Revolutionizing the education to mainstream SDGs : Dr M.S. Swaminathan way

In the morning I get zoomed on subjects like 'recreating the education'. Come evening and I get webexed on 'reimagining education'. Then I get youtubed on 'rebooting the education', followed by facebooked session on 'redesigning the education'. Finally, when I go to bed I dream of 're-dreaming the education'. I consider it a welcome sign that many education experts finally found the opportunity to re-educate ourselves on education!

My dream came true, however, when we had a virtual meeting with Dr M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation-MSSRF, Chennai. Dr Nadesa Panicker Anil Kumar, Senior Director of MSSRF and his team spoke to us virtually on 'real education' in a real situation, in the field. It was about the educational campus of MSSBG (M S Swaminathan Botanical Garden Campus).

After the presentation from TERRE Policy Centre on Smart Campus Cloud Network-SCCN, Dr Anil Kumar found in TERRE ' like-minded' partner. He was quick to grasp that SCCN is not just yet another network of universities, but a unique way to educate and connect the dots that contribute meaningfully to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals-SDGs. What I learnt in interaction with Dr Kumar can best be termed as transformational education.

The place we virtually visited while we talked to Dr Anil Kumar was a Botanical Garden in Wayanad, a district in the Western Ghats, in the north-east of Kerala and not far from the border with Karnataka. It is mainly known as coffee growers land. Recognizing the risk of damage to the ecosystem due to the cash crop of coffee, under the guidance of visionary and multi-award winner Indian scientist Professor M.S. Swaminathan, the community there initiated a project of 'Bio-happiness', It integrated the agriculture, nutrition and health, to resolve the increasing pressure due to climate change.

The botanical garden currently boasts of 400 individual mature trees for conservation belonging to RET ( Rare, Endemic and Threatened ) species. It is a conservatory with over 112 species from the RED data book, a 'Wild Food Species Garden' which signify food and medicinal possession of the tribal and rural communities of Wayanad. It also hosts an Ayurvedic garden of over 500 species with the number still counting!

Is it a garden or conservatory or nature's University? I asked Dr Anil Kumar. He replied that it is a garden-university to educate and train, to build the capacity of the community for sustaining culinary diversity, to sustain curative diversity and cultural diversity.

Members of the community are like the vice-chancellors, knowledgeable farmers are the lecturers, government officials in the area are the members of the university council. The students are young future farmers engaged in experimenting with the agro-forestry.

MSSRF's Botanical garden campus has now become a member of SCCN. That was achievement and honour for the movement of University Network for SDGs. Agri-universities and colleges now can benefit from the success of MSSRF.

So, is it "reimagining the education"? or recreating? or remodelling? reshaping? remoulding? reconstructing? recasting? reorganizing? Reshuffling? Revamping? renovating? remaking ?

I would just say revolutionizing. Nothing short of a revolution is expected from campus where SDGs are mainstreamed by Dr M S Swaminathan, maker of India's Green Revolution. END 

Rajendra Shende, Chairman TERRE Policy Centre,

Former Director UNEP.