Bon voyage — Part 2

Gist of my personal experiences from Jagriti Yatra 2019

5 min readJan 12, 2020

Introduction blog (Part 0)
Bon voyage — Part 1

Day 4 (28/12/2019)—Madurai (TamilNadu):

Concentration areas: Healthcare, Technology

We can feel the change in temperature as we traveled across the states within few days. We reached “Aravind Eye Center” at around 11AM. Their vision and purpose to eradicate needless blindness, their initiatives and subsidies for treatment to the poor is highly commendable.

Discussions in Aravind eye care hospitals, Madurai

Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must also be the joy of doing something beautiful — Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (Founder, Aravind Eye care)

Post lunch, we had a panel discussion on “Future of healthcare in an enterprising India” where experts from various domains including pure medicine, healthcare policy makers, healthcare related startup incubators, involvement of AI/robots in surgeries participated and provided their insights. Though some of the opinions differ at few points, everyone’s ultimate vision is something like:

Just think when was the last time you went to bank to withdraw cash. The same transformation which happened in banking sector should happen in healthcare system so that there is no need to go to hospital for normal checkup

We enjoyed the song Enga Madura, praising the beauty of city Madurai and after the entire program, we boarded train at around 11 PM heading towards Sriharikota, AP

Day 5 (29/12/2019) — Sriharikota/ Sricity (Andhra Pradesh):

Concentration areas: Science, Technology, Ventures

Temperature continued to be soaring as we reached Sriharikota (Launchstation), ISRO. Because of national security and other obvious reasons, no electronics were allowed and we were asked to be seated in bus during the entire visit. Personally, I felt like a wildlife safari (or a school excursion where we were not allowed to do anything but just watch). Overall, it was a nice feeling watching the behemoth launchpads at such close vicinity. The atmosphere has positive vibes which can be clearly felt. During the safari (which lasted for like 4 hrs) and in the day, I had some interesting discussions like

Q: “Why do all the space launch stations located to the east coast and not at the west coast?”
A: In short, it helps the satellites to get an initial boost velocity (Detailed answer)
Q: “If a nano robot, while performing surgery malfunctions and the patient suffers, who is responsible — The doctor or the robot?”
A: In short, from present day policies, the doctor is responsible but this scenario is nowhere in near future

After Sricity visit, which is about their venture, we boarded train at around 8 PM and had discussions in “Book Club” (in train, like minded people form various clubs/groups to have discussions and book-club is one such group) on topics such as:

“Should reward based educational system (the current ranking/marks system) be changed with another metric to improve quality of education and reduce suicides?”
“Fixed mindset vs Growth mindset”
“The practical usage of arts, music etc; in real life scenarios”

Having listened to various perspectives, I felt a bit overwhelmed and with this state of perplexity I slept in train as it is heading towards Visakhapatnam

Day 6 (30/12/2019) — Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh):

Concentration areas: Education, Food, Women empowerment, finance

We reached Vizag at noon and went to “AkshayaPatra”, the world’s largest NGO providing free mid-day meals to school students and visited their kitchen, understood their vision and had few cultural programs.

Prabhu explaining about AkshayaPatra’s vision, Visakhapatnam

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows — Sydney J Harris

After that, we went to Gitam’s college where we had panel discussion on “Celebrating women and spirit of entrepreneurship” which is mostly about the issues related to women while working, especially in startups. In short,

“It’s not just about what you do, but about why you do what you do. And how you do”

We also had some finance related sessions by industry people on how to make business models, the risks involved in starting startups and planning accordingly.

Yatris at presentation in Gitam’s college, Visakhapatnam

I felt it too technical as I am unaware of many concepts and eventually a few of us bunked the session, chitchatted, and had fun. With this level of enthusiasm, I slept in train which is heading towards Orissa.

Day 7 (31/12/2019) — Berhampur (Orissa):

Concentration Areas: Water and sanitation, Rural development, Education

We reached Orissa at around 9 AM and clearly I can feel a slight valley in the temperature (indicating that worse temperatures are yet to come). We visited “GramVikas” and had a discussion with Joe Madiath on water and sanitation issues in rural areas.

Joe Madiath, Founder of GramVikas — (Berhampur, Ganjam, Orissa)

We visited a local village and spend some time with them, playing with children and talking to them. Their lifestyle is very simple and I can see people struggling at some of the rudimentary problems which we have overlooked or haven’t thought as a problem. After that, we went to the local school and had the Pre-New Year celebrations with school kids. Though it’s situated in rural area, the school has some advanced facilities such as 3D printing machine, mini robots (which are not present in most urban schools). We had our style of DJ with them where most of us danced for about 3 hrs and it was amazing experience spending time with them. When we returned to station, the entire platform was decorated for New Year eve and we had feast on platform.