By Ishrat Singh
As you exit Mohali’s ‘airport road’ to climb onto the national highway towards Delhi, the last bit of Punjab on the Haryana border includes the town of Dera Bassi. The town’s developers seem to be a confused lot; while the town has many factories and is full of urban structures like housing societies and shopping complexes, the existing residential areas are anything but developed. I speak of the villages surrounded by factories and under-construction multi-story buildings but which themselves have no proper roads. One such potholed road leads to the village of Pandwala whose government school greets you with brightly painted walls. However, my destination was the Anganwadi center in the middle of the village housed in a dingy old structure whose walls might not have been painted for a long time.
Considering that I was about to take a class/workshop in person after 16 months, I’d take it any day over an online session. More than a dozen young women greeted me as I entered the center along with my colleagues. They were sat in one corner on a red floor mat working away on the three sewing machines that they had received as part of the project that I was there for on the day. While one was working on a bright green and golden cloth, making a ‘salwar kameez’ out of it, another presented a logo to a professor accompanying me (hand sewn on a piece of cloth). I was told it was the logo of their upcoming self help group. The creativity level was stunning and even before a single conversation, told me to not underestimate these shy-looking village womenfolk.
PU TIGRE2ESS project aims at ensuring sustainable living and well being by fostering entrepreneurship and inculcating nutritional values amongst rural women and youth, the domain which is generally portrayed as deficit in entrepreneurship. The Panjab University TIGRE2ESS team took this initiative to impart sewing skill training and to make best products out of waste clothes. Further handholding the trainees to become self sufficient through entrepreneurial venture.
I was there to help them improve their photography skills via their mobile phones which would enable them to present their products aesthetically on social media, thus, boosting sales. I noticed that most of them had the latest smartphones, which coupled with their creativity as I had just witnessed, had the potential to become a great marketplace. I immediately began by asking them to open the camera settings of their smartphones and exploring the various options and what they did. It did not take too long for them to grasp onto those features and even put them to use. Once I explained the concept of focusing, framing, and composition, their first assignment to click a picture of the cloth they were working on was given to them.
Then followed a self-assessment of their own pictures which helped them put to words the problems they faced in clicking a good picture. However, one young girl had taken a flawless picture but this time, I wasn’t surprised.I thus delved deeper and explained the rule of thirds, the concept of leading lines, and so on. I then inquired about the products they made which I was told included carry bags and cushion covers. Now I decided to dedicate the rest of the session to their specific needs and told them how they could best take catalog photographs of their own products.
A village with acres of farmland, trees, old structures, and the people themselves is a goldmine of locations to take pictures, I said. They did not seem to believe me so I told them that I come from a city that craves these locations and so does your potential customer.All said and done, it was time for another test. The students were to take a catalog photograph of their own products, putting to use all that they had learned. A wonderful photograph of a girl wearing a carry bag, standing in a long winding but narrow village road told me that they had passed the test. However, a photograph of that same bag hung on an old and rusty wooden door told me that I had passed the test. Class dismissed.
Food for thought: Towards a Greener Revolution 