Day three of Tata Jagriti Yatra proved to be a one of those days that really captured the imagination of both participants and facilitators. Today we were to meet Shree Padre who hails from Vaninagar, a village bordering Kerala and Karnataka.  Shree Padre is promoting self-help journalism among farmers in Karnataka. His “Pen in the Farmer’s Hand” movement allows farmers to trade information on agriculture and related subjects, giving a new voice to traditional wisdom. He recognizes that, collectively, farmers know how to solve the various problems they face; what they have lacked is a system for sharing their experiences and techniques with one another.

Mr Padre proved to be an eloquent and thought provoking speaker, immediately engaging with the participants. I was fortunate enough to be able to squeeze in at the back of one of the classroom coaches and listen in to the afternoon session which took place. Topics were wide and varied but one which stood out for me was on the subject of water harvesting and resource management. It was clear that the participants were fully engaged with Mr. Padre’s talk as a tremendous amount of energy was thought was evident during the Q&A session. Today the two coach set up worked very well with questions being fielded from both sides and relayed via plasma screen between coaches so that everyone could see and hear each other, thanks in great part to one of our facilitators who made it a point to rush the mic over to the participants in the second carriage.  Following his morning session with the participants, we decided to give him a tour of the train and the whole set up. Lunch followed at the station we stopped at and the afternoon session with Shree Padre actually took place on the platform under the welcome cool shade of the platform roof.  Whilst the a large group formed in front of Shree Padre, smaller clusters of participants who had previously attended the morning session formed small groups to discuss in detail the mornings discussions and form their own opinions about the issues raised. I took an opportunity to walk around all these sessions, taken photographs and listening in to the – at times – raging debates, questions, answers and reports being exchanged between members of the various groups. At no point did any of the debates fall out with each other, which was heartened to see but a number of groups certainly did have some some robust and well thought out arguments. All in all, a very inspiring afternoon session of group discussions.

It was time now to head off to Kerala, our next stop Trivandrum where we woud visit the Trivandrum Technopark.