Seeing is learning: A visit to Agastya foundation science lab in Bettadasanapura

Time and again teachers and principals at high school have revealed to us that children especially in government schools fail to understand some basic concepts taught at primary school level. The reasons are manifold and there are existing evidences to confirm this. What seems to be working or at least getting children enthused about studies, is the activity based learning.

We saw in my last post that how delighted the kids were when movies, videos were projected on big screen which helped them understand some concepts about water cycle. Couple of days back, we made a visit to Agastya International Foundation’s Science Lab in Bettadasanapura near Electronic city, Bengaluru. The visit was facilitated by Mr. Nandeesh from ELCIA Trust. ELCIA Trust has adopted 19 government schools around Electronic City. To facilitate better learning for these government school students ELCIA invited Agastya foundation to set up a science lab. One of the schools’ campus was identified for setting up this lab.

The science lab is open throughout the day from 10.30 am to 3.30 pm. Two tutors from Agastya conduct daily two sessions for the students of these 19 government schools. The batches are decided, fixed with consent from school, the concepts explained as per the standard/grade the students are studying in. The lab has conceptual models for explaining basics on biology, chemistry, physics, geography, etc. The models are developed as per the syllabus for each grade and hence relevant for students to learn and understand.

The tutor from the lab, Mr. Sunil, said that “if you explain the concepts in a lighter vein and show children the working principle, then the difficult concepts become simple and easy to comprehend”. We at Biome hope to learn from these initiatives and develop some conceptual models for explaining concepts related to water.  

 

 

A day with Government school children: Speaking on water issues

We have been engaging with couple of government schools in and around Bengaluru International Airport for the past couple of months. The engagement is not limited to hard infrastructure components like rainwater harvesting but also involves lot of soft components to create ownership, handholding of the system for teachers and students.

It was one of such sessions with Kannur Primary School and Kadusonnapanahalli High School. In Kannur, the students were from 1^st to 5^th standard whereas in Kadusonnapanahalli students of 10^th standard attended the session. The interaction focused on water cycle, facts about water, water scarcity, and briefly touched upon water scarcity and necessity of conservation. The session was mix of sharing videos, talking and interaction. 

Projector set up at Kannur School

The smiles on the faces of small kids, especially the primary school kids, makes your day. Principal Ma’m of Kannur Primary School, Ms. Manjula said, “Students are always happy to see something on big screen. It just cheers them up and a good way of teaching them.” While we had videos to be shown, we couldn’t get a video projector on time before the session. Kadusonnapanahalli school had it in house so we weren’t worried about it. But Kannur we weren’t sure. We reached the school and started talking to the Principal Ma’m about showing the videos and she delightfully says, “We have a projector.” She showed the projector and the set up and it was the most amazing thing that I could have seen. The school is selected for ‘Meghshala’ project which uses audio-visual methods as learning aids. 

The whole set up comes with a small portable projector, a Wi-Fi dongle, tripod, portable speaker, and a tab with in-built lesson plans. Projector also has a USB port and USB chord to connect the speakers. This is such a useful thing for the schools to have. Though the teacher still doesn’t feel comfortable with using the this, and sometimes struggles with using USB, this learning method has certainly caught the students’ attention. Kudos to the team. If you have some information about such projectors, price, we would like to explore more.

Kadusonnapanahalli school had its own set up and multiple options to project. A big TV screen connected to a DVD player which somehow couldn’t be used that day. A wall mounted projector wasn’t working. Finally, we used portable solar powered projector donated to the school by Rotary.

We sourced videos available freely on the web platform. We especially thought the video by Agastya International foundation on Water cycle was very useful. For one, it was in Kannada so students could follow it and second, it was activity based so student understood the concept.

We are planning next sessions on Rainwater harvesting, water demand, sanitation and hygiene. Keep following this blog to be posted about our next interactions. 

 

Kaveri 101

1. See the map to Identify the 4 major reservoirs in Karnataka : Hemavathy, Harangi, KRS and Kabini. Inflows and Outflows to all 4 reservoirs are monitored and known and this forms the basis of all calculations
2. The river flows into TN and at Biligundlu there is a measuring station that tells you how much water flows into TN from Karnataka
3. The water that flows into the river downstream of KRS and Kabini is measured at Biligundlu , is expected to flow in from about 22,000sqm and in an average year can contribute about 80TMC.
4. About 740TMC is the total water that is expected to flow into the river (from all states)
5. Of this the following allocations have been made (the states are entitled to the following volumes of water
   1. Kerala: 30TMC
   2. Karnataka: 270TMC
   3. TN : 419TMC
6. The total inflows into the river from Karnataka is 462TMC. Of the 462 TMC, Karnataka can keep 270TMC for itself and has to give TN 192 TMC (this is measured at Biligundlu). For the purpose of this post, we assume that the basis of this split is agreed upon (270 keep, 192 give)
7. So if you see the only real numbers that matter are, irrespective of rainfall across the catchment, based on the total inflows in Karnataka,
   What Karnataka keeps                                           270
   -----------------------------                          =              ------
   What Karnataka gives TN                                      192

Hence if the total inflows in Karnataka was 100TMC, Karnataka can keep 58.44 TMC and send to TN 41.56TMC. Hence one would not need to base it on the % rainfall deficit/surplus – but on actual inflows. The inflows can be measured on a daily basis, the corresponding keep and give numbers calculated and released at some predetermined/useful frequency. It seems fair ? And simple ?

Now the inflows to/from all reservoirs are known , the additional inflow from 22,000sqm at Biligundlu is also known. This should make the actual sharing numbers even in a deficit year – a reasonable and clear calculation

Thanks to zenrainman's FB post on the same topic for a slightly more elaborate description,

And whats TMC ? That for another post :)

Do lakes actually recharge ground water ? and by how much ?

Well with water : Near Jakkur Lake

A question we often get asked as rainwater harvesters is, is there any point in building a recharge structure adjacent to a lake ? Does the lake not recharge ground water ? Will the recharge structure/well make any difference ? This is a very pertinent question and I can write on what we have seen and learnt -  from experience

Very often you do see old open wells adjacent to lakes. The well used to be the place from where people drew the water for use. The water level in the lake and the water level in the well would more or less be in sync. That seems to indicate that water from the lake would seep out into ground and then into the well. So yes – the lake did send water into the ground which you could withdraw from the well. This is still true in many cases – when the lakes fill up, the wells fill up too. Eg Jakkur Lake

However over a period of time as the lake starts to silt up, the recharge rate reduces and hence the relationship between the water levels in the well and lake might also reduce.

New well with water : West of KKHalli Lake

eg. Kaikondrahalli Lake has an old open well about 40ft deep to its East that is dry. Three new 15ft deep wells have been dug in the school to the West of the lake. All the wells have water. However these wells are being recharged with rainwater too. Why does the East Well not have water ? Has the well silted up and hence there is no percolation from the lake to the well ? There is a borewell at the bottom of the open well. Has the pumping out of water from the deeper regions emptied out the shallow aquifer ? How come the 3 new school wells have water ? Is it the artificial ground water recharge and not the lake that is feeding the shallow open wells in the school ? Its hard to say.

However, one thing that can be said for certain, the lakes dont seem to be having an obvious/hard to miss positive effect on deep borewells in the vicinity. Deep Borewells around the lake continue to dry up or yield less

Dry OLD well: East of KKHalli Lake

Do deeper borewells actually yield more water ? Do we get more water as we dig deeper ?

Having worked with, seen and spoken to numerous borewell owners, it is apparent that the borewells that yield well; say about more than 60,000 litres of water per day (that are used by layouts, tanker operators, industries etc) are those that are shallower than 600ft. Its not the 1000+ft borewells that yield copious amounts of water. Even if it is a 1000+ft borewell that is yielding a lot of water, a camera inspection will reveal that actually its the shallower cracks that yield more water. Take a look at the attached picture to somewhat make sense of Bangalore's geology and to see how water comes into a borewell. It does seem more UNLIKELY for water to be available at greater depths

The general perception is that deeper borewells yield more and hence people dig deeper. But the contrary is true. In fact as you dig deeper than 600ft the number of naturally occurring cracks in the rock formations reduce and hence the water availability also reduces. A deep borewell might be able to provide lifeline water to a home of about 500litres per day but very unlikely that it is a 100,000 litres per day borewell. Its the shallower borewells that yield more water.

Would like to hear and understand from people who have deep (1000+ ft)borewells that yield more than 60,000 litres per day

Pre-conditions to get Permission to dig a new Borewell

Do you know that, if you are drilling a new Borewell you need permission to drill one.

Under the Section 11 of the Karnataka Ground Water (Regulation and Control of Development and Management) Act, 2011 and Rules, 2012.  It is mandatory to apply for permit to dig new borewells.

Under section 12 and 13, it is mandatory to register the existing borewells and drilling agencies with the BWSSB, if you are in the BBMP jurisdiction area. You need to apply with the local government authority for the BDA jurisdiction region.

As per the notification issued by the Karnataka Groundwater Authority and signed by Member secretary, Department of Mines and Geology, all of Bangalore is declared “Notified” based on the groundwater availability and extraction. Hence, a permit is required to dig borewells.

All the users be it individual household, farmers, industries, commercial establishments, drilling agencies etc. who extract and use groundwater in Karnataka come under purview of the law

There are pre-conditions laid for individual household, when permission is sought for withdrawal of groundwater. They are:

• Only one tube-well is allowed to meet drinking and domestic purposes use only.
• No tube-well/bore-well will be constructed, if any working tube-well exists. If the existing tube-well is non-functional/to be replaced, then it should into a recharge well, if possible or possibly sealed and no water be pumped from it.
• The persons intending to construct a new tube-well will intimate the Authorizing officer/committee, 10 days in advance along with the drilling agency’s name and address.
• Maximum diameter of the tube-well should be restricted to 152 mm only and the capacity of the pump should not exceed 2HP.
• Concurrent with the construction of the tube-well, the owner shall undertake the installation of Rainwater harvesting in the premises.
• Details of the drilling like the rock formation encountered, the depth and diameter of the constructed bore-well, types of pipes used, yield of the bore-well and groundwater quality shall be kept for record and are to be provided at the time of inspection.
• Spacing of 500 mtrs should be maintained from the existing public source of drinking water as per section 3 of the Groundwater act of 1999

Therefore, if you are drilling a new Borewell or have an existing Borewell, remember these conditions set by the regulations.

All documents are referred from the below link

http://khanija.kar.ncode.in/SitePages/GroundWaterInfo.aspx

Safe Water Learning with Arghyam

27^th Sep 2016

Bangalore

What is the source of Fluoride in groundwater?

What is Dental Fluorosis? Why does it happen to Children only?

How to check if a person has Skeletal Fluorosis or not?

What are the ways to test for Fluoride in water?

How is Nutrition linked with Fluorosis?

What are ways to remove Fluoride from water?

Is Fluorosis reversal possible?

How can we prevent the adverse effects of Fluorosis?

How can eating Til Chikki, Moringa, Amla, Tamarind help in reducing the effects of Fluorosis?

What are the strategies to begin to work towards mitigation of Fluorosis?

And many more..

These were some of many questions that were answered by the safe water learning cards session.

Both me and my colleague Shreyas, were invited to conduct a session for the members of the Arghyam group in Bangalore on the 27^th September 2016. Arghyam supports many projects and initiates action research projects across the country that concerns groundwater and sanitation.  One such project is the Fluoride Knowledge and Action Network. 

So what are these Safe Water Learning Cards?

•    They are set of around 70 cards are designed to help learning on Safe water issues, with particular reference to Fluoride issue in this case.
•       There are four sets of cards – Basics, Debates, Strategies and Solutions
•       Each card is color tagged with the particular set.
•       There is basic content in each card to stimulate thinking and discussion.
•       They are meant to supplement existing modes of learning.

There were 15 members who had participated in the session. We had made arrangements such that each team had two members seated in a circular manner. The group had members who knew nothing, some had little awareness, some who have worked on Fluorosis. Given the lack of time, we selected combination of 30 cards with Basics, Solutions, Strategies, and Debates around issue of Fluorosis.

Learning card belonging to a specific topic were distributed to each team were given 4-5 minutes to read and passed onto the next team.  The participants were advised to make note of things they didn’t understand, important points which are interesting or topics they would like to learn more. Once the set was completed, the floor was open to discussion.  

Both me and Shreyas initiated and facilitated the discussion. Many questions we had asked were answered by the teams. Some questions were answered by the other teams and this is how the  cross learning and discussion took place.  We gave relevant examples to explain some doubts based on our recent field visits to Chikballapur and Raichur.

The same strategy for discussion was followed for the other sets. The group held that the Flash cards learning was a good experience and much simpler method to connect to the topic and have discussion. Many of them who knew nothing were aware of Fluorosis, its types, the permissible limits, the technologies for Fluoride removal, strategies and solutions to mitigate Fluorosis.

Kiran Kumar Sen

Biome Environmental Trust and

 Fluoride Knowledge and Action Network