We are now over halfway through our program, and the time has flown by. It’s our second day in Agra and we spent the day visiting Dayalbagh Educational Institute (DEI). The visit began with a look at the Institute’s student-run dairy farm. I really enjoyed being able to walk around and see the different aspects of the production. 40 products are being made and sold with the brand Cupid (Photos 1 & 2). We sampled their different milk flavors and chocolates. One of the great parts of this operation is that it is run by mostly volunteers from around the community. They help tend to the dairy cows and the fields. This allows the Cupid products to be sold back to the community for very low prices, especially since the products are so healthy.
After the processing unit, we went to the Gaushala which means dairy farm. There are 1100 cattle being kept, however only 200 of those cows are in the milking stage of their lives. They are essentially the “bread winners” for the other 900 cows. The older cows are used to graze and fertilize farmer’s fields once a crop has been harvested. This improves the output of the field for the next batch of crops. All of the cows on the farm have their own name and tag number (Photo 3). The farm has soothing music playing throughout to help the cows relax and the milking cows shower twice daily. All of these factors contribute to happier cows that will produce fewer stress hormones. The cows raised here are cross bred to gain a higher milk production and disease resistance (Photo 4). The community is able to buy a bottle of milk from the farm for only $0.25. We walked around the fields and greenhouses on the dairy farm site where they were producing crops for consumption, research and medicinal uses. There were even peacocks roaming about the fields!
Next, we travelled to the Women’s Polytechnik Center. It is another off-campus school where 16-20 year old women can enroll in 1-2 year programs to become certified. The school offers courses in garment technology, interior design, home design, and textiles. The women can obtain this certification quickly after high school and begin working in their respective field. Some will be placed with a company to stich or design, and quite a few start their own business. I was blown away by the fact that the school has 100% placement of its graduates. All of the women were working on beautiful pieces and were happy to show us their work (Photo 5 & 6).
We then went to the main DEI campus to listen to a presentation about the institution. It is a highly-ranked university with over 9000 students. They offer various degrees as well as core courses in culture, religion, agriculture, rural, social sciences, and games and sports. Particularly interesting to me was the policy that engineers must spend 5-6 months in the workforce for job training before they are allowed to complete their degree. I think that is a helpful procedure to have since it allows students to try out their field and determine if they really enjoy it.
We headed back to the dairy farm after this to hear presentations from the students on the Master’s and PhD’s projects. The topics ranged from biobeads to remove heavy metals in water to how to establish a biodiversity park. All of the students were extremely knowledgeable in their field and presented their research in a compelling manner. Our U of A group also gave our presentations on an aspect of Indian agriculture that we were interested in. Then, our group went to have lunch with the DEI students. DEI had prepared a meal for us and it was some of the best Indian food I’ve had during my time here. I’ve determined that I really enjoy lentils, naan, a cauliflower and potato mixture, and paneer. This program has really helped me be more open to different foods and I’m looking forward to making Indian food once I’m back in the US!
After lunch, we were taken on a full tour of DEI’s main campus and shown examples of student’s work. The whole university is very hands-on oriented when it comes to student’s projects. On the main campus, students are able to attain higher degrees that take 3-4 years, or in some cases 5 years. We visited the textile lab where the students were working with block printing. There was a room for sculpting that housed lifelike clay statues of people’s heads. In another room, students were diligently painting a still life of their posed classmate. There was a class for different forms of painting (some were landscape, while others were more abstract). In one class, the students were working on their textile designs. Much like the Women’s Polytechnik, the students here were extremely talented.
We then visited the electrical engineering department to learn about the machine that allows them to run real tests on circuit boards that students can design online. It’s a free process that they launched and is now available to everyone. One of the even more impressive things about it is that each student only has to use the main section of the machine for a fraction of a second to run their test. This allows the machine to be used 24/7 by anyone without having to wait in line for the next trial to open up in 30 minutes. As we walked down the hallway, the professor pointed out the security cameras along the way. Our next stop was the security booth where the man informed us that students had installed the cameras and created the processing. The room was filled with screens showing every corner of each part of DEI. Community involvement was a focus once again since there are monitoring stations set up around town. Community members would spend their free time monitoring different sections of DEI and alert the security team if they saw anything suspicious.
We visited the horticulture garden and saw the medicinal crops they were growing and their greenhouses. We were able to smell the different crops and learn more about their impact on a person’s health. Next up was the music classroom. We were fortunate enough to get a small, private concert highlighting DEI’s main musical focus. There are 3 videos attached that show the different instruments we heard. I have never listened to classical Indian music before, but I really enjoyed it. As Dr. Srivastava put it, “music needs no translation”. Finally, we went to the 3D printer department. As we were walking up, I thought we would view what the students had been making using a 3D printer. Instead, we saw the different generations of 3D printers that the students had made themselves! It was so cool to see how the students had improved each design and the items they had printed from their own machine.
The last stop of my day was at the KFC next door to our hotel. Any time I go abroad, I make a point to try a fast food chain that we have in America. It’s fun to find the differences in the menu items and the taste. At this KFC, instead of mashed potatoes, they served rice. They had fewer menu choices, and some interesting soda choices. I really like their chicken nuggets. They were spicy and used very good chicken. After our KFC run, we had a late dinner. People tend to eat dinner around 7 pm or 8 pm which took some getting used to for me. Then, we all turned in to recharge for the next day!
