National Service Scheme (NSS) IIT Kharagpur

We have completed one month in new academic session. The first year students joined us three weeks later. We all worked together to accelerate the process of their integration with the team. On 10th August, after a brief orientation in fully packed V1 hall of Vikramshilla complex, they set out for the respective villages / slums with senior students and faculty members guiding them. Participation in the 18th August (Sunday) institute foundation day program made them aware of their role when our Director said ( Link ), " We want to adopt 10 to 20 KM radius around this campus so that our impact can be felt all around and we make ... people prosperous by whatever we generate in science and technology. " And thus the new team of the year is now fully set and fully functional. The senior / existing members of the team however started the activities soon after their arrival here after summer break (17th July). Here is a quick glance of activities of Pariapara and Talbagicha...

The discussion started informally when a member of IIT Kharagpur campus community approached NSS, IIT Kharagpur team about possibility of having Vivekdisha program ( Link   Link2 ) in our neighbourhood village high schools. The aim is to enhance education experience by conducting Online classes through multimedia : From class 6 onward. The audio part of this video ( Link and also at the end of this post) gives a short introduction in Bengali. This was delivered at Balarampur village on 07-02-2013. The images of the video are the ones taken at Balarampur and Talbagicha High School. The last few frames captures a brief stop over of Vivekdisha team in our campus.  The concerned program officers were very enthusiastic. There was some issue in the beginning at the school level on what this program is. NSS, IIT Kharagpur team organized video conferencing with village school teachers at one end and Amit Maharaj of Vivekdisha at the other end in Belur Math head quarter of R...

Ravinder Singh Guguloth, Group Leader from Rangametia village reports:  I am very happy to be a part of NSS. As a volunteer, it was a great experience for me throughout the NSS course, interacting and understanding the society. In the first year of my course, we were assigned the work of surveying ration card, drinking water facilities. Convincing people was very difficult as they didn’t seem to believe in the government functionary or process. It seemed that there was a wide gap between the people and offices of the government. ( However, exposure with villagers was limited as it was confined to weekly visits. There may be more than what was visible on surface on welfare activities taken up by Govt. offices. )    As a group leader I tried my best to involve, all volunteers in the work every week. Our Program Officer, Saumen Hajra sir’s guidance has been very crucial. In the last semester our group had undertaken the activity of surveying sanitation fac...

Brief report of activities from Talbagicha village unit NSS volunteers and Talbagicha High School jointly celebrated Swami Vivekananda’s 150 th Birth Anniversary through daylong cultural activities on 4 th February 2012, at the Talbagicha High School premises. The celebrations consisted of the following events: 1. Sit and Draw Competition: For two groups of students (“senior group” from classes V-VIII and “junior group” from classes IX-XII). 2. An essay writing competition about the “Relevance of Swami Vivekananda’s Life and Works in the 21 st Century”, for students of classes VIII-XII. 3. A quiz competition, in which students from neighbouring schools also participated. 4. A speech on Swami Vivekananda’s message to the world, by Prof. Joy Sen, Dept. of Architecture and Regional Planning, IIT Kharagpur 5. Prof. Makhanlal Nandagoswami, Dept. of Physics, Midnapore College, presented a slide-show and talk about the cosmological mysteries of the universe in Bengali. 1 st , ...