For all travel mongers in college, a journey through
diverse states in India may sound as an inescapable opportunity. IIT
Gandhinagar has fulfilled its students’ desire for travel through their Explorer’s
Fellowship Programme. The programme sends students on a trip to explore the
myriad flavours of India, covering minimum 6 states in 6 weeks.
The programme was launched in December 2014 and saw a good
response in its first year. Students across all years of graduation, post-graduation
and PhD had applied as fellows to the programme. 18 students went for the trip in
7 groups and some of them successfully covered more than 10 states in 6 weeks.
Prof S.K. Jain, Director, IITGn, says, “The fellowship
is not just to give students a taste of adventure, it is to engulf them with
ground level realities of our country.” When asked about how would it help
students in their engineering career, he said, “As an engineer, students should
model their innovations around simplifying the travails of the less privileged.”
According to Prof Jaison Manjaly, Student Affairs Dean, “One
of the missions of this institute is to develop leaders for the society, not just engineers. We want to be a university and not just an engineering college.”
Students who returned from the successful journey had
innumerable stories to share about the newly explored niches of India. Samarth
Kashap, one of the fellows who visited 13 states, said, “It is an unfair notion
that inhabitants of North Eastern states aren’t welcoming to those from the other
parts of India. During our return from Itanagar to Sikkim, we met an old lady
who helped us in travel bookings and taking us to our destination safely. We also
met a young girl who took us on a tour through the city and filled our
backpacks with fruits and supplies for our journey. All this help was offered
without any condition of monetary return.”
Another student, who did not wish to be named, spoke
about some of his troubles dealing with contrasting cultures and morals. He
said, “On our visit to Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu, we were denied accommodation
in most lodges as we had a female member in the team. The lodge managers
considered it immoral to house unrelated people of opposite genders in the same
room. We eventually had to check into a lounge that was frequented by
foreigners.”
However, while the institute shells out Rs 45000 per
student from its funds, what explicit benefit do the students think they
receive from this programme? Some of the fellows said they were interested in
applying for IAS and other civil services exams and hence the 6 week trip
helped them build stronger opinions about India’s economy, politics and
culture. Another student, Prashant Kumar, in his fourth year, says, “My aim is
to pursue research on the rural education system and thus engineer more
efficient systems to overcome any prevailing flaws. We visited 15 states in 51
days and limited our quest to villages only.” Prashant has also made a
documentary of his 51-day travel through the country. You can check the video
here. (https://youtu.be/rHWK4XKW-q8)
The Explorer’s Fellowship
has received more applicants this year as compared to the last year. Prof Jain and Prof Manjaly are looking forward to inculcate this programme into the culture
of IITGn students.
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