The Third Annual Retreat of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies began on Friday, February 24, 2017, at a venue on the campus of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) at Kalpetta, Wayanad district.
The main group came to Kalpetta by overnight bus from Bangalore; others came via Kozhikode from different parts of Kerala and India.
Sandipan Baksi, Programme Coordinator, began the work session with an hour-long introduction. He reported on work done in 2016-17 and made suggestions regarding the work programme for 2017-18. He discussed research work done at PARI, the seminars, conferences, and other events that have been organised, the Library and archives, its publications, the FAS blog, and other issues. Arindam Das, who heads research at the Foundation, discussed progress in PARI and proposed a timetable for 2017-18 with respect to PARI. Deepak Johnson then made a presentation on the online presence of FAS.
There was a lively discussion on the issues raised in these three presentations. A new work programme has been proposed for 2017-18, the major features of which are, first, the proposed completion of two more publications — volumes on West Bengal and Tripura — in the Socio-Economic Survey Series, secondly, work on the project on rural wages in India, and, thirdly, work on the new project on women in production in rural India. There was also detailed discussion of the FAS’s website and social media presence, and of methods of improving in-house training and seminars.
In the next session, each FAS employee made a presentation on his/her work over the last year, speaking separately on the work assigned and done, on his/her contribution to the work of the Foundation over the year, plans, and suggestions for how to improve functioning in the Foundation. T Sivamurugan, Tapas Modak, Ranjini Basu, Ritam Dutta, Sanjukta Chakrabarty, Vijay Kumar, Rakesh Kumar Mahato, and Jharna Deb Barma, all part of the PARI team, spoke first. The group decided, among other things, that FAS would organise regular language training classes and classes on basic statistics. Divya Devadiga and Shaktiprasad spoke next. Pushpita Dhar spoke on her work with PARI publications.
The last individual presentation on February 24, 2017 was by Jaya Mary.
The morning session on February 25, 2017 was conducted — as always, with skill and friendship — by Noopur Varma. After a lively discussion in which everyone participated, the group listed the strengths, weaknesses, and the tasks ahead of the FAS. Some very interesting decisions were taken on expanding the range of FAS’s external collaborators, on future workshops for students and on an annual seminar. Watch this space over the year for details.
Parvathi Menon spoke about the work that she intends to do with FAS, particularly on bringing her two areas of expertise — agrarian history and the media — into the picture.
The last three presentations from FAS staff were made this morning. The first was by Daya Mohan Tripura. The reports of Pinki Ghosh and Biplab Sarkar, who were unable to attend, were presented by Sandipan Baksi. And apologies: we did not mention the contribution by Subhajit Patra to the discussion yesterday, nor that Madhura, VKR, Parvathi, and Noopur had participated actively in the discussions yesterday.
To lunch. The dining room here is run by a friendly, helpful and women’s group. Lunch was a traditional Kerala meal, plus two types of fish and two varieties of rice.
Then to the group photograph, now posted.
The final session was on the Repository (including the Library). Sandipan reported on the current state of discussions on archiving FAS data and providing external access to the database. His presentation was followed by discussion. VKR reported on the state of the Library.
Final word to Noopur Varma: The quality of the discussions at the Retreat improve with every successive Retreat.
