After 45 years, I was returning to my native place Bantwal (near Mangalore) for a longer stay of two months. Ever since I left it for my studies at IIT and then abroad, I have visited it very frequently but only for one or two days. This is a typical rural town surrounded by small villages dependent upon farming and beedi rolling.
In this town there is a five year degree college with 1000 students. Most of them are first generation literates. A large percentage (99 per cent) is not accustomed to read books other than text books despite the college having a good selection of books. These students for several reasons are also not accustomed or allowed to ask questions as in many other colleges.
Because of the well critiqued education system of ours, they are also not encouraged to think and develop their own solutions to any problems. To make some changes in this kind of rigid and learning-unfriendly environment, I experimented with seminar series called “True education” during my stay. It was a great success.
An experiment
I had 19 sessions with a small group of 20 students. We limited the participation so that every one can be given personal attention. They regularly attended these sessions over a period of seven weeks. None of the topics will help the students to score more marks. There was no compulsion to attend.
No student could relax and day dream since every one had to either ask a question or make comments during all these sessions on topics of wide ranging interests. I noticed a remarkable improvement during this short span. Students were hesitant to open their mouth before the beginning of the seminar series.
Towards the end they were completely transformed and there was not enough time to respond to all their questions.
The topics covered included philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurthy, NGO movement in India, world and Indian history, India’s energy crisis, communism, socialism and capitalism, liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, and critical factors for India’s development. I spent just 15 minutes at the beginning of each session introducing the topic. The remaining 75 minutes were spent for question and answers.
During the valedictory, every student made a short presentation on what they got out of this seminar series. Every one wanted this experiment repeated for the benefit of other students who missed the opportunity. 
The results
Many girls mentioned that they have now started to read news papers and that too critically for the first time. Many talked about the courage they have acquired as a result of their participation to ask questions not only in the classrooms but also in government offices.
All have determined to take up some civic cause to fight for like untouchability, casteism, dowry system, gender bias, child labor, plastic menace, water harvesting, tree planting, improving the local hospital, etc.
Some teachers who observed the program in action were wondering how to complete the syllabus if students got transformed and start asking questions as a result of this program. On the other hand teachers at Bantwal College were happy that some of the participating students have already changed the class culture by taking greater part in the discussion and asking questions.
In our district five more colleges have already come forward to implement this program. There is hardly any cost to implement this program. Through this programme we can encourage independent thinking and critical questioning abilities on the part of students without having to wait for our political class and bureaucracy to take the needed steps to change the education system.
What we need are very few -just one or two per college- committed  teachers or educationists to get involved.