Outside the classroom

The group,called Perspectives,is an informal association of about 16 teachers and students of University of Delhi,who,apart from reading what their books have to say and organising seminars and classroom discussions,go on field trips and interview people affected by migration,child labour and most recently,farmers hit by low production and debt.

Last week,after being in existence for two years,Perspectives came out with a book on the agrarian crisis: Harvesting Despair: Agrarian Crisis of India. The book was written after the Perspectives team visited Punjab in July 2007 and Vidarbha in May 2008. The group did exhaustive research to write on the challenges faced by farmers and wrote why,in a country that’s largely agrarian,a farmer commits suicide every half an hour.

Budhaditya Das,a member and a former DU student,says,“Our syllabus is vast but there are many issues that are not covered. Perspectives emerged from the idea that there should be a space for discussions on various issues.”

“There has been a lot of discussion on the agrarian crisis but it is not enough. It merits more space in the world of literature. Through this book,we are trying to present the difficulty faced by farmers in a more simplified manner,” says Das.

Their first work,Abandoned: Development and Displacement,brought out in February 2007,was on development and displacement and the close link between the two.

Perspectives is an independent research group and recently,some students from Jawaharlal Nehru University have also joined the group. They engage undergraduate and postgraduate university students in seminars,conventions,public meetings and through newsletters.

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