In India, social causes are the easiest thing in the world to come by. Even so, Poorna Kaksha is an unusual organisation, simply because their way of doing things is unpredictable. Children go to school every day and learn on the classroom floor, without a blackboard to look at or a chair to sit on. This is what Poorna Kaksha tackles. Its founders, Achyuta Sharma, Ishan Roy and Varsha Jadhav, are students of art and design, who have brought their expertise to bear on some of the issues affecting education.
“Varsha and I worked on our first retail project together,” says Achyuta, the man who came up with the concept. “We became great friends. When the idea of Poorna Kaksha came about, she was the first person I thought of to be co-founder.” Ishan found a place with them because of his natural talent for design, with his background in furniture.
The three began by visiting schools across the country to understand better the problems they face. They went with the assumption that infrastructure was what schools needed most and found that assumption to be correct. “I went to seven schools and none of them had toilets,” says Achyuta. This, even though there is an allocation in the government’s budget for infrastructure in schools. “The government adopts a very checklist attitude toward this; they put up the structure and that’s that. They only concern themselves with the measurable aspects of education,” Achyuta adds.
The three of them designed a prototype that would meet the needs of rural schools and pitched it to various social sector organisations. “Looking at a school, things like textbooks and training teachers come to mind. People take things like furniture for granted and ever parents don’t ask,” says Ishan. This was around the time that the government was enthusiastic about technology, introducing the Akash tablet into schools. The idea seemed absurd to Varsha, Ishan and Achyuta, for “what’s the point of giving kids tablets to write on if they can’t write?”
They found during their ground work that schools don’t have even 15 minutes of electricity each month on an average. “We felt that the basic comforts of the children were simply not being met,” says Achyuta. The most ironic thing in all this is that motivating a child to study is as simple as providing him with a nice desk to sit at or some nice stationery to work with. Which governments overlook because it cannot be handled in measurable terms.
“We have three different design modules, one each for high income schools, mid income schools and low income schools,” says Achyuta. Classroom infrastructure is the first phase, where they design furniture and storage space. School infrastructure is next, where they design labs, libraries and layouts. The final phase is experiential education, which deals with teaching aids and creative thinking tools, to name a few.
Standardisation is a concept they unanimously emphasise. “It creates a sense of identity and belonging,” says Varsha. “It’s pretty much the most important thing.” They also use only indigenous products, a notion they call “contextual design.” This helps them explore the materials found in different areas and put them to good use, as well as to understand design aspects from different sections of the nation by roping in local artisans. This not only cuts down on the cost of production a great deal, it also creates livelihood opportunities for the artisans.
It was only a week ago that Poorna Kaksha held a meeting with the rural development minister in Maharashtra, pitching ideas that were very well received. “We want to implement our solutions through the government in zilla parishad schools,” explains Varsha. “So the pilot happens in Thane and Pune and if it works, we will manage classroom infrastructure for the entire state.”
Development seems like a detail-ridden affair, and it is. That there are so many creative minds out there paving that path, however, is a truly heartening thought.