Story Of Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS)

It all started with the nation wide (BJVJ) Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha in 1987. Kalajatha requires extensive and detailed preparation with local organizing committees, with pre jatha ancillary activities, with book sales, with house to house fund collection etc.

Hundreds of thousands participated. It was not simple entertainment, it was not charismatic political leaders and it was not matinee idols. It was pure and simple science. And people came to learn, to learn with pleasure. Our rural people still maintain the child like curiosity, to know new timings. The All India Peoples’ Science Network was born in Feb 1988.

The Government of India approached the KSSP to help them organize a similar jatha, in Andhra and Orissa to place the agenda of literacy before the society. That was in March – April 1988. Discussions ensued and a dream emerged: to eradicate illiteracy from the whole of India.

The NLM, National Literacy Mission was formally born in May 1988. The first meeting of the Council was held in June 1988. KSSP has already been preparing for the TLC, Total Literacy Campaign, in Ernakulam district. During NLM council meeting Dr. M.P. Parameswaran the representative of KSSP was requested to conceive some thing big to churn the Nation and put literacy on the agenda. At the spur of the moment he replied: We should have a train Jatha. Give us four trains to travel across the country for three months with the message of literacy – A Vigyan Gadi".

"Trains are yours. Make the plan" come the immediate response from Sam Pitroda on the dias. "Our designers are at your disposal" said Dr. Ram K. Iyyengar Dy. Director General of CSIR. The ball come back to the court of the KSSP, rather of the AIPSN.

Nation wide consultations were initiated. Ideas changed. Instead of 4 trains jathas, 400 bus jathas, one in each district was accepted as more effective. These jathas should visit 60,000 nodal villages. A project was prepared on behalf of the AIPSN.

The question arose: what is the operating mechanism? Who will run it? No individual constituent unit of AIPSN will be able to handle the entire load. It was decided that a new organization should be registered to carry out this project – to organize the jatha. The NLM concurred with the proposal.

What do we name the new organization? Who will be its members? What is its mandate? Discussions went on and on. Finally the name BGVS, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samithi was agreed upon. The contender was BJVS – Bharat Jan Vigyan Samithi, from the 1987 BJVJ. Instead we chose Gyan Vigyan – purposefully. Gyan connotes both Akshara and Wisdom. Literacy for Science is one message. Science with Wisdom is another message.

The project was approved in 1989 October. A nuclear office with M.P. Parameswaran and E.K. Narayanan began to function from July 1989. The BGVS was registered in August with Dr. Malcom Adiseshayya as Chair Person and Dr. M.P. Parameswaran as Secretary and formally inaugurated on December 22, 1989.

The BGVJ took place during Oct. – Nov.1990. It was a grand success. Ernakulam was declared as the first fully literate district in India even earlier. A campaign to make Kerala fully literate was initiated in March 1990. Similar campaigns were initiated in Pondicherry in Bijapur and Dakshin Kannda districts of Karnataka, in Durg, MP. in Midnapur, West Bengal. The objective of BGVJ was achieved even before the actual jathas. Literacy had already become an agenda before the Indian Society.

Without knowing itself, as an automatic process, BGVS was aquiring a new role beyond creating a demand for literacy: to create local level institutions that will service these demands, to provide competence to these institution and above all to give a content and meaning to literacy – about which the PSM was becoming increasingly clear.

To know the Word to know the World To know this World to create a better World

This better world will be secular, equitable, plural and sustainable, and

This world will be democratic Democracy requires citizens participation Participation demands capabilities and attitudes The Literacy Campaign should help to give these capabilities and create these attitudes.

It became increasingly clear both for the PSM activists and the government that the role of BGVS did not end with the jathas, but only actually began with it. What was started as a short term project implementation arrangement, became a permanent institution working arm in arm with the government for literacy, while criticizing it on most of the economic fronts like GATT, New Economic Policy etc..

For a period of about 3 to 4 years this collaboration grew from strength to strength. BGVS was formed in a number of states, helped the district administration to create an environment and demand for literacy, to set up multi level peoples’ structures from district to block, panchayat and habitat levels, to carryout the campaign, to expand the nature and scope of the campaign according to local possibilities and requirements, to identify and enthuse volunteers – akshar sainiks as they are called in many states.

During the decade 1990 – 2000 literacy campaigns spread to more than 400 districts in India and brought over 120 million adults, and often children too, to literacy classes. India witnessed one of the largest literacy campaigns in the world, but unlike others in a totally non-revolutionary situation.

The most exciting element is the fact that more than 10 million youth, predominantly girls and women came forward as volunteers for the sheer joy of being so and not with the expectation of getting anything. Altruism has not been, yet, totally destroyed. People have still hope for a better tomorrow and they are ready to strive for it.

Literacy was, literally, a women’s movement. More than two thirds of both volunteers and learners were women. Whether it is in Nellore or Pudukkottai or Begusarai or..............

It was women who stole the show (Scenes from major programmes)

All these led to the formation of Samatha during 1993-94. The women’s wing of the GVM. It set for itself a comprehensive agenda of self-empowerment, economic independence, freedom from age old oppressions.

(Scenes from Samatha)

The Gyan Vigyan Movement, that is being generated should help our people to concieve a better world, to engender a will to achieve it and impart the skills necessary for it. BGVS was, perforce, compelled to expand its area of activities from literacy to education, from word literacy to resource literacy, to health, to development planning and so on.

The Participatory Resource Mapping was a programme where people together with helpful scientists identify all the natural and human made resources in their own village/panchayat and plot them on revenue maps to be eventually used by them for local level development planning.

They participated in watershed delineation, in watershed based development planning and setting up water users association and the tike.

Many literacy volunteers got trained themselves as health activists and village level health workers.

Some opened their own informal primary education centres.

Though BGVS was initiated as programme for adult learning the movement was very much aware of the fact that the future belongs to the present children. The PSM constituents of GVM were since long involved in children and their education. This concern was carried to the GVM also. We had Joy of Learning campaigns, Jeevan Shalas and now a Gyan Vigyan Andolan.