore. Its trainee journalists can opt to study in the Print, Broadcast or Multimedia streams and gain both a practical focus as well as instruction in sound

theory. IIJNM graduates are highly sought after by the media industry and are well prepared to rise quickly in the profession. “IIJNM has consistently been producing the best crop of new journalists over the past several years. I have found IIJNM graduates to be the most daring, the most experimental and the most comfortable with tools like RTI,� said Aditya Sinha, former Editorin-Chief, DNA. With virtually 100% job placement in the past several years, IIJNM alumni are employed in practically every major media organisation in India. Undoubtedly, there is no better college in India to study at for a career in journalism.

Institutions like IIJNM will bring about profound impact on India’s media in the years to come. With improvement in the quality of journalism, we can certainly hope for superior reporting and news delivery, leading to better governance and stronger democracy in India.

By Arun Thankaraj

58

campusdiaries november

India 2.0 Campus Diaries Exclusive

In conversation with Arvind Gupta, IT Cell Head for Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) campusdiaries november

#youth

00

Society

How often do you use techonology in your day to day life? It’s very natural for you to think about smartphones and social media, because that’s what the world seems to have blown themselves over.

The question is how do we use these tools of open-sourced data and information to maximum use, for maximum output?

Arvind Gupta gives us a few insights of how a political outfit uses new media

HOW HAS THE MASSIVE GROWTH OF THE INTERNET, ESPECIALLY AMONG THE YOUTH, HELPED YOU REACH AND COMMUNICATE WITH THEM? Let me explain to you first how the basic Indian elections work. India generally runs three different types of elections — rural, semi-rural and urban. If you classify them, they will be like pre modern, modern and post modern. Modern is what we traditionally see in all the campaigns, pre modern is very rural, contact based, valley based elections and modern is this digital age elections. India has about 540 seats and in this you can divide the seats in all types of categories. The rural seats are about 200, the semi rural and urban about 180 and roughly plus or minus 160 seats for the urban digital age category. The second thing we must understand is that the Internet is growing leaps and bounds every year. India has leapfrogged the desktop revolution and has gone ahead to the tablet the smartphone revolution. This is what has been leading the Internet revolution in India, the tablets and the smartphones. They have easy access with good Internet data connections in hundreds of rupees. Even a smartphone nowadays costs about four-five thousand and people are almost all day on their smartphones. And the ones leading this revolution is the youth. If you see the usage in terms of the growth numbers, it’s primarily the youth — your 18-25 age group. In terms of numbers, India adds about 8-10 crore new voters between every election.

40 percent of these people are Internet-enabled and that’s 60

a sizeable chunk. It is better to communicate with people when they are on the Internet, using the social media — a tool they are more comfortable with. More and more studies are showing that the youth consumes its messages fastest through technology-based tools, thus it’s a natural choice for all consumer marketing firms as well as political outfits.

HOW HAVE YOU UTILISED THE SOCIAL BANTER AND DISCUSSIONS OVER VARIOUS POLITICAL PARTIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS TO THE BENEFIT OF YOUR POLITICAL PARTY? No data is wasted. Our conversation right now or five people conversing somewhere else on a chat or a twitter thread. I think, there is a lot of information out there and political parties like us are trying to find base in such discussions without violating anybody’s privacy or breaching any security issues. So how do we take this information, which is open, and make sense out of it? For example, whenever an article is posted in one of the leading websites or newspaper websites, you should see the comments it brings along. They are in thousands. And sometimes when you analyse those comments you do get a very good insight on how people have reacted to a particular story. So there are ways and means to understand them which results into valuable information out there.

So you do keep a look out for content over Comments, Facebook groups,Twitter Threads etc.? campusdiaries november

Whatever we can understand, we try to understand.

THE INTERNET THRIVES ON THE IDEAL CONCEPT OF SELFCENSORSHIP. HOW DOES THIS BENEFIT YOU? (AS CONTENT HERE IS OPEN-SOURCED AND CANNOT BE LARGELY MONITORED OR CONTROLLED) With the nature of the medium, we have to understand that any user generated content we should generate. Whether it is political or not, I think, the only way to regulate or monitor the medium is through self-censorship. Before you put yourself out there, first you must question yourself whether it is right or wrong. I think it’s a good thing and we should encourage this, as simple as that. Self-censorship has not been debated over, what is being debated over is government regulation. And a counter to that is that we should give the person a chance to write what they want to write. We must believe in freedom of speech and the idea of self-regulation. So, if I believe in something and I want to write about it, I should be able to.

SO, HAS THIS BENEFITED YOU AS A POLITICAL PARTY? Any kind of open sourced content will always benefit anybody, whether they are in governance, politics… everybody. See, if you make people control their emotions, that’s not good.

There should regulation thus in the means of self-regulation or self censorship with a pledge that I will not use this tool for public mongering and creating issues but apart from that if I am doing a free and fair discussion I think, it benefits everybody.

ACCORDING TO THE 2011 CENSUS, 68.84% OF THE POPULATION IS RURAL. HOW DO YOU PLAN TO ENGAGE THE YOUTH IN THESE RURAL AREAS TO CONNECT WITH YOU AS A POLITICAL OUTFIT? As I said, there are three different types of election modes, and the youth runs across all the three of them. So if you take the intersection of youth across other modes and the campusdiaries november

rural intersection, you will find that they are very aspirational in India. They also want to own the next big phone, they also want to be connected and learn more, and they also want to learn about the top university courses that are going on et al. Now sometimes, the Internet fails them. They don’t have connectivity or the infrastructure. Yet they are trying to device other methods, where the mobile is a common factor. Although mobile Internet may still not to be too accessible but the phone is accessible.

So, our scope of the digital world to connect with the youth is not only limited to the Internet, but also through traditional methods where the mobile technology is very effective.

For us, Facebook, Twitter, and other mediums are additional to traditional medium.

It is not a replacement medium. We are already using ten different methods to connect to the youth and this probably is the 11th method.

This is important to know because if I am doing a rally or a door-to-door campaign, that wouldn’t cease the other things we are doing.

We’ve gotten a tremendous response from the rural youth, like for example if we ask them to send their opinion through an SMS they do respond.

AS THE IT CELL HEAD, HOW WILL YOU PERSONALLY WANT TO INFLUENCE THE DECISION-MAKING OF THE YOUTH THROUGH THE INTERNET? The youth needs to understand that we don’t want to influence anybody’s decision making.

Our job is to give information and data out.

61

People have to consume that information correctly and be able to make a decision on their own. That is the job of any marketer – go out and give the information. And secondly, to start listening to people’s opinions and action some of them, the Internet enables you to do that and the youth wants to be listened to. This influences their decision-making a lot.

-gagement, providing information, taking feedback, interacting with them in small things, and not just giving one way messages. If you see any of our social media properties, it’s very interactive from conducting small quizzes online to generating feedback over specific as well as generic issues. Also engaging them in voluntary online and offline processes.

SO YOU WORK ON A FEEDBACK MODEL?

HAS TWITTER HELPED YOU REACH PEOPLE FASTER AS A SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM? WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON IT?

Yes, absolutely. Today we are crowdsourcing opinion over the Internet and the digital medium. We want the youth to make a informed decision of what is good for them and what isn’t.

You have to trust the power of the voter in the Indian democracy to make the right decision.

WILL HAVING A STRONG SOCIAL MEDIA CONNECT AMONG THE YOUTH AFFECT THE VOTER CONVERSION RATE ACCORDING TO YOU, THEORETICALLY SPEAKING? HOW DO YOU PLAN TO REACH OUT TO THESE POTENTIAL VOTERS? It is already affecting it and it will go on. What we have observed in the last few years is that people have come back from voting and said that ‘Hey, I voted today’ and that sort of puts some peer pressure on everybody else, asking them whether they voted today. It’s like a sense of achievement, like hey I bungee jumped today or I climbed a mountain. So now this sense of achievement is translating into sense of voting. The plan to reach the youth better is yes, through social media and also by constant en62

Every medium is different like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. Twitter sort of amplifies your method, it’s an open platform, so anybody can contribute, unlike Facebook, which is comparatively a little more closed platform than Twitter. On Twitter, everything is out there, it’s a very open platform. And it is setting a narrative for discussions and even the mainstream media is using it to understand information, it’s become the newswire you can say.

SINCE COLLEGES ARE ALSO A RESOURCE POOL, ESPECIALLY IN EMERGING NON-TRADITIONAL ELECTION TOOLS (LIKE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA), DO YOU CONSIDER UTILIZING THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS STUDYING MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY AS PART OF THAT RESOURCE BASE? HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING EXEMPLARY ABOUT THE SAME? campusdiaries november

This is an interesting question. Because we’ve had many media and communication students lining up to intern with political outfits. In fact students from IIMs and IITs want to join this internship and I only see the number going up and then there’s a new set of ideas and mindset – it’s a great talent pool and we’ve realised that. I think every political party should, they’re a great resource pool with many bright ideas. Usually they join us for summers but if they want extended internships, we do want to give them the opportunity to do so. They get to do a lot of things in the internship, such as write articles, develop technology and content, depending on what background they’re from.

MANY COLLEGES HAVE POLITICAL YOUTH WINGS AND EVEN ENGAGE IN STUDENT POLITICS INTENSIVELY. HOW DOES YOUR WEB PRESENCE HELP THIS STUDENT POPULATION? The web presence does help. And these outfits in colleges should also have their own web presence because it helps. But, student university elections are very small elections, and I am not too sure how exactly it works really, but as an ideological perspective, yes, our web presence does help.

WHEN YOU DO A SOCIAL MEDIA WORKSHOP, LIKE HOW YOU HAD ONE VERY RECENTLY, IS THERE ANY SPECIFIC FOCUS GIVEN TO A YOUTH POLITICAL UNIT?

campusdiaries november

ARE THEY MORE INCLINED TOWARD THE WEB AND TECHNOLOGY? Particularly, for BJP, we have the Yuva Morcha, which is different from the ABVP you see in colleges. But, the Yuva Morcha is not the one that is fighting elections; they’re a different organisation.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE YUVA ITV? What happens is, all these new technologies and channels are very successful for the simple reason that their ROI (return on investment) is very high, they’re very low cost to run and they can be run very effectively with very low resources. So what we’re doing is taking this to various other channels and extending its reach to the youth. So youngsters come to us and tell us that because you featured me I was recognized by 2000 other students for a talk I was giving and this is the kind of recognition they want, because they’re not getting coverage in mainstream media. When they start engaging like this, they actually do get appreciated. They can showcase their own talent through this medium and upload quality content curated by us.

Mr. Modi has been comparatively very influential on social media, especially Twitter, as a youth brand. But in India, where general elections have local MPs as the face of the campaigns,

63

what is the strategy being implemented to connect BJP comprehensively with the youth?

The youth wants fresh ideas. It’s a message now, apart from how you distribute the message and talk about relevant things that the youth wants to hear — about their future, their security, about their jobs, about economic issues surrounding India. The message of Mr. Modi is just that — development with highest levels of security, a vision for India — which is achieved with the right skill, scale and speed.

Because people don’t want to see a change 40 years later, they want to see it now. Mr. Modi, thus, communicates this and embodies this entire aspirational aspect of the youth.

YOU HAVE SPOKEN LARGELY OF THE INTRODUCTION OF E-LEARNING FOR STUDENTS AND E-GOVERNANCE WITH THE MEDIA, AS WELL AS CREATING CONTENT POOLS. HOW HAS THE BJP MADE CONSCIOUS EFFORT TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN? E-governance is not something we just talk about, but also implement in all our states. And BJP is the only political party that connects our people in academics, practitioners and IT Ministers on a regular basis in a conference. It’s all about creating a culture for governance. Good governance is fundamental to BJPs beliefs and

w w w x w x w w x w w x w x The message of Mr. Modi is just that — development with highest levels of security, a vision for India — which is achieved with the right skill, scale and speed.

Because people don’t want to see change 40 years later, they want to see it now

one of the pillars for good governance is e-governance. And in that we are very serious about how we share this in all our states and slowly it’s a culture that is now being developed.

Similarly, we also leverage technology to reach out to more people in India. Education is the primary thing that is very important, we don’t have resources or infrastructure or teachers sometimes to provide good education, so why not use e-governance to reach out to students, use virtual classrooms and e-learning tools so that people can learn a lot more and a lot better.

A MESSAGE TO THE STUDENTS?

They should make sure they are registered to vote and persuade people around them to vote and then exercise their vote. Voting in India needs to have more value and people to realise its importance. There are many elections in India that are lost or won based on hundreds of vote and people should realise that.

campusdiaries.com/stories/india-2.0-0 64

campusdiaries november

x w w x x w x x 26w x x w x w x w � x x Not your typical

year-old

Ritika Chawla Azim Premji University Bangalore #visionary

x x� x � �

Life of a girl belonging to a typical Indian middle class family means finishing school at 17, graduation at 20, post-graduation at 22, getting married at 23 and having kids by 25.

Maybe today’s generation is different or maybe not...

campusdiaries november

65

Society

L

ife of a girl belonging to a typical Indian middle class family means finishing school at 17, graduation at 20, post-graduation at 22, getting married at 23 and having kids by 25.

Maybe today’s generation is different or maybe not, I’m not completely sure. But I’m sure of someone I know who broke these societal shackles to follow her heart. Sonal Kapoor, a microbiologist MBA by qualification was working with a media house when a visit to a slum for a film shoot for her organization made her change her path in life. It might not sound very significant to those reading this but to Sonal her encounter with a heavily pregnant woman with her seventh child, the earlier five being girls, for whom food was luxury and toys meant scraps picked up from garbage, changed her life completely. When Sonal asked this woman on how she was planning on supporting a seventh child, the woman replied that if it was a son he would grow up to be her support but if it was a girl she would strangle her. She was also sending one of her 8 year old daughters to a brothel so that she could feed the rest of her family.

For all those reading this and so far were believing that India is shining and we are progressing, think again. Sonal did and

66

in a span of few minutes she also decided on shifting the thought process of others, especially women belonging to this particular community. After a feasibility study and involving a few locals she started Protsahan – a one room school for educating the girl child, which today is called Protsahan India Foundation.

Even though it started in one room, Protsahan is not a run-of-the-mill school, it can’t be. Here children use scrabble to learn English along with cartoons and photographs. The idea was to give children living in the slums the gift of art as Sonal believes colors can help heal children’s fears.

Like many others, Sonal too went through the regular phase that almost every start-up or initiative does, when people around you think you’ve gone insane to give up on a comfortable life and become a “social worker”.

She too heard the lecture on you-do-these-thingswhen-you-retire-andhave-lots-of-money. After this, came the phase of funding. Money was a problem for Protsahan but that did not deter Sonal.

She did freelance projects to keep it running and raised funds through comedy shows, beer meet-ups, etc.

If all this wasn’t enough, there were legal hassles that she dealt with. Being from science

background she had no clue, but a network of well-intentioned people came to her aid. There were still many hurdles to be tackled. For example, when she wanted some people to come and conduct a candle-making workshop, each asked for an exorbitant fee for which she obviously had no means. She took this on as a challenge and learnt how to make candles from Youtube. And went ahead to teach the women linked with her NGO. Starting with just one friend on her side, her team grew to people from across India, ranging from students from IITs, IIMs to those from well-known companies in Johannesburg, Singapore and New York. Inspite of first few years being bootstrapped by the founder on her own, today because of the impact, the World Bank, United Nations, Confederation of Indian Industries, Australia India Youth Dialog and other organizations of national and international repute recognize Protsahan, making every person linked to it proud.

When you do what Sonal does, you really don’t know where to stop or draw your locus of control.

She didn’t either. What started with an idea to educate the girl child also took on empowering their mothers. Sonal runs an Artisans’ Honour Project

campusdiaries november

She too heard the lecture on you-do-these-things-when-youretire-and-have-lots-of-money

and Project Stree for the mothers of the girls to create candles and other fabric-based crafts such as hand bags as well as sanitary napkins. Not only does the money generated from this project support certain families but its revenues are also used to sustain the Educate India Project.

She started Protsahan with 19 students and today after more than 3.5 years, it has touched thousands of lives, including children from the red-light districts, streets, slums, construction sites, rag-pickers and rickshaw pullers and works with about 200 children each day.

Ask her about her vision and with a lot of conviction Sonal says, “We seek to make creative microentrepreneurs out of young children on streets and slums by using Protsahan’s 5 pillars of creativity

approach.

As Protsahan, we have learnt that scale doesn’t always translate to empathy. We want to stay focused and not expand just for the sake of expansions. We aim to bring massive change to these 200 precious lives we are working with each day. It starts with fighting abuse and vulnerability in the life of a 10-12 year old girl, training her with the ten month bridge course where she for the first time handles design and art, smart phones and cinema and acquaints herself with functional literacy, post which she is put into a government school. Girls who come to us, some do not have mothers, some can’t speak or hear, some are HIV+, some have sold fruits and vegetables since the time they have been three and have never

been to a school, some being ragpickers from streets. After her 10 month bridge course, she now starts learning traditional Indian Art, professional Photography and Filmmaking and Cinema and starts developing as a creative individual at a lot of subtle levels. Once she turns 14-15, she starts getting trained as a creative micro entrepreneur. Most times, she is the first girl in her entire family’s past generations to become literate. Inclusive growth will not come about with if we do not work together to fight against the abuse and rape of our children. If you and I as young people do not do anything to change our country, we have no right to expect anything from the government.”

campusdiaries.com/stories/not-your-typical-26-year-old

In focus

IIT Bombay’s

Around the world in four days

68

campusdiaries november

“W

e promise you the four best days of your life!” said one of the core group members of Mood Indigo 2012, at the Mood Indigo freshmen orientation during the first few days of college.

Now, promising an eighteen -year-old the best days of his life is not a long bluff to make. But, promising that to an eighteen-year-old who has just finished having the two months of his life after giving an examination that he/she prepared for, for two years, is a big deal. At the moment, I didn’t think much of it, and dismissed it as an attempt to glamourise the festival by blowing it out of proportion.

Little did I know.

Mood Indigo, or Mood-I, or simply MI, is the cultural festival of IIT Bombay. It is the largest college cultural festival in all of Asia. This is the fact that wowed the crowd at the freshmen orientation. This, and the long list of celebrities associated with the festival.

We were impressionable back then. Throw a few big names around, and we’ll be hooked.

Especially, the kids that came from places far from Mumbai, the cultural capital of the country. When names like Asha Bhosale and R D Burman are associated with something, you can’t help but feel a little thrilled by it. That is what Mood I was, for us, in the early days – a festival that gave birth to careers of Amjad Khan, Vishal Dadlani, Ayushmann Khurana, and countless others; an event where big shot stars like Rani Mukerjee and Vidya Balan descended, to promote their movies; and a stage where Porcupine Tree, Karni-

campusdiaries november

-vool and Katatonia had performed. It was awesome, and I mean it in the literal sense of the word.

The organising structure of Mood Indigo is segmented into ten different departments. The creatives department handles the ambience, website design, posters and the like. Media handles media, as in, the cove-

-s which were published on an online college forum, and most of all, one of them was published in Mirage, a supplement of Bombay Times.

And all this before the actual test had even begun.

The four days of MI 2012 did live up to all the hype.

The campus was decked in the colors of ‘Tribal Tryst,’ the theme for MI 2012. One could

The four days of MI 2012 did live up to all the hype. The campus was decked in the colors of ‘Tribal Tryst,’ the theme for MI 2012. One could see tribal masks, archways made of straw, stick figures with headrests and painted faces on the street rage and publicity of the fest in newspapers, websites, this magazine and so on.

Freshmen who work for MI – they all do, generally – are called organizers. Sophomores are called coordinators of MI, they work for different departments, and are far fewer in number. 22 third year students make up the Core Group, who are the heads of the various departments, and finally two fourth year students are overall coordinators.

The freshmen are free to choose the department they intend to work for. My flair for writing and interest in mass communication led me to register for the media department. What difference would a freshman make to the continent’s largest college festival, I asked myself. But as it began, I had my answer. I had the opportunity to interact with various journalists, the assistant editor of The Times of India, Mumbai, being one of them. I wrote a series of article-

see tribal masks, archways made of straw, stick figures with headrests and painted faces on the street. A crowd of 20000 was seen on the first day, which included college students from places as far as Guwahati and as culturally rich as Udaipur.

Litfest was introduced at MI 2012, which featured a series of talks and interactive sessions. The halls where India’s brightest minds attended lectures were now used for panel discussions with the who’s who of the Indian news industry. Sir Marc Tully, former Bureau Chief at BBC Delhi gave a splendid talk and held an interactive session on Indian culture. A panel involving editors and senior reporters of various news channels, papers and periodicals discussed, at length, the role of investigative journalism and its importance today. Celebrity Chef Vikas Khanna launched his new cookbook, and renowned dire69

-ctors Prakash Jha and Sudhir Mishra sat on a panel that discussed unconventional cinema with the audience.

Mood Indigo Worldfest 2012 played host to contingents from four countries, namely, Japan, Serbia, Romania and Sri Lanka. These groups performed their own folk dances, cooked and served their own food, displayed and sold their handicraft, performed little acts on the streets, and paraded the institute in a carnival. The young crowd was impressed by the friendliness of the firangi folk, and the Global Mela where the contingents had their displays witnessed a huge footfall.

MI hosts a variety of competitions that encompass all genres of culture.

Omniscience, the quiz competition of MI was held alongside Nihilanth, the inter IIT-IIM quiz competition.

More than 50 colleges participated in Aagaaz, the street play competition, whose elimination rounds were held in Kolkata, Bangalore, Delhi and Pune before the festival.

The elims were also held for 70

Third Bell, the one act play competition. The winners of both Aagaaz and Third Bell got an opportunity to perform at the prestigious Tata NCPA theatre and the Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, alongside generous cash prizes. Dance competitions were organised in various formats and themes like Street Dance, Solo Dance, Classical Dance, Thematic Dance and Bollywood. The winners of these competitions, too, performed at the Tata NCPA in June 2013. The Mood Indigo National Debate saw overwhelming participation from various other countries as well, including a contingent from Pakistan.

The host of competitions included some off-beat challenges like Typography, Crime Scene Investigation, Hogathon (where the participants had to eat as much as they could), and Treasure Hunt. Participants tested their word-skill at Scrabble, Spelling Bee and a number of other word games. The melodious among the crowd sang their way to glory at MI Idol and Singing the Indigos. MI also featured the fi-

-nals of Livewire, India’s biggest and oldest semi-professional band competition. The winners of Livewire opened for the grand International Nite, which featured the immensely popular Punk rock band Simple Plan, who performed their first gig in India. All the four nights of the festival culminated in concerts, called the Pronites.

World renowned musician and composer Karsh Kale and his ensemble, the Karsh Kale Collectiv wowed an audience of over 10 grand on the second night of the festival. The final night of the festival ended with a bang, where the famous composer duo Salim-Sulaiman performed their most popular numbers.

It was my first time at a concert of this magnitude.

All the headbanging, the Mexican waves and the chorus singing was the highlight of the festival, and never had I enjoyed myself so thoroughly.

Not very far behind on my list of highlights was having a close encounter with Anushka Sharma and Imran Khan, who had turned up to promote their upcoming movie, and so had Arjun Rampal and Chitracampusdiaries november

nganda Singh.

On the whole, the festival was a level apart. As a part of the Media department, it was my job to escort a journalist to the various events of the festival, and have them cover them. It was a job I thoroughly enjoyed doing, because it ensured a swift entry into any packed auditorium, skipping the long queues and avoiding numerous other formalities. “Oye oye! Journalist hai journalist hai!” I would say, before breaking any queue and then look at the poor poor people standing in the mammoth sized queues for so long! The star on list of privileges as an organiser was the opportunity to sit in Simple Plan’s press conference, where I also had the chance to ask them questions. At the end of the day, I’d also developed a cordial relationship with the said journalist, who now gets in touch regularly. I developed a specific skill set that involved building confidence and micromanagement. There were times when I had to stretch myself, run to places and work my way out of difficult situations, but this only added to the whole experience of Mood Indigo and all its glory.

We wrapped up MI 2012 on a high, with unprecedented coverage in the national print media and online as well. “The credit for the festival goes to all the organisers who run this mammoth of a fest from the ground level. We would crumble without them,” said the overall coordinator for MI 2012.

It was time to step into the shoes of a coordinator, and make a more significant differcampusdiaries november

After the end of the fest, I was escorting a participant and he said, “Man! I really had an awesome time at Mood I.” I want to hear it again from you! I had been told not to make this write-up preachy. But I felt like doing so because, to sum it up, Mood Indigo 2013 is THE place to be. I have had the time of my life playing my part in its organization and I will make sure you enjoy the festival just as much. See you at Mood I!

-ence to Mood Indigo 2013.

I was involved in a lot of ideation for publicity and deals with various magazines and other media. Working as coordinator let me observe, in close quarters, how the mechanism of the huge festival worked. There was an enormous amount of stuff to learn from the senior members of clan Mood Indigo. I was encouraged to suggest ideas, which had the probability of turning into real time events.

I negotiated and helped seal a number of publicity deals and what not.

Our team also launched the International Music Festival this year, which will bring in artists from across the globe at the festival. Flagas’k, a reggae band from France, is known to amalgamate music with humour. The crowds at MI are in for a hilarious concert. The Outside Track fuses the Canadian, Scottish and Irish forms of music to generate energetic, virtuous tunes. The five members of the band hail from Scotland, Ireland, Cape Breton and Vancouver. Ana Gog, a Northern European band is well known

for its hypnotic piano solos and rich vocal harmonies.

A prominent figure on the Irish music scene, this band is expected to take MI by storm. German musician Robin Sukroso has created an invention called the ‘Acpad guitar,’ which is a slightly different looking guitar with blue glowing LED buttons, computer chips and many cables, a virtual and complex instrument in itself, that he will create mesmerising music with.

Another major highlight of MI 2013 is the ‘Dragon Boat Race’ which will take place before the fest, to the lines of its theme, The Oriental Quest.

It will be a one of a kind event, where teams from various colleges will battle it out to the finish line on their speeding dragons. This will replace the all Mumbai Treasure hunt that we conduct every year.

S. Hussain Zaidi, the bestselling author of Dongri to Dubai and various other novels on the Mumbai underworld, will be coming to MI this year, as part of the Litfest.

By Sapan Shah and Team MOOD I 71

poetry

S

wing swing

D

rip drop

Inspired by the song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday, which talks of the lynching of ‘blacks’ in the southern states of the ‘30s,USA, this poem deals with the prominent problem of honour killings in India Vrinda Batra Lady Sri Ram College New Delhi #honour

00

campusdiaries november

B

ody ‘swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.’ Castilleja dripping red Paints her screams

On the callous earth.

She clawed at the dirt, As he watched teary eyed.

And they slashed at her girth.

Castilleja dripping on the ground, Fruit hung without a sound.

Someone asks the mistake the two made.

And anguish on faces as anger fades away.

Away flies logic as they persuade Themselves that the two were incorrect.

As they began to introspect they wondered why the fruit dangled and the castilleja wept.

Love had brought the two to their fate Her a flower, him a fruit merely exacerbates The problem. The rest were too late to realize that both flower and fruit die and fall on the same ground.

Silence was all that was found When somebody questioned the group As to why the flower was red And the fruit hung.

Confused faces wrung As they stood by the dead.

campusdiaries.com/stories/swing swing drip drop campusdiaries november

75

campusdiaries

#thenextline We asked you to be a part of a 100 authors’ story and here is what the story has woven itself to be.

Read along to be amazed as 100 unique authors’ 100 unique lines come together in one story

There had been encounters before, but none as big as this- none as breathtaking as this.”w @Campus_Diaries

one doesn’t end up sitting next to a superstar on an 18-hour flight often @shaaqT

It was her dream come true, someone she adored her whole life, was beside her, sparkling like a dream. @PoeticDisguise

She needed to breathe and make the most of the flight... to tell him all her dreams. @AvaniLalka

She wanted to start with school, but then was heartbroken when he plugged his earphones... @BhumikaMistry

Now it was upon her to do something smart to catch his attention, and hold it, so she did. @ThatCrazyPoet

Shriya tapped his shoulders and he turned around, took out his earphones and asked, “Yes ?” This was it. @bvajresh

Do you know what it’s like to be on a flight with a superstar?” She asked. He smiled and... @karthrav16

“Well, if I did, wouldn’t I be where where you are? Deep, huh?” @SanikaD

Shriya seemed confused at the mildly arrogant reply. Maybe she’d imagined her idol man a little differently. @kiranv3091

She stated at him with amazement like a baby on his first day out and finally took out her... @BhandAadmi

lipstick, just to drop it on the floor as the plane lurched forward. @manasi_nene

He bent to get it as she did too & their heads bumped into each other. She stared at his face, so near... @tulikaD

76

campusdiaries november

...hers. She was flustered, mumbling apologies, he stared into her eyes.

This had to be a dream! @AshuLouPuppy

“Were you just trying to steal my lipstick?” asked Shriya. @tejas_khatry

She knew she had said something stupid. Her cheeks turned red and she looked away immediately. @SimranSaini93

She thought of salvaging the situation.

“Look, a dragon!” she said, pointing outside. @infernoespera

“The dragon? How did you know about the dragon?” he said. I thought ordinary folks couldn’t see it! @raeesapotnis

Just as the Dalai Lama turned around to look at her, she suddenly regained her composure. @thesamarthpatil

For a moment he looked away, as she brought out her light-saber and ran it through his heart. @visshy_it

And she watched in awe as he turned back, with a benign smile, the light saber doing nothing more than ruffle his robes. @snuffles_t

Everything was normal until she felt a heavy jerk. “Dont panic,” was the only thing she heard @j_amaren

But she could already feel her Master’s wrath at her folly.Huge cracks began to appear on the... @priyasree

...wall and the knock on the door was enough to send shudders down her spine. @benedictgershom

The smell of rot and brimstone filled her nose and she knew her Master was near. Chairman Mao was coming for his agent. @GrimPillMage

As Chairman Mao walked towards her in crisp suit and polished shoes the smell of his scent filled the air. @ShreyaBanda

“Good thing that was a simulation eh, Shriya?” he said. @deep_blu_c

“Holy Shit”, replied Shriya. She loved augmented reality but was wondering if she could put it for better use. @ansh_shrey

the drugs were wearing off slowly and awareness seeping in... So strong were her senses that suddenly... @StrugglinSapieN

Shriya promised herself not to ever ROFL“MAO” again. @EkBrunMaska

Unable to decide, Shriya found herself stuck between reality and imagination when... @Sunrahimain

campusdiaries november

77

Meanwhile, Mao had hijacked the plane. They forced landed, 200 kms from Patna. 40 deg and not a soul around. @mainhoonzayesha

Soon after, Mao called his men & they grabbed Shriya by her hair, dragging her out of her hiding place. @amoriste

But they soon realised she was more than a human, as they saw her head turn into a fire skull. @retardsoham

Next, she breathed out a fire ball into the sky signalling her partners. She had found the secret base. @thecipherstory

Slowly after emitting the fireball, a flash light occurred and an unusual power entered shriya. @batulkapasi07

Suddenly the rain started with storming lightening thunders and shriya started singing. @ramuias001

She could feel her skin burning underneath. @KhauMein

Her words were music to his ears.Yet he never paid attention to her. @foggy_nites

A high power laser beam was emitted from within her & all of Mao’s men were burnt to ashes @bindaasaditya

The power was within her, making her stronger, filling her with the divine light. @bakewanti

But what did she really fear? The skeletons of the past kept haunting her.

What happened in the past? @BawlaChawla

The fear had gripped her since the day when she wandered into the old abandoned house near the wood. @disha4193

My pen ran out of ink. I stopped writing about her. @JennySharmila

I realised it was too late to sleep and too early for morning, I got back with my pen. @SeedheSadhe

He tried to write what he feels about her, but he knew that words wouldn’t do justice to what he felt about her. @contradictionL

Then he thought about her, where would she be now. After opening the ink bottle... he filled the pen calmly. @AthiraRajPillai

He wanted her to hurt as much as he did, he wanted her dead. But did he?After all he loved her. But she didn’t. @jestalt

He did not because she was carrying his blood. Yes, she was pregnant! @iamgunti

To hurt her would mean his own child Instead, he vowed to protect her.

Even if it was from himself. @sparklybat

Somewhere in a different part of the city, a drawer was opened: a drawer full of secrets, regrets and memories. @Rj_Tina

Pushing them aside, she picked up a little ball of light that lay in the corner of the drawer @ShantanuAnand44

That little ball of light gave her the power no one could ever get. @PRikaGulati

She bounced it on her palm, weighing her options. @fiercetornado

She was contemplating her next move with that ball of light but suddenly the door burst open.. @VodkaKhatam

And the demons of her bygones rushed in, haunting her present and threatening her future. @SnobbishTownie

She started chanting something. Soon the curtains in the room caught fire @Jasmin0924Walia

But she decided her fate, she launched the ball of light, her past destroyed in seconds. @AdityaUbare

for a moment she didn’t know what to believe!? The haunting past that had latched itself onto her was gone? @Nicoline_R

She wanted to move on and dream. And when she did dream, her dreams weren’t magical anymore. @sarmah333

The flames before her, reminded her of her only weakness. Mr.Mao’s peacock. She saw its apparition develop. @vineetgarmella

The peacock’s dream had haunted her too long, it was time to know that secret it hid. @wisefaery

She rose and opened the cupboard to remove the one peacock feather that her mother had entrusted her with. @blah_brian

It is a documented fact that more than one peacock feather can drive daughters crazy. But there it was.. @noseriouslyno

it was like a fairy tale where demon’s life trapped in parrot she thought as she looked at the feather & Mr. Mao @nidhi213

The ball of light destroyed Mao’s men and the feather was now her weapon against Mao @seanseq

Salvation comes,albeit in a feathered form. @srividyabhaskar

campusdiaries november

79

But suddenly there was a strong breeze... within no time feather disappeared, where did it go? @Itsmesirisha

It flew away to its rightful master, the one who owned it in its actual sense, it was none other than.. @PappaSays

The Master let the feather fly higher since she tends to forget her own true capacity! @NityashreeY

Afterall, our own portraits are the toughest to draw. @disco_deewani

But she had to do it, she had to kill him. Her teacher. Mao. Little did she know that he was her father. @bhayankar_cool

In a few seconds, he’d be dead. She walked towards him. Nobody else was there, and she heard it, “STOP”. @SugarcaneStory

She turned back to find yet another Mao... or maybe his illusion? @2lipstalk

But what truly made her skin crawl, was the uncharacteristic kick she felt from within her womb. Oh no. @iPreferQuirky

Or maybe it’s just gas. Shouldn’t have eaten all those beans. @theshenoise

There she was, lying on the floor taking slow deep breaths, blindly staring at... @natasha595nair

the Mao who stared back at her.... Was she guilty? @Aarti_Trikanna

Guilty of sharing her evil father’s blood with her unborn baby. Suddenly she felt a sharp pain. @sedadi

No, she wasn’t. She was actually searching the true love in his eyes and waiting for him to grab her. @NashiliAnkhein

It all came back to the old house near the woods, where she had seen them hurt the boy, but he had run away, afraid @dummy_1411

Afraid that no matter what she did, it wouldnt be enough; that it wouldn’t be enough to make a difference. @iAreyArey

But then again! she thought, what if... @Arun_Moras

Life can’t be lived in ifs & buts, her evil father had once told her. Today, she had to take a call which was... @pratthebrat

to kill Mao. But she wanted it fair... she challenged her master to a death combat. @Zamayra99

She picked up the ball of light but a thought interrupted another, swaying past her again today or so it goes. @Nandini2892

All she knew was that there was a dead body lying next to her after she woke up from her hypnotic sleep. Someone she knew... @mrstupidcrazy

“Oh my god, What have I done?” she thought beginning to tremble in fear. @sriramtweets

The dead glassy eyes stared back at her, and she sadly realised that it was a part of herself she was looking at. @Pradak93

Before she could make sense of anything, a loud howl pierced the night air. @kamehameyaa

It was the unmistakable sound of the ambulance urgently screeching its way to the hospital. Her worst fear had come true. @SinfullyAlive

Maybe, if she prayed hard then it wouldn’t turn out like him. There could be hope even in this abyss. @justayushi

She felt a strong jolt in her stomach... She screamed, closing her eyes. @eDen_xD

An idea had died. It had a shape. A human with eyes which could never burn like coal! The screeching halted. @Weave_yellow

Hopelessness ivied around but she knew she could not drown.She had to be a phoenix. She had to come back to life @WiniBakshi

Suddenly, she reached into her pocket. @varunshetty

And pulled out a gun, and said, “If the US takes military action in Syria, I blow up the entire world” @neillalwani

At that very moment, hyperbolized anger morphed the original event with something else entirely. @reetiks

She stretched her right arm to the heavens, as if to pierce them entirely! It stretched into a mighty drill! @GihaKamina

And then she woke up. @Danishism_

campusdiaries november

81

SUBSCRIBE. THE VERY BEST OF STORIES, COMMUNITIES AND THE CELEBRATION.EVERY MONTH. INVITE YOUR FRIENDS TO THE CELEBRATION. GIFT THEM A SUBSCRIPTION

Stay in touch with the best of stories & communities Get attractive discounts too!

Coupons available in your campus/nearest magazine stalls/select cafes 3 Months

Rs. 100

33%

12 Months

Rs. 250

66%

6 Months

Rs. 150

50%

CALL +91 99164 74368 WRITE TO engage@campusdiaries.com campusdiaries.com/magazine

Thoughts, ideas and experiences

Publish like never before

With your friends and communities

The best stories and storytellers

Your Stories campusdiaries.com