RURAL IMMERSION

PGDM

Introduction

Rural growth in India has been developing rapidly. The rural customers have been
spending more time in the market. In this dynamic of today’s business, rural
immersion helps both students and corporations to understand the field of the rural
world and how our future will develop along with it. Rural immersion includes
mostly field trips over the period of days or weeks helping us to build up
knowledge, develop creativity and proper decision making.

It also helps us to interact and deal with the healthy environment and the social
well-being of people. Biased with language, rural immersion helps us to structure
our thoughts in diff. Fields of local, small-scale businesses.

Our rural immersion program had two days of complete learning and keen
observation over the rural world in right outskirts of Bangalore. On 18th and 19th of
August 2022 we had our rural immersion through ISBR Business School. We
started our day with exciting slides which helped us to gain knowledge in how the
rural immersion is going to be impactful and what all we are going to learn over
the course of two days.

DAY 1

We arrived at the brick factory managed by S R enterprise. As we can see in the

picture, right outskirts of Bangalore, Anekal they had a huge space with tile shade
under which thousands of bricks are made each day. Right at the center ofthe brick
factory they have their burner which is running 24*7 baking endless bricks. After
the observation we found out that there is total 7 employees working in the brick
factory. Each employee has a specific role which they perform every day. This
includes mixing of clay, shaping, stacking, and baking.The wages of employees
are way above moderate level. Since the brick field factory is in the village, we
could see the structure of village environment where tiled rooftop is there
protecting the bricks from rain. We have also found that the brick factory has
space for the employees to stay. This helps the enterprise to give the workers free
staying and if they are intending to bring
craftsmen from other area, they will have no
problem living there.

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 Image: Clay preparation
Image: Soil Excavation

Image: Molding of clay into brick Image: Sun drying

Image: Cooling

Image: Burning

On the way we went to a village hospital which is an initiative and ruined by

BOSCH. Hospital seemed to be well maintained. It’s a one-story building having
quite a few doctors and nurses. It also includes a medical shop consisting of all

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the basic medicines at a very economical rate which can be easily purchased by
villagers/ locals. We even found out that the medical shop has some medicines
related to snake bites which is quite a common thing in the area.

Gerbera Polyhouse

On the way we went to Gerbera Polyhouse. This is a new kind of model which has
been setup in the village. Inside the area there is a vast land where different
varieties of gerbera are cultivated, maintained, and transported. This area is very
well maintained and has a strict temperature which is perfect for gerberas. Theyhad
a drip irrigation system and complete covered area which helped them to control
the sunlight, temperature, and rain. Their major suppliers are in the bulk which
goes to different event organizers, hotels and in other functional activities.
Depending on seasons there are changes in prices. There were no more than 3
employees working over there.

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At The End the day we had a plan to visit the village panchayat and learn their
ways and workings but unfortunately, we were not able to get inside their office
due to various reasons.

VISIT TO SCHOOL

Finally, our first day ended with a lovely visit to a village school at Guddahatti
where we interacted with the children. Their school building was designed in a way
that it seemed like a local train. This was one of the major attractions of the school.
They had classes till 7 and only 5 teachers. We also saw that 2 classrooms were
under construction and the rest there were 3 classes which were in operation.
Lack of security, cleanliness of class and space around were the ones which got
highlighted to us. Another major concern was the washrooms which were quite
dirty and unhygienic. The food for the students is received from

the Akshaya Patra, a well-known foundation and the raw materials for lunch are
also provided by the same but prepared by school staff. There were around 120
students of different age groups.

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DAY 2
E-waste Collection Center

Today we had a major day of visiting the slum in the heart of Bangalore but before
that we went to an E-waste Collection Center. This is in Nelagadaranahalli ,
Peenya, Bangalore. Their everyday role is to collect all the wastes from corporate
houses in and around Electronic City. The place included 15 workers who are
segregating the waste, compressing, and shredding the waste into granules. We had
a detailed view of how the waste materials are collected and moved on a conveyor
belt where the segregation process is keenlymaintained with at least 6 members.
After the waste is segregated each variety ofwastes are divided and piled up and
moved to the compressing unit. After the compressing is done the waste is kept
separately where it will be further re-sold. The wet wastes are separated differently
where they are put into different machineries. This machinery is responsible for
churning the wet waste into fine granules where it can be used as manures. These
wastes are also kept for selling purposes. We learnt that the workers get their
salaries with PF and gratuity and have a strict working schedule of 8 hours/day.

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 Slum area

Finally, our 2nd day’s major activity was a visit to J.P. Nagar Slum area. We went
inside the slum. Our whole batch is divided into some groups, and we targeted
different lanes inside the slum. As a pre-information we knew that the slum
hadapprox.300 children and around 3000 families so we carried stationeries and
goodies for them.

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Our main goal was to interact with them and know what the issues they were
facing in their day-to-day life. Every group had one person who knew the local
language which helped each group to understand what problems every other
family are facing. We got to know that they were living in a rented house and for
those they were 500 to 1000 accordingly. There were no gas connections, and
every household uses firewood or electrical cooking. Common bathrooms were
there in several houses along with public toilets inside the slums which were
maintained everyday by the municipality. They rarely have power cuts in the
slums. All houses have dish TV connection for entertainment. Each lane had one
water pipe for supply. Some houses have temporary roofs, and some have
permanent ones.

By keen observation we found that most people are doing tailoring work and
bamboo knitting to make baskets and other small items. They also had flower
knitting from where they made flower garlands and sold them in the market. Many
used to collect garbage and sell them. Many houses were also seen making coconut
oils which they had for their personal use. The nearest school forthe children was
within walking distance. Lots of 2 wheelers were observed inside the slum along
with electric scooters. Many people inside the slum had various problems related to
government and subsidies. Some even had problemswith earnings because many
families didn’t have permanent earnings. One thing that was observed that every
child was visiting school which got us to the attention that literacy rate is high for
the upcoming generation. There were few groceries inside the slum. When we
distributed all the children were happy and light of excitement were seen in
everyone’s face.

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CONCLUSION

Moving out of the corporate and urban life we all can make some time to learn and help the rural
world. There is a lot to give and take along with endless learnings. On the first day we learnt
about a few businesses that can be developed by combining the rural activities and on the second
day we went through a journey through the slums helping us to know how much the slums are
helped by the government and what more things we as general people can offer to them.

The two days had endless learnings with a lot of on field and real-world experience that we can
carry on in our journey of life and embrace ourselves with the changes we are all moving into.

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 THANK YOU

REPORT BY

HARSHITA KUSHWAH, AYUSHI SHARMA, ADITYA S KUMAR , GAURAV GAUR ,

SUMANTH, VIKASH SOLANKI & SHIVPRAKASH VARIMANI

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