First Experiment: Drishti: We saw the innovation school in 3 Idiots towards end of 2009. On similar lines sometime back in Oct 6, 2004, student co-funded and student managed laboratory known as Drishti Lab was opened in the campus of NIT-Surat for promoting technical innovations beyond academics. Drishti was envisaged by my beloved senior Ashish Sharma in his early second year of engineering which took formal shape in April 28, 2004. Unfortunately that was his final year in the college and on June 11th he left with us the designs and plans he had for Drishti. First formal team got formed in August same year and the work started and things were never the same in the campus thereafter. Student managed Lab was opened and post college hours students could work on the projects of their choice.Within second year of formal formation, Drishti teams persuasion led to massive participation by students in all technical festivels. Institute saw 8 calls for interview of prestigious KVPY (Young scientist fellowship) out of 48 called all over country which increased over the years. Recently one of my beloved junior got patent on one of his projects. Drishti now has come a long way and is aiming currently at winning Robocon Asia-pacific event!.
In person,I often quote Drishti has my first experiment, possibly because it changed the course of my life from research to social arena. I still remember we went to hostels explaining what is Drishti and what we aim at and realized that students believed in the "idea from scratch" and first year saw 450 students enrolling with membership fees. College contributed equal amount and gave space and necessary basic infrastructure for opening up the students lab. That was perhaps the first time in my life, I was ever working in a team beyond technical projects that too for an organization which was just setting up its foot and realized what collective action can do!. We had a combination of people from 3rd year and 2nd year who were good in their technical understanding and had feeling of supporting juniors in their technical projects. I was lucky to have some of the most wonderful people of the batch Parthav, Sarat, Gaurav, Ashish, Pranav, Narayan et al and from the junior batch Shailesh, Abhai, Manmay, Akash...who made the first level of Drishti firm. Our team retired in final year to give space to new third year and second year. This served two purpose, one the retired team could put more time with junior students in their projects (free from admin work) and two it could guide the working team as and when required. Though all was not well as it was thought to be but that's obvious in the first experiment!. What's important is Drishti as a thought is still vibrant and the platform continues to provide the extra edge and support to the junior students.
Second Experiment: GS Elections:
