Dear Students,

First of all, let me take this opportunity to thank you all for your participation in the interactive session on Perspectives on International Development. It was a great pleasure for me to share some of the aspects of the global development approaches and processes to which I was exposed during the course of my first year master’s programme. I hope it was informative and helpful to you in gaining a broader view of development and the way it is being approached internationally.

As a follow-up to that session, I felt it important to share some of the online resources on the various development topics which may be useful to you during your study and after, as you begin your work as development professionals. These are the links which my fellow students at Brandeis (my university in Boston, United States) and I were referred to; we have found them useful in our study work as well as field work. It is not an exhaustive list and some of you might be familiar with a few of them. The idea is to create a comprehensive list to which you all can contribute and use as an online resource guide. Please feel free to add any useful/interesting links related to your work that you may come across so that your fellow students can access them; just add a comment here with the link and the category and the list will be updated.

As you all gear up for your first hand experience with grassroots NGOs, I wish you all the success and a great learning experience!

Wish you all a promising year 2009!

Best regards,

Mansi Anand

“Severe flood in Orissa! 200 people dead!” flashed the television news announcement. Jeeva was watching Live Music, her favorite channel. Seeing the flash at the bottom, she switched the channel to DD News.

The first issue of The Grumpy Writer's Grumps

aka Ananda Mahto

I wanted to create an avenue for me to write some periodic updates about the English language. Sometimes, for example, I might write about strange or frustrating usage; other times, I might, instead, offer some writing tips for students.

The result? The Grumpy Writer’s Grumps.

Check it out and see what you think….

By Mohd. Rashid

In my college days, going to sleep late and getting up late was the general schedule for me. One Sunday, though, I got up early and was busy getting ready to go to the book market at Daryaganj, New Delhi.

I asked Ahmed, my roommate, if he was coming with me. He replied, “Do not go today. I have had a bad dream about you.”

Giggle.

As I mentioned in a comment in the last post, one of the classes offered this term for PDM 8 students is Specialized Writing. In this class, we try to go beyond simply writing term papers and reports, and explore different types of writing. One type of writing we were exploring was journalistic writing—in particular, writing a press release. Here are three press releases offered by the students in this class. (There were a few creative liberties taken, particularly in terms of quotations, since this was done as an in-class assignment, but I think they still manage to capture the spirit of the events).

Mate, Neelabh, Ananda, and Mahanthesh ping ponging away...

By Lim Mate

[[Read on for the story...]]

It has been a while since I’ve even had a chance to visit this site, much less update it. But that’s because we’ve had a few busy months here at the Academy.

So, what’s been going on?

I started teaching at the Tata-Dhan Academy in the third term of the seventh batch of students undergoing the PDM—the Programme in Development Management. During that term, I taught a class in writing and another course in spoken communication, and it was very exciting for me to be back in the classroom again after more than a year without teaching. I knew, of course, that this classroom experience was only a fraction of what makes learning at the Academy interesting, but had not yet had much of a chance to see what the students really did in the field. I also knew that although I could teach English well, I did not really know much about what happened in the field beyond what I had read in a handful of student reports or heard about in student presentations. So, at the end of August in 2007, with my knowledgeable mentor and guide, Sangeetha, I got my first real chance to let the roles of student and teacher change, and have my students teach me about their field locations during my visits to them in the field.

AKA “We don’t just read and study here…”

One of the things that makes me excited about being a teacher is that I get to be around interesting people all the time. In the process of working (both with my colleagues and with my students) you get to learn a lot about them. I always like when they share their hidden (or not so hidden) talents.

Here are two videos that illustrate some of the talent you can expect at the Academy. The first is of two students, Sumit (cooking) and Mate (playing the guitar), rehearsing for the Bihar Ethnic Dinner. Talk about multi-tasking, right? The food was delicious, the song worked out great, and everyone had a great time. The second video is of Shanthi singing a song to the PDM 7 students at the end of their programme. Shanthi seems to always be able to come up with a song for any occasion, and her songs seem to defy the confines of age.

In time, I hope that we can highlight the talents of all of our students and faculty on this site.

Anyway, rather than making you read more, just enjoy the videos. (Sorry about the sound quality; there’s only so much you can do with a little digital camera, right?)

By the way, you can always go to Google Video to download any of these videos for viewing offline. The easiest way to find them is to simply search for “tdapdm” or to subscribe to the “tdapdm” video RSS feed.

As on 15 August 2008, we have received 18 new applications for PDM 9.

For these applicants, please note that:

• the DMAT will be conducted at the Academy on 22 August 2008
• the group discussion and interview will take place on 23 August 2008

Interested candidates who were unable to meet the 15 August 2008 application deadline can walk in with a completed application on the test date.

>> Thanks to Suneetha for the update! <<