The first project of the Centre for Knowledge Alternatives is to document and chronicle India at the local level.
We may know a lot about India. How much do we know about it at the local level? How many cars are there in Karnal? What folk songs do people in Jambugoda sing? How many girls study in schools in Sambhal? Simple information at taluka or district level is difficult to find. If one really needs it, one has to go to the RTO office of Karnal, spend weeks chatting with villagers in Jambugoda and district’s Basic Shiksha Adhikari’s office in Sambhal to find such information.
If you set aside a few metropolitan cities, we can’t easily find regional and local level information in India. District administrations’ websites are woefully inadequate.
Does this need to be this way? Must we rely on Wikipedia’s nominal entries or Lonely Planet’s tourist-centric information to find out more about our local cultures and development? More importantly, can we afford to not have decentralized repositories of knowledge in our ever-so-diverse country?
The project aims to construct local level chronicles of India. It will map, document and create a hub of local data and cultures pertaining to the districts/talukas.
We evolve a framework and do a pilot for a few districts to begin with.
Here is the Concept Note of the Project.
