Programme

PGP

Term

V

Academic Year

2021-22

Course title

Innovation, Social Institutions and Knowledge at the Grassroots

Area

Public Systems Group

Credits

1.25

Instructor(s)

Prof. Anil Gupta (VF), Prof. Navdeep Mathur, Prof. Anamika R. Dey (VF)

Course Description & Objectives

Introduction: COVID-19 has triggered a renewed need for understanding local knowledge, institutions and sources of solidarity. When long distance supply chains get disturbed, Gandhian dictum of decision making, governance and consumption signature at local level becomes important. We cannot just save ourselves individually, we need cooperation at community level. The limits of excessive individualism seem to have been reached. But our pedagogies, processes of decision making and design of future pathways of coping creatively with risk have not yet fully factored strategies for learning from below. This course will try to address this gap to some extent and help students get a virtual immersive experience about creative and innovative potential at grassroots and also in proximal communities.

Pedagogy

In addition to the faculty sharing the insights from grassroots innovators, participants will also identify sources of creative learning from their immediate experience and context besides elderly, extended family, domestic and other community service providers etc. They will also identify unmet social needs y and explore innovative solutions for the same. They will also listen to stories of some of the grassroots innovators to get inspired and provoked to overcome one’s own inertia. All the three faculty will attend and support all the interactive sessions; however, the lead responsibility is mentioned in the outline in the sequence of names for each session. Learning is not just from faculty to students but also reciprocal. From students to faculty. Unusual Insights can occur to anyone.