BOLPUR, Jan 17 : A science project by the students of Bolpur's Institute of Total Education is among the projects to qualify in the 16th National Children Science Congress (NCSC).
The project was one of 23 to get an award at the national seminar held at Nagaland's Dimapur between 27-31 December, last year. The group of five students was led by Dattatreo Ghosh, a class VIII student of Visva-Bharati's Sikhsa Satra, and its project was called: “Santiniketan's tribal people ~ a documentation of plant and plant products used and made by the tribals of Santiniketan”. The project contained research on the plant-dependent professions of Santiniketan's tribal people.
The students' project qualified at the district and state levels. It was then selected for the national competition and elected one of the best out of a total of 610 projects submitted from the entire country, in the presence of the former President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.
Dattatreo Ghosh, team leader for the project, said: “Myself and my four team members, Subhodip Chatterjee, Sidhartha Majumder, Achinta Ghosh and Sagnik Sadhu, selected the topic of the Santiniketan tribal people's plant-dependent profession. We submitted our project from our Bolpur-based tutorial home, the Institute of Total Education. The project attracted the attention of the authorities of NCSC. We are proud that our project was selected for a national level competition”.
Sagnik Sadhu, a member of the team, said that he and his fellow students visited the tribal villages, like Benepukur Danga, to observe the plant-dependent work being carried out there, before they began the project. The authorities of NCSC assured the students that they would have the opportunity to participate in the International Science Congress. However, the students' rank in the NCSC competition has not been confirmed yet.
Another project by students from Institute of Total Education was submitted for the national level competition. The project was on obesity, but it did not receive a certificate of excellence.