Grama Sabha meetings are not only about voters coming to discuss local development plans and the panchayats getting budgets approved. Many a time, a curious bunch of college students would be sitting in the background, taking down notes about concerns raised by villagers and coming back with solutions to address them.
For some years now, students of 8 in Kattankulathur have been active participants at Grama Sabha meetings organised in various villages located not far from their campus. At the recent meeting held on August 15, groups of final year engineering students spent a good part of the day interacting with villagers and discussing developmental initiatives related to sanitation, education, skill development, women’s empowerment and sustainable rural livelihoods. Many of the solutions are worked out in the lab and implemented in the villages.
