Page 5 - Annual Report 2019-20

Director’s Report
Namaskar.
It gives me immense pleasure to present you with our annual report for the year 2019-20. It’s been a year that witnessed several new events that Vigyan Prasar organized, several new programmes that it launched, and several new products that it developed. Marching ahead steadily in the domain of science & technology communication, popularization, and its extension, Vigyan Prasar aggrandized its activities beyond the national boundaries. In its pursuit to stay on top while extending its outreach, Vigyan Prasar leveraged the effectiveness of all four media types --- print, electronic, digital, and social.
Besides, a long-felt need to popularize science & technology in Indian languages has been discussed, and a number of actionable plans have been formulated. Yet, how many on the ground have fructified, and how many of them have sustained so far. A systematic approach to expanding Vigyan Prasar’s science popularization attempt into Indian languages was thus launched during this period. Titled as Vigyan Bhasha, the journey began with Bengali, where a number of district-level school-level workshops in West Bengal were organized. Bigyan Katha, a monthly newsletter in Bengali was launched with articles duly contributed by
noted Bengali popular science writers. Books authored by well-known science writers in Bengali were encouraged to author these books. These efforts bore fruits. Despite numerous other events that came in unprecedently, five popular titles were published. Additionally, several meetings and discussions took place during the course. Newer ways to communicate with the Bengali-speaking populace were evolved. Expert lectures on various themes through webinars continued. Interestingly, this effort brought a new team of young science communication enthusiasts in Bengali together as well.
Similar to the success achieved in Bengali, efforts in Indian languages gained significant and quick momentum in Southern India as well. Ariviyal Palagai in Tamil means a community forum of science. This was the name that we gained through initially while speaking with various Tamil-speaking science communicators. With the help of a number of local science & technology organizations in Tamil Nadu, we launched the science communication, popularization and extension programme in Tamil with a two-day confluence of ideas on how to take this programme to different parts of the Tamil-speaking geographies. A monthly newsletter, as usual, was suggested to be the regular medium to popularize Ariviyal Palagai.