Group Meeting 8 August - Report

Group Meeting - Report

- Anand Vaidya

Date - Sunday 8th August, 2010

Place - MBA Powai Center

Time - 2:30pm to 5:30pm

Members present - Anand Vaidya, Amod Vaidya, Manisha Bhurke, Yogesh Panchal, Chanda Jagde, Sharda Jitekar, Akhil B'Shriram

Agenda : 1) Biography - discussion & method

               2) Contractual Agreement - explanation, discussion, signing the agreement

Meeting Report -

Back from the Orientation Workshop held at YUVA Center in Kharghar, Amod & I first shared our experiences with the whole group. After that I started explaining them the Terms & Conditions mentioned in the Agreement. What are the responsibilities of a catalyst, a team member & whole group. What are the timelines that we have to adhere to. How much research grant we are getting and for what purposes we can use it. I asked everyone if they have any doubts or problems regarding the Agreement. But everyone was alright with the Terms & Conditions mentioned in the Agreement.

(l-r) Yogesh, Manisha, myself, Chanda

(l-r) Manisha, myself, Chanda

Yogesh clearing his doubts

Later I talked about writing an auto-biography, as it was compulsory for each & every member. Everybody wanted to know why we should write about our own life? What is purpose of writing about our own life? Who is going to read our biography? These & many questions were raised.

I could clearly see there concern. Their life is full of defeats, failures, difficulties & sorrow. It is very difficult for them to look into their past life & write all incidences of their life. They do not want to look back into their lives. Also some members of my group are girls. They feared that if they write about their personal life, it would create more safety problems for them.

First I explained to them that writing about our own life is an essential part of this research fellowship and it is compulsory for each & every member. I told them that your biography will not be published anywhere or read by anyone, other than the PUKAR staff, without your permission. Yogesh agreed to write his biography on the condition that no person other than I, Sunil & the person who will type his biography can read his biography.

Rest of the group also agreed to write their biographies. But they did not know how or where to start it. I told them to just start writing as you remember it, enjoy the process of writing it, bring out some old photographs. And yes one more interesting question everyone had was how many pages should we write. It was a very difficult question for me to answer. How could I tell them to write only these many number of pages. So I told them that your biography should not be too small or too lengthy. I told them you just start writing & you will soon start enjoying it.

Everyone signed on the Contractual Agreement as no one had any doubts about research grant or timeline specified or the entire process of this research project. I think major part of our meeting went on discussing about why should we write our own biography. And no doubt it was a very valid question.

Our next meeting is scheduled on 21st August with Mr Sunil Gangavane, our Project Coordinator.