Ahmedabad: Anant National University students take up real-life challenges as year-long project

In a unique project, students of Anant National University have taken up real-life challenges and will spend a year creating solutions for problems that affect the city and community at large. The project is a part of Anant Fellowship through which, this year, the students have worked on problem areas that include organic waste from agricultural markets, heritage monuments, migrant construction workers, examining reasons for inefficiencies in the delivery of public housing, etc.

Sharing their experience, the team (Urjita, Mallikarjun, Prachi, Saksham and Ashutosh) working on reimagining the agricultural market said, "Thousands of tonnes of organic waste from agricultural markets (mandis) are dumped into landfills every day. With landfills mountainous enough to produce landfill slides, we urgently need organic manure.

"We worked with APMC market vendors at Jamalpur, market managing committee as well as the Solid Waste Management Committee at the AMC. Our interventions ranged across scales, from shop-level installations to initiating behaviour change among vendors in relation to waste disposal and from opening up the mandi to school kids and increasing awareness about the role it plays in our cities to developing guidelines for new mandis being planned."

For the heritage project, students collaborated with the AMC's heritage cell, the Sunni Wakaf Board as well as locals to increase the heritage value of Rani no Hajiro. "Our interventions included improving access to basic facilities such as electricity and water at the monument, curating heritage walks that celebrate not only the monument but also the many productive activities of locals and improving livelihoods of immediate residents by connecting them to NGOs."

Officials of ANU said, "This provocative method of inquiry and engagement has taken shape in the form of incredibly diverse and inspiring projects that range from developing housing options for migrant workers to re-imagining our agricultural produce markets. Through this fellowship, students ask critical questions such as whom are we designing for, what the long-term impact and objectives are, and how, as individuals, we can bridge the gap between where we are and where we want to be."