Community Development Through Sustainable Technology—A Proposed Study with Irula Tribe of Masinagudi and Ebbanad Villages of Nilgiri District

Abstract: Irulars are one among six Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) of Tamil Nadu. In the study area, Masinagudi and Ebbanad villages, the Indigenous community dwells in thick forest region of Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary. In comparison with other PVTGs, Irula community of these regions are behind in development due to their remote location. They have very minimum basic amenities, nutritional deficiencies, high dropout rate in schools, low literacy rate, and often migrate
to other places in search of better livelihood. It resulted in the community to face the vulnerable living conditions. Unemployment, indebtedness, inadequate healthcare and poor education facility for children are increasing problems of this community. Added to that, the practice of unsustainable agriculture, chemical utilization, contaminating the wildlife habitats and nearby environment. The increasing conflicts of animal–domestic animal and animals–human shows that Irula community is at risk. The present study focuses on development of Irulas community with appropriate sustainable technologies reviewing successful intervention from different aspects. The probability of implementation of successful intervention of appropriate sustainable technologies will be presented as framework to promote the Irula community of Masinagudi and Ebbanad village of Nilgiris district.

Deep Learning based Emotion Analysis Approach for Strengthening Teaching-Learning process in Schools of Tribal Regions

Abstract: Emotions are individual traits for different sort of people especially for deprivation in the society, age long marginalization, inaccessibility of basic infrastructures, poverty etc. The vulnerabilities among tribal students can be understood and analyzed using the sophisticated technologies. Face detection and recognition of a human is an essential move in deep learning framework. Human emotion recognition assumes to be vital in finding out the vulnerabilities of individuals.The automatic identification of emotions had been a consistent research theme from early time periods .There has been a few advancements made in this fieldusing automatic identification of face emotion. Feelings are reflected from facial expressions, hand and signals of the body and through outward appearances. Thus understanding and extraction of these emotions have a high significance in the collaboration among human and machine correspondence.The paper aims to detect face emotions and annotates the every human in a given video using a combination of computational analysis, manual annotation, and experimental validation. The technique can be applicable for Tribal school kids for understanding the emotions. The system can recognize the emotion of kids and can authenticate the person.It can also be used in detecting and annotating unauthorized entries in restricted areas. Through the gaming platforms it is easy to attract the tribal students and to analyze their emotions and plan the developmental aspects based on the outcome. It will also help to understand the specific reasons of school dropouts and other issues students in tribal community face. Teachers can develop a framework using the reportfrom the application to improve the educational qualities of students. It can be concluded that Deep learning architecture –Convolution Neural
Network is able to accurately classify the emotions.

IDENTIFYING SITES FOR PROMOTING ECOTOURISM IN PHULWARI-KI-NAL WILDLIFE SANCTUARY (PWLS), SOUTHERN ARAVALLI HILLS OF INDIA

IDENTIFYING SITES FOR PROMOTING ECOTOURISM IN PHULWARI-KI-NAL WILDLIFE SANCTUARY (PWLS),  SOUTHERN ARAVALLI HILLS OF INDIA 

Promoting eco-tourism in Wildlife Sanctuaries without compromising conservation can provide an opportunity for interested people to be in the midst of biodiversity and rare biota. The study was carried out in Phulwari-ki-nal Wildlife Sanctuary of Rajasthan with an objective to identify potential sites for promoting ecotourism. Plant wealth of the region was enumerated using vegetation samples and information obtained from vegetation samples like richness, diversity, density of all life forms were brought into GIS platform. Normalization and scaling techniques was adopted and weightage was given according to floral components to generate floral diversity map. Based on thematic maps plant diversity hotspot, tourism spots, path for nature walk and habitats for threatened plants and orchids distributions were identified to promote the Ecotourism in PLWS.

Status of Ground Species Richness, Diversity, Percent Cover and Biomass of Papagani River Basin, a Tributary River of Pennar, Andhra Pradesh

In the present study, status of ground plant species of Papgani river basin was studied. A total of 210 sampling points were selected and nested plots were developed to quantify the herbs and grasses of this region. 156 plant species were recorded with the diversity (H) of 2.33 and density 16 plants/sqm. Biomass of an ecosystem showed 0.90t/ha with a ground cover of 54.32%. The regression analysis was carried out to examine the relationship between, density, ground cover and biomass. Relationships of above said variable was weakened by grazing, frequent fire and human intervention, the hypothetic statement was proved using “t test”. The anthropogenic threads dominate the fast growing unpalatable species like, Cymbopogon and Heteropogon spp. It reduces the productivity and functions of a river ecosystem.

UNICEF Social Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) training

Amrita University and enVision jointly organized four batches of training program on Social and Behaviour change Communication for the State Master level trainers of Tamil Nadu. This program was conducted under the “Swachh Bharat Mission” and creating Tamil Nadu as “Open Defecation Free” (ODF) State. The whole program was funded by the UNICEF. A total of 170 State level Master trainers were trained to do role on conduct periodic training at district and block level. Also the master level trainers offer training to the village leader, panchayat member, member of self help group and public. The idea behind of this planning is to create and promote the 50,000 trainer by December, 2015.

The course plans of four batches of training programs were Socio Ecological Model, Communication Plan, Counselling, understanding the Team Work, Usage of IEC materials, Behaviour Change Process, Tools used in Behaviour change process and Community Approaches to Total Sanitation (CATS) that includes Village Mapping, Transect Walk, Fecal Count, and Force Field Analysis and developing communication plan.

Four batches of training program organised in the month of October and November in SIRD (State Institute of Rural Development, Chennai Maraimalai Nager) premise. Participants were actively participated and given very good feedback about our training program. Also appreciation was received from the UNICEF India, Additional Director of Rural development department, Director, Additional director of SIRD. Success of this training program, Amrita University and enVision will jointly organised few more district level training program in future. Follow up of this training, separate workshop was jointly organised by the MoRD and SIRD at Hotel “Rain Tree” Chennai. The objective of this workshop was developing a future plan and analyzes the progress of SBM.