Students visit villages, study traditional crops, lifestyle

Tribune News Service

Mussoorie, October 20

More than 50 students from Kirti Government Model Inter College, along with their teachers, visited several villages around Uttarkashi here today. They were educated on the vanishing traditional crop system under the National Children’s Science Congress (NCSC), organised to inculcate scientific temperament in students.

The students conducted a survey on traditional crops, health conditions and electricity conservation and discussed other points with the scientists accompanying them.

The children scientists in the junior category, namely Abhishek Prajapati, Rohit Panwar, Udit Panwar, Jitin Prajapati and Shubham Negi gathered information on the sub-topic ‘food and agriculture’. They learnt the ways to grow koda (barn millet), koni, cheena and fafra on the occasion.

The students in the senior category, namely Satyendar Raj, Rohit Kumar, Sagar Rangad and Ankit Gusain, visited Gajoli and Naugaon villages and learnt about the traditional medicinal practices being adopted by the villagers.

Another group in the senior category, consisting of members Aman Ramola, Arjun Panwar, Pradeep Kumar and Anup Awasthi, paid a visit to Ladari and Kotyal Gaon villages and learned about the use of alternate energy, namely solar power, by the villagers. They also learned the benefits of using LED lights in households on the occasion.

Lokendar Singh Panwar, teacher and mentor of the group, said the NCSC programme was initiated in 1993 to provide a forum to the young scientists to pursue their natural curiosity and to quench their thirst for creativity by experimenting on open-ended problems. The science congress would help in stimulating scientific temperament and learning scientific methodology for observation and sense of collection of data among the students. Students would be presenting their projects at block and district-level science congress to be held in near future, Panwar added.