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Friday, January 08, 2010

Why and What is Lohanasonline.com

Recently, we launched a website http://lohanasonline.com called Forum for Lohana Community. Many of the friends ask the aim of the site. Well, here I am briefing how and why the idea of the site came.


Being a teacher I feel off and on that the level of thinking in the youth is far lower than it should be. On many issues, most of the time, they do not have their opinion because they do not know the issues properly. Even if they know the issues, they do not wish to opine.  This is one of the major reasons why many of them lag behind. Besides, our present education system make (or force!!) them to be bookish only. It is more than sufficient for a student set a goal to get distinction -- and the irony is that they get it without knowing their subject. 

I have always wondered why do they not learn "how to learn". In the real life, at each and every stage, we need to learn new things. Not all could be taught in the school/college. Somehow we tend to force student prepare for the exam rather than learning how to learn. 

Even the cream students are unidirectional. Should an IT professional know the basic about History/politics/culture/movie/country...... When I ask my M.Sc. students from Junagadh who Ranakdevi was, I do not get the answer. Many of them are duped by me to believe that in a particular year Diwali would be in the month of Fagan. Many of them have read the novel of Narsinh Mehta!!!

All this have always provoked me to do something to make the youth think, to churn the thoughts in the deep of their brains. But for whom should I do? and how?

The natural choices for me are (1) my students (2) my caste fellows (3) youth of India. 

I chose the first to begin with. Then I extended my thought to the second. For the third there are many to take the leadership, it is better to contribute to support their efforts.  

To attract (drag!!!) lohana youth to discussion and inspiring (or instigating!!) I started with Lohana Community on Orkut. It prospered for some time but then quantity won over the quality (as it happens only in India!!!). So we were toying with the Idea of a forum for discussion (where one can discuss on every legitimate topic), which in turn will make the youth more participative in real issues, real problems and will grow the number of think-banks.  

Hence the present forum.

I hope this throws some light on your query.  If you appreciate the idea behind this, why not to join hands with many others who have already started sharing the their thinking/ideas/information and thereby generating knowledge? I should be glad to see you in action motivating other friends to express themselves on whatever thought they like. 

Love,

Dinesh Karia