E Week fever is here

“I have my exams; I have my placements,” says Shweta Singh, “but all I can think about is E Week.” E Week India 2012 has come early to Jyothi Nivas College (JNC), and if we are to go by the words of the final year commerce E Cell leader, then the contagion is barely contained.

This is my first E Week and I have been told there’s nothing quite like it. Still, am not sure what to expect. I ponder this fact while walking up the driveway of the college when I see an expectant face asking me if I am from NEN. I am a bit surprised but then I recognised her immediately for a NENian too. Is there something as a NENian? 

Science models and prototypes

The expectant face is of Reshma Sundar, an E Cell leader. While guiding me to the exhibition area, she briefs me about the E Week events in the college. There are week-along activities and they are starting with an inter-collegiate exhibition and competition for prototypes and product models, and a workshop for women entrepreneurs. The workshop, Reshma proudly explains, is to teach vocational skills such as soap making, mushroom cultivation etc to two groups of women.

I am at the exhibition and soon transported back to my college days but this is no time to reminisce. I start with the table closest to me. The model seems a bit famished with a bare-bone circuit board and wires connected to miniature bulbs. It is an LED dice which can be used in electrical signages.

I walk about the models, peeking at a few and avoiding those with a crowd before stopping at the ‘Power generating floor’. The ingenuously named model has been put together by Akanksha D, Sudheesha K and Jenoblessy R, three science graduate students from JNC. The model prototypes a product which converts mechanical energy to electrical when placed under a road or pathway of high movement density. The converted energy is then stored in a battery for later use. Among the other interesting models was a fire detecting robot and a quadcopter inspired by the movie Three Idiots. 

Vocational skills workshop

I walk into the workshop feeling like an intruder. I needn’t have bothered. Everyone is engaged with the soap-making demonstration. I turn my attention to Dr. Radha Ganapathy, professor of economics and faculty coordination of E Cells in JNC. Her intensity towards this E cell initiative is riveting. She explains about Jamate Islamic Hind, a group of women entrepreneurs adopted by the JNC E Cell. They are working together to advocate entrepreneurship among the lower-middle class women in a bid to make them more economically independent. The workshop attempts to train them with vocational skills like soap making, growing of herbal plants, food processing, mushroom cultivation and cloth bag making.

The E Cell is also working on an ‘Urban livelihoods’ project initiated by IIM-B which works with a group of women from Ramanagaram by providing them with marketing and distribution support. The women are engaged in the making of jewellery and accessories that uses ‘Aari’, a traditional embroidery work.

As I engage the photographer in me, I can’t help but marvel at the initiative and foresightedness of the barely 21-year-old E Leaders of JNC. The credit goes no-less to Dr. Radha who emphasises with turn of every few sentences – “What has started with E Week continues well after all the excitement has abated”. 

I leave wondering if I have already met my first set of inventors of the future. Here in JNC they have already been working for a more inclusive world for a while now. 

Mischelle Rebello