posted by Shaila Kagal

Recently at our Advisory Board meeting, one of our eminent members, Vipin Tyagi, wondered how  we reconcile the huge gap between the workplace of students’ dreams and the reality of mundane table and chairs they would occupy.   Indeed, reality check is an important aspect of learning process.  An IT B-School like SCIT can only give a glimpse of life but one needs to be rooted to the ground.
Nonetheless it is worth sharing an experience as suggested by another eminent member Suhas Kelkar, what I recounted to Mr.Tyagi.
Community work in various forms is a part of curricula although often students wonder why it is a part of B-School programme.  In 2003-04, as a part of the curricula, we had arranged a weekend trip to Ralegan Siddhi, a model ‘reengineered’ village in the heartland of draught and water-starved Ahmednagar district near Pune and architected by the social activist Anna Hazare.  The village is a marvel of what one can do to uplift.
A batch of our students, a busload with our enthusiast Registrar Mr. Mahadev, went there with our mission of “give & take”.  What we had to give was our knowledge to the students and teachers of the unique school where admissions are only for those who had failed.  Our students trained in communication and with the fresh idea of sharing their knowledge conducted computer classes and were really impressed by the concept of the school.  But ‘take’ part was the one that remained imprinted in my mind.
A road-building project was going on at Ralegan Siddhi mostly with labour of love. Our student batch of nearly 30, were given a small part of the road to be built.  For two hours our students were digging and building.  At the end of the time, the work was measured in money value by the village office.  All the work that the batch of 30 carried out for two hours had earned meagre Rs.49.00!  It was shocking but an eye opener not just to our students who would normally sit on ivory towers enjoying cool air-conditioned breeze and drawing fat salaries, but also others who had not seen ground reality from close quarters. The take away was far more valuable than what we gave or what we earned.
There is no better way to know reality than to experience it!