Class FIeld Trip- Baramati

On February seventh and eighteenth the Alliance students in the Development Economics class offered and I, along with two program staff members and Professor Kulkarni traveled to the Baramati KVK in Maharashtra, India from Pune, India. The class trip proved interesting, challenging, and educational- not to mention fun. The eight students slept two to a tent. That may sound austere, but each tent was twelve by twelve feet and had a toilet, shower, sink, and full-length mirror in a room separated from the bedroom by a zip up canvas tent wall.

            During the experience of the trip, the diversity of India and how that diversity manifests the unity of India unrolled a deeper layer of itself to me. This trip was my first, intensive, tangible experience of and interaction with rural India outside of books and movies. From conversation with women running a self-help economics groups, to tours of the KVK (a Hindi abbreviation for Agricultural Science Center) farm and teaching facilitates for farmers, to an interaction with agriculture college students on their campus, to a visit to the current Prime Minister of Agriculture's museum or display of what seemed to me to be an ungodly amount of wealth and opulence, to conversations with men who ran the teaching and other facilitates for farmers at the KVK, I walked away with away with a brief introduction to the progress and practices of agricultural technologies in India.

            The exchanges I had with my fellow Alliance students also proved enriching. India is a progressing rapidly; though it’s progress is at times and in ways lopsided, from this two-day trip, at least, I felt that a thorough and concerted effort and pathos exists in India to make India truly great.