Annual Day 2015

Annual Day of NSS, IIT Kharagpur was held yesterday (14-04-2015) at Kalidas Auditorium of IIT Kharagpur. NSS team works in about 20 villages / slums in our neighbourhood where mostly people from backward community live. As has always been the case, the function this time too had major participation from these villages / slums. And that it was held on anniversary of respected Babasaheb Ambedkar reminded us our responsibility to serve the underprivileged even more.

Besides our guests from villages and slums where we serve, we had with us among others, Dr. Amitava Mookerjee from Kolkata Unit of Sankara Nethralaya, Mr. Hitabrata Chowdhury and his team from Social Engineering and Adavanced Technological Education (SENATE),  and Dr. Nazmi and his team from Kharagpur Voluntary Blood Donors Organization (KVBDO).

The function started with young student leaders making a short presentation of what NSS team did during the year, specially the activities since NSS Day function of last semester. The activities around 7-day long Annual Camp at Balarampur village got a special mention along with special activities like medical camp, blood donation camp, development work related to agriculture in Pariapara village and self-employment (Muri-making machine) at Soldahar village with funding support from Sponsored Reserach & Industrial Consultancy, IIT Kharagpur. The other notable feature of this semester's work has been road-building work taken up by certain units as a part of regular weekly activities which is usually done during the annual camp days. A 4-page newsletter was released that highlighted these activities and was distributed to our guests. A separate post on this newsletter follows (Link)

The invited talk of Dr Amitava Mookerjee made us all feel how our ignorance / superstition does not allow to bring smile to the faces of many who deserve it as much. There is a huge queue of blind people who are waiting for someone to donate eye, 22000 in his hospital and per year only 100 donations are received. Pledges of eye donation are taken in plenty. But after death when eye is to be harvested to give back vision to someone who is eagerly waiting for years in darkness, the family members do not allow saying that if so done, the person would be born blind next life. He narrated a personal experience of 14 year old girl, the trauma she faced - the inglorious existence, she had been pushed into, the indignity of a girl who cannot see. It was an eye opener for all of us and made all of us ask ourselves the inconvenient question, "Where have all our pledges gone?" Dr. Mookerjee offered us help to conduct eye camps in our neighbourhood by bringing here expertize of Sankara Nethralaya team and also train a batch of our students who can in turn teach others how to take care of eyes. The speech of Dr. Mukherjee can be heard here (little blurring in the beginning).

Cultural program of village / slum school students followed. Since there is a vast stretch of tribal population in our backyard, quite a few tribal dance performances were there. Scholarships were provided to some village students who are both meritorious and needy from the support received from benevolent donors. This is also the time to bid adieu to senior students who complete their 2 year tenure in NSS. A certificate of recognition was awarded to recognize the best volunteers among the outgoing batch. Unit 6, 11, 15 got special appreciation for their superior contribution in the Annual Camp.

We had among the speakers in this function, teacher of a neighbourhood village school. He thanked NSS, IIT Kharagpur for the work being carried out and the platform given to village / slum school children. Many other teachers of neighbourhood schools, or lead persons of those villages who were present in the function, echoed the same. We express our thanks and gratitude to them and through them to all those who we serve, for providing us the opportunity and making better individuals out of us. We gain more from this interaction. Academics gives us degree. It is this extra-academics that builds our character and our relation with the society, thereby making us educated.

A playlist of all videos of this function that has 14 dance performances by school students of different villages / slums can be found here (Playlist Link).

Some photographs from this function are provided below.