E-Paper
DRC website to net Dalits world-wide
DALIT RESOURCE Centre (DRC) of GB Pant Social Science Institute now has its very own website to help people keep a tab on its various activities and events being organised all the year round. The website? www.dalitresourcecentre.com? was launched by Bishnu Mohapatra of the Ford Foundation (New Delhi) at a brief ceremony organised at the institute's Seminar Hall on Thursday.
DALIT RESOURCE Centre (DRC) of GB Pant Social Science Institute now has its very own website to help people keep a tab on its various activities and events being organised all the year round. The website— www.dalitresourcecentre.com— was launched by Bishnu Mohapatra of the Ford Foundation (New Delhi) at a brief ceremony organised at the institute's Seminar Hall on Thursday.
Speaking on the occasion, Bishnu Mohapatra spoke about the utility of the website for the people in general, who are really interested to know about the lives and history of the Dalits in India.
"The plus point of the website is that a person from every nook and corner of the world can view and understand about the activities of the Dalit Resource Centre and the Dalit and non-Dalit writers can use the site for various kinds of their research work.
He said that the DRC has helped in bringing the subjugated knowledge to the forefront. Famous Dalit writer Mohandas Nemisharay agreed with Mohapatra and added that there must be an effort towards combining different resources together about Dalits that are in the scattered form in all over India.
A number of educationists, intellectuals and scholars of repute from both Allahabad and outside including AR Akella, Guru Prasad Madan, Devendra Choubey, Rajkumar Itihaaskar and Madhuri Devi were present during the launch.
Developed under the Ford Foundation sponsored project on Dalits, the website will cover the entire gamut of Dalit Resource Center's activities, that have already been taken up so far and those which will be carried out in the time to come.
The website has been developed by a-city based Internet site development firm Cyber Networks under the leadership of Gaurav Agarwal.
"The goal of the DRC project is to widen and deepen the democratic participation of the Dalits in the democratic arena of the country by expanding the Dalit public sphere and to create an interface between writers of Dalit popular booklets and other literary mainstream litterateurs and knowledge generators to widen the space of Dalit popular writings," said DRC project director Dr Badri Narayan.
He said the objective of the project is to develop an effective 'Dalit Resource Centre' which will be the hub around which research and documentation of the knowledge base of marginalised Dalit communities, that is expressed through their popular booklets, will be stored. Various advocacy and interventionists activities are also being carried out for enhancing the democratic participation of Dalits and expansion of their public sphere, he added.
About the website, Dr Badri Narayan said it has been divided into various categories like introduction which includes information a the Centre, the Project, Board of Advisors, Staff Structure, Collaboration and networking of the centre.
Under the activities link, the site provides details of Field Visits, Social Biographies, Village Conferences, Kabir Chetna Samman, Interview of Dalit Writers, booklet collection and abstracts.
The websites 'Events' page includes a discussion forum and details of workshops organised. The site also informs about the publications by the DRC and its staff and the Archive which includes booklet collection list, list of Dalit newspapers and photo gallery.
