BOW: International Development: Ahmedabad, India: Week Four

This past week was filled with a lot of work and a lot of fun. At the beginning of the week our team had two possible approaches to the project, but by the time Wednesday came around we had consulted with multiple faculty members and decided to pursue a path that involved heavy programming. Once this decision was made it was time to just sit down and crank away at a computer. This is the time when I was thankful for the people on stackoverflow.com who had experienced all of the debugging issues that I faced and posted fixes for them.

This week Professor Rakesh Pandey was also visiting Ahmedabad University. He is the link between Ahmedabad University, Olin College and the ADE (affordable design and entrepreneurship) program. It was good to give him an update on the work that I have been conducting here at the Institute of Life Sciences and get his input in regards to how to approach challenges that we were facing. Thanks to him, I also got the opportunity to meet with previous ADE students from Ahmedabad University and get insights into their experiences. It was great seeing the different viewpoints and hearing about their experiences. These discussions also opened my eyes in regards to the Indian education system and how different the mentality is here compared to the US. Professor Pandey also spoke to students at a variety of the Institutes under the Ahmedabad University umbrella. The talk was focused around his life experiences, innovation, and ADE. One of the most inspiring thing that he said was that there is one thing that is common between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, and that is 24 hours in a day. This really emphasized the importance of time management and the fact that some people can complete 2 years worth of work in one year, while others can spend 40 years doing just one year of work.

This past week we also explored one of the larger developmental projects in the Ahmedabad area, the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project. The Sabarmati River, which divides the city of Ahmedabad in half, is now being developed into a 10 km walk way, which at completion of the project will also house gardens, amusement parks, golf courses, and even water parks.