The Print’s reportage of India consists not only of heartwarming feel-good stories, their stories (almost always authored by outstanding female journalists) help one understand both changes afoot in this vast land AND the upside potential if India fixes its broken institutions. The added benefit of these stories is that they highlight how the changes seen in India over the past two decades eg. UPI, Jio, rising female literacy, better roads are creating a surge in aspirations and expectations. Soumya Pillai’s story from a village in UP is from this mould and we suggest that you read the story in full not least for the photos from the village school: “A Bollywood movie, students with big dreams, a supportive pradhan, and ISRO’s leap of faith gave UP’s Hasudi Ausanpur village India’s first primary school with its own space lab.”
Ms. Pillai frames the story around a 14-year female student from the village school and in so doing gives us a glimpse of aspirations are being reframed in modern India: “Avantika Kumari no longer wants to be an IAS officer. She has discovered something far more exciting—space, stars, and satellites.
The 14-year-old from Hasudi Ausanpur village in eastern Uttar Pradesh along the Nepal border is part of the first cohort of 30 students to graduate from India’s first rural space laboratory. All it took was a Bollywood movie, a group of students who dared to dream big, a village head who supported them, and a leap of faith by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Children’s Day two years ago. Now, they’re trying to build a local weather station and see if drones can be used to predict floods.
The shy teenager from Siddharthnagar, which was categorised as among the least developed districts in the country in a 2018 NITI Aayog report, rattles off about rockets, drones, and aeroplanes. She can give a lesson or two on satellite designs. And she knows how to build a basic telescope.
Avantika’s responses are monosyllabic until the conversation shifts to space and science.
“Around two years ago, if you would have asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you I wanted to become a teacher or maybe an IAS officer. Most children would have had the same answer,” she says.
Now, Avantika is gunning for the stars.“
Credit for catalysing this miracle, says Ms. Pillai, goes partly to Bollywood: “The seed for the idea took root in 2019, when Dilip Tripathi, the village pradhan, watched Mission Mangal, the Bollywood movie starring Vidya Balan and Akshay Kumar. The movie was panned by critics, but left Tripathi with a desire to learn more about India’s space programme.
He went down the internet rabbit hole where he stumbled upon an article on Vyomika Space Academy, an ISRO-backed educational platform that supports students with resources to get an early start in science and space education. Tripathi mentioned the academy in passing during a village event…”
Initially, the ISRO did not take the village school’s interest very seriously: “ISRO’s response to the students’ email wasn’t encouraging. According to Tripathi, the sense among the scientists was that the Vyomika Space Academy was a premier space programme tailored for private schools.”
What happened next speaks to the latent talent in India’s vast population: ““The children were heartbroken. The understanding was that the students would not have the aptitude to cope with the demands of the course,” recalled Tripathi.
But the students were determined to prove ISRO wrong.
They followed up with another email. This time with a request—’let us prove ourselves’. They asked ISRO to conduct a test, and if a reasonable number of students clear it, then the space organisation must include their village in its prestigious programme.
ISRO could do little—90 students took the test; 55 cleared it. And thus began the journey of setting up the space lab and a full-fledged space education programme.
“There is a set programme, but students have taken the level a notch higher. They are bringing new ideas and questions, which is helping us improve,” ISRO engineer Rakesh Raj, one of the initial course directors, said.”
Once the ISRO’s space lab was set up, the village children took to it like bees zoning in on nectar. Leaving aside the intellectual development of the kids, their ability to immediately apply what they were learning and improve their lives puts the rest of us and our fancy education to shame: ““Their exposure to the world is very different from what we have seen in city schools. They come with practical problems, which makes us think beyond the curriculum,” says Manoj Kumar, one of the teachers in the school. Kumar was among the eight teachers trained by ISRO under the Vyomika programme to assist in the classroom. While this group manages the programme from the school, guest teachers from ISRO oversee the functioning.
Garima, a 12-year-old Class 6 student who recently became eligible for the programme, saw an opportunity in solving the flooding problem. Every year, farmers in the village face significant crop damage because of flash floods from Nepal. There are no forecasts on these floods because of their small scale and impact.
She asked her teachers if an early warning system could be created to minimise damage.
“We were told that an early warning system might take more advanced technology intervention, but we were shown how drones can be used to monitor damage,” Garima said, displaying her drone-operating skills. The Vyomika Academy is now arranging special sessions to work on the logistics of setting up such a station in the village, which will be managed by the students.
The students have also involved the villagers in their scientific pursuits. With the telescopes in their lab, they have been organising regular star-gazing events at the village square….On these star-gazing nights, village elders peek at the Moon through a telescope and see the craters on the lunar surface.”
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