A 400 Litres Ball

Manyata Das, the primary school headmistress in a remote village Vittal Ashram located in the drought-prone region of Vidarbha in Maharashtra, addressed the students, parents, village elders, and the staff of the various government departments assembled at the village center.  

For a primary school with just a hundred and twenty students and three teachers, the assembly of more than a thousand people was becoming an annual event to look forward to. The entire village eagerly waited for this day coinciding with the last day of the school academic session. The assembled crowd included parents as well as other residents of the village. The curiosity of the assembled crowd was on solving a problem presented as project work to students for summer vacations. It was a unique village where every resident took upon themselves the task of doing a project work wrapped into a puzzle. They spent time over the next sixty days to solve it before the new academic year began.

Anyone and everyone could attempt the project. There would be no winner nor prize money awarded. In the next sixty days, the entire village population would be working on the project and discussing it endlessly and creating solutions while holding their answers closely to their chest. All responses would be received with equal enthusiasm in an open meeting after the vacation. Ultimately the winner was mostly the school headmistress who looked at the issue differently. None could be offended as there was always a surprise element in the final outcome.

The entire concept was created by headmistress Manyata Das. Her unique ability was to package the project query in the form of a puzzle that would take most of their time to unravel before the solution considered. It was this ability to transform a local issue into the form of a mystery that exhilarated the interest of the entire population.

Manyata Das congratulated the students, teachers, parents, and assembled guests for their performance during the year. She believed the academic year that got over had touched different topics of concern, and the solutions were unique learnings. The entire village was worthy of promotion to the next higher class. In the coming academic sessions, the focus shall be on mother nature, the home environment, and the workplace. As part of the preparations, the students needed to spend the holidays observing nature, hearing and recognizing sounds and smells, visualizing the unseen changes in the environment, and come prepared.

The last item of the address was the project. The topic was

“Identify the method to transfer four drums of water (equivalent to 400 liters) into a ball of the diameter of a tennis ball”.

The crowd dispersed once the project topic was announced.

Manyata Das the headmistress, an Assamese by birth, was born and brought up in Amravati. Her forefathers migrated to Amravati at the invitation of the Nizam of Hyderabad to introduce skills and technology for growing shakar limbu, commonly known as oranges.

It was their family that introduced oranges to this region. Over the year’s oranges buoyed by the trade turned into a money-spinner for the farmers. Her extended family shifted to menial jobs as their knowledge became irrelevant with time.

Manyata completed her post-graduation in Botany along with a B.Ed. degree. She fell in love with a local Maharashtrian wealthy farmer and married him. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last long as her husband committed suicide due to heavy indebtedness. She lost all their possessions and to escape harassment moved out of the village several hundred kilometers away to a safer place where she and her young daughter of eleven have been living now for the last five years.

Another cousin of hers also a widower with a similar story invited her to come and stay with them so that each could be of support to one another.

The local primary school did not have a full-time teacher, so the village head offered her the job as headmistress in the local school. The school had government funding for only one teacher while the Gram Panchayat was required to appoint other teachers temporarily for every academic session. 

Over the five years, Manyata had infused several changes to the teaching methods. In the absence of adequate funds and the non-availability of trained teachers, she designed the open school model by using the village resources (human and infrastructure) for learning. She developed techniques for hands-on learning with the parents, siblings, and educated persons participating as teachers continually as a relay process.

Instead of sitting only in the class, the hands-on learning was outside the four walls, be it history, maths, science, or languages. Over the years, the teaching technique drew the attention of the District Magistrate. The DM who was also, a lady ensured that her teaching techniques received appreciation, and she placed one education officer at Vittal Ashram to understand Manyata’s teaching techniques. Manyata over time, received several awards, visitors, and commendation letters.

Behind all her innovations in education was her tale of sorrow, hardship, humiliation, curse, and struggle. It was these adversities that made her strong-willed and determined to guide her students to be extraordinary, better trained with exceptional abilities to confront everyday challenges to think independently.

Her approach was to convert the everyday challenges of the village into a subject of learning. While she ensured that the prescribed curricula were taught yet she integrated the real-life situations into the learning process. All understandings in the classrooms were to be discussed at home, and the parents were invited to participate both as students or teachers. The school was thus educating the entire community irrespective of age or gender. Most of her projects were people’s problems, and solutions that emerged became the tool for problem-solving.

The school had already addressed several topics:

fair wages to farm laborers post office savings lodging police complaints and pump maintenance immunization sanitation, health, hygiene addressing power voltage fluctuations bottled water supply risks, and utility summer projects as a concept integrated a local problem with a global issue thus preparing her pupils and community to anticipate as well address future challenges. 

The students went back home for the summer vacation and began to think about this project work. Most students talked to their friends, parents, siblings as well as elders in the village

Meanwhile, during the vacations, Manyata took her daughter to visit her friends in different places as well as go on long walks along rivers, mountains, parks, farms, cottage industries, and zoo. She wanted her daughter to be exposed to nature so that she can herself decide on her future areas of work. Her father had done the same with her, and it was only after understanding her interests, she studied Botany and prepared herself to become a teacher.

The first Sunday after reopening was the designated day for the presentation of project outputs. The whole village had already assembled well before time, and some had displayed their thoughts as working models. The village head had decided to make it a celebration with lunch for all the participants. The DM also participated not in her official capacity but as a parent, along with her son and husband. They mingled with the crowd and kept their status anonymous.

Once the presentations began, the students came out with their understanding of the problem and their own solutions. Many had made an elaborate assessment of the problem and solutions.

After several presentations, one girl student Manyashankar presented her project in the form of several charts. The results were as follows

Growing one orange in the Vidarbha region requires 400 liters of water

Each tree has a life span of thirty years and fruits come to full bearing after ten years in its lifetime each tree produces around ten thousand oranges and consumes water equivalent to one-year drinking water needs of a village with a population of 1000 Irrigation is provided mainly from borewells most of which go dry in a decade farmers start drilling new wells and begin the race to hold the water level as it sinks Overtime farmers accumulate huge loans and unable to pay to end up committing suicide mother and I lost our family head in such a failed race, I am proud daughter of Manyata the headmistress and my father committed suicide in this gamble Manyata continued from where her daughter left. The problem she said is not in growing oranges but the greed for boundless profits. The water footprint for oranges @ 400 liters is not sustainable

Chemical fertilizers have replaced manure and oil cake Rainfall irrigation replaced with borewell irrigation distance between trees reduced by one-fourth Native breeds replaced by hybrids. Bearing age of trees reduced ten to give the life span of trees dropped from sixty to thirtyAppropriate lessons if not learned the entire village will have to lose their male members and will turn into a haunted place. Traditional crops like ragi, millets, chilies, and turmeric need to return. Greed needs to be replaced with respect for the environment.

The killer is here and is roaming around all orchards and homes in the village. See the writing on the wall and change soon. See the environmental damages and more importantly count the deaths that have happened in the last decade. Respond appropriately so that you are not the next in line.

A funeral-like silence took over the proceedings and the crowd dispersed aghast at the truth and conscious of their own role in such a misdemeanor. 

Lunch remained unserved none were hungry; there was ample food for thought.