Hello everyone, welcome to the NPTEL course on remote sensing and GIS for rural development. This is week 12 lecture 5. We have come to the last lecture for this NPTEL course and we have witnessed many themes that are related to rural development and how they could be improved or monitored or efficiency assessed using remote sensing data. The goal of this course is not using remote sensing as a tool just for mapping and taking data out, but as an application tool for development. When I say development, it is finding scenarios for development. Let's say we have a village and we need to assess how much resources are available for further development. This could be small scale cottage industries, artisans, where they have handicrafts and food items that they could create. And then water is needed for that, soil which is indirectly giving the crops. So we need good soil fertility, good water and crops for making these products. And then we also notice that the accessories that are needed for them also are not well mapped, which means like roads, amenities, roads, power, water supply, etc. Then finally, we also thought about how rural development scenarios can be created in the wake of climate change. Too much water, too less water, what to do, groundwater cannot be pumped for long. And we also looked at multiple satellites and studies that have used indicators for development. So in today's lecture, I would like to summarize all the 12 weeks and then see and show how they are interconnected so that we have an idea about rural development as a whole and how these remote sensing tools and GIS can aid for further development. Please note that saying development does not occur through data and proven methods is also a cause to fight for rural development. For example, you have a village where the land is fertile, but there's no water. That is a limitation. So that whole NMSU Foundation has worked very well on this particular theme. There's a lot of water in the river, but the farmers are in a higher elevation. And because of that, the rainfall, all the rainfall goes to them and then goes into the river valleys. So lift irrigation was done with a minimal cost like different pumping stages and stuff. And the cost was put on the farmers who are growing the crops because initially they were growing nothing. They were just foraging or doing migrating to urban cities, but now they are independent farmers in a community system. So this was possible because we could map the soil fertility, we could map the water availability. So what was difficult is if you have a 2D map, a plain surface map, then you have village and water supply, but it's not connecting. Why? Because the 3D says it is at a higher elevation, this is at a lower elevation. So there has to be some network to pump against gravity and that is energy intensive. So this is what we had aimed this course can do. Not all have the luxury of having good NGOs like NMSAP Guru are not blessed with very good NGOs that work for the people. A lot of regions are still without connectivity and NGO helps or academic studies. So the idea was to build the capacity using these lectures, introduce GIS and remote sensing concepts, introduce the data sources and possible problem statements for you so that you could visualize the problem and then work on solutions using map samples. Now this becomes associated with rural development. So let us start today's full lecture in terms of summarizing and stuff. First, I would like to go back to the Ministry of Rural Development webpage where we discuss the different ministries available. What we found out is most of the people talk about the MG Narega scheme where the farmers are given 100 days work and wages so that they could stay in their villages throughout the year because 100 years is normally the non-wonson time, no water, no crops growing. So if the farmers are compensated for their time in that part then the rest 200 days they get good water and some soil and fertility they manage. The good concept now coming is initially it was just 100 rupees and they would just do random stuff for the village but now they can work on improving the water structures, improving the soil fertility through IWMP practices and other things and that is where you see a confluence and convergence of schemes and then once the fertility is good so the 100 days they don't have work so they work for this and the government is paying them and then after that what happens the soil fertility is good. Now the farmer who has put 100 days can actually use the benefits of the soil fertility, the water availability and have better croppings so this will make sure that our backbone of India which is the agriculture still gets a breathing space in the high tech world and also grows along with the other people. Still we are an agrarian nation which means most of the population is dependent on agriculture as a livelihood and then we do have to acknowledge that fact. So what we did initially is we went through this webpage and then discussed about the departments, the documents, the dashboard. Again dashboard we covered in this week only to showcase that there are multiple dashboards and it's easy to use. Sometimes the data is already processed for you so all you have to do is run it and then collect the results and then put it for your research outputs or your thesis etc. So then you have your media coverage publications release etc. You can also see that the major themes schemes that are there under the ministry are the Montega is number one then schemes for women, self-help groups, roads and then housing and then in SAP, SAGY, DDU, GKY, livelihood building, livelihoods, Teodoya and Ruben. Ruben is mostly to scale between the urban and rural in between there is a parcel of land that is called Ruben and we also make sure that peri-urban conversions of rural to urban or urban to rural has to be checked. So these schemes are already there and the prime minister schemes are all more are coming on mapping so Gatishakti has a big component for mapping anything like that that can lead to better development in India it could be industrial development but still industrial development requires a lot of contribution from the rural world and the rural world should be mapped. So that is where we are also putting some recommendations for Gatishakti on using mapping exercises for rural entities. So this webpage is very important as those who want to still be associated with India's rural development I recommend you to please keep an update on this website visited often so that you can have some data on the applications and think how this can work right and then course week by week topics we'll start from here because I want to show how when you read and refresh your course for your exams please note that the questions will come only from the slides and the understanding from the slides I did not take a book and go through it because many tutorials are there for that and there is no exact book for rural development especially for India and Pan India so I have talked about the issues and concerns and how we can manage it using our system. So in week one what we had done is we had introduced what is rural development so it is very important to first get an understanding of what rural development is before working for rural development. So this this aspect is missing sometimes when we jump into a research project or a theme or for a course we think these are fancy terms but it is very very important to get sensitized to the word rural development and then so we went in, dived into this. First we talked about different sources and security measures like water security, food security in India and then how that puts a tremendous pressure on rural. So issues were first discussed and then some infrastructure issues like agricultural and rural infrastructures, agricultural infrastructures include dams, irrigation channels, lift irrigation schemes which are not fully funded, check dams those kind of things. These are not just water but there's soil, there's fertility, etc. The rural infrastructures could include the schools, the libraries for rural people and then better connectivity of roads, water supply system, sanitation, access to healthcare, all these stuff are very very important. I recommend you to go to villages often to see these structures so that you could assess the the growth of India and also find some locations where some some more aspects could be developed. For example we do have very good schemes but sometimes the schemes find it difficult to get to the ground why because there are multiple resources constraints. So I always say that medicine is difficult to get into the villages but if you go to the villages you still find bottle drinks. So how can a bottle drink go through the roads and networks but medicine cannot go. So this is something which always shakes me up in terms of thinking about rural development and if there could be a mechanism where we could use and benefit from the other resources that are available that would be a win-win. So for example with along with these delivery systems some medicine can also be delivered to reshops. Just check just go as a tool you can go and then check what is rural development after this course to get better feeling of what is needed and how maps can help. So if you can map these locations also that will be great. So there is a mapping community that IT Bombay is going to start under our lab. It is called IU map and Indian Union of Mappers where these maps can actually help discuss about rural development in a higher level. So as I said there are a lot of issues we in the first week we went through most of these issues we discussed them through scientific methods literature review and some articles also from the government think tanks like CAG and stuff. Then what we did in week two is we introduced the geospatial technology. So first we had issues and in issues I had hints saying that remote sensing can help. GIS comes later so remote sensing data monitoring all these things can help and or finding regions for activities. For example if you have the water recharge structures needed there's a budget for water recharge structures but we don't know where to put it. So that is where these remote sensing GIS tools can help to find potential recharge zones in the area. So week two was devoted for that for understanding what is the data issues and what is remote sensing. So since we are having a course which is titled RS and GIS we discussed what is remote sensing and the very simple definition that we can give minimal definition is that it is something that you process that you collect data from an object without touching the object. So if in those days you have a thermometer that you put in the mouth or your armpit and then you are measuring temperature. That was not considered as remote sensing but nowadays during the COVID era you had the guns where they would take the temperature from you with thermometer guns and without touching your body because through COVID there was a lot of transmission. So that is a remote sensing device. It is measuring a temperature of a body without touching the body. So that we used across remote sensing is everywhere we use it but we don't call it. Photographs are kind of remote sensing. We don't touch the object. We take an image and then a lot of other things. So satellite data is mostly remote sensing data. It doesn't touch the object. It just senses the reflection of the natural environment which is your sunlight reflected or a natural body emitting the radiation. There are also other methods where we saw that the satellite can itself send pulses of energy and then wait for it to be reflected or reflected back and that is also called active sensors. Passive sensors are where we don't have to give that much energy. So these are very important and very cool concepts. Now I would probably say that most of you can discuss at a higher level what satellite is and how satellites work through this course. So there is one component where we talk about rural issues and then we find and identify remote sensing as a tool that can augment, that can aid for rural development and then we discuss about rural remote sensing, etc. And then the idea is remote sensing is still a tool but how do you process the data then you use GIS platforms. So we discuss about what is remote sensing, very detailed and how it's being used for rural water and crop management, acreage which leads to more development of rural agricultural practices and then how do you assess the rural infrastructure using remote sensing. For example there could be a scheme which says there is a full house is built but then the size of the house, the dimensions, locations, etc. might be not accurately captured. So remote sensing can actually capture these at a very, very high level of accuracy. Then we went into week three where we had introduction to remote sensing and open source data systems. So once we said okay remote sensing is could be a potential tool, we also need to give them the sources for the data. Otherwise there is a big misunderstanding that it's a fancy tool, it cannot be used for rural development. So that's why we had promised that in this course we only use open source systems and data that is free so that we can use it directly for rural development. Everyone is in the baseline, we could build infrastructures, rural development scenarios using just the open source because if it is urban cities that are bigger data sets that are available and there is a lot of money that is being paid for these data and software because there is a big need but people should also put the same need for rural entities however the data is at a different level. So that is why we use open source data and we want to create capacity that can use open source data and open source mapping software which is QGIS. So we gave an introduction to open source data system not only from India which is boven but we also gave NASA, ESA which is the U.S. agencies for space research and also the European agency ESA. So then we also looked at themes, thematics. So some students are more interested in surface water hydrology, groundwater hydrology, soil moisture. So we gave them all data sets that can be developed using these remote sensing tactics. Then we went to introduction of remote sensing for data for soil and climate because soil moisture and climate play a very vital role in the rural development. Carbon sequestration is also there and we need to understand that rural communities play a very vital role in sequestering carbon without their knowledge because if they process and maintain the land properly there's a lot of carbon that can be sequestered. So now we have discussed about these data sets and how we use the data sets we need a software and that is where GIS comes. GIS stands for geographic information systems. We said that this is where the data converts to information so it is not a GDS where geographic data system is not it is an information. So from data from the remote sensing we converted to an information tool using GIS. GIS plays a very vital role and again we gave us very short introduction to QGIS which is quantum GIS and open source software for using GIS. The other objective I cleared here is that these tools are as important however we cannot in this course give full lectures on these because each one is a lecture by itself an NPTEL course by itself. However I have given links to good NPTEL courses that I feel that talks about the basics of remote sensing the applications of remote sensing and GIS I've also given a lot of tutorials and links to learn GIS, QGIS, etc. The idea is if you have the basic understanding then you can fit in quickly into this course. We did give some more hands-on exercise. I gave another week of GIS QGIS training. We introduced again the GIS concept install QGIS software and then different types of data in GIS which are vector and raster and we discussed about the tools that are available for vector analysis. This was followed by applications of these tools in real time data. So there are a set of tools that are available for vector analysis. We discussed them and then we said okay now these tools have very specific roles and can be very very handy in certain types of role development applications. So we discussed the tools and we discussed the applications also. One example I would like to offer now is now we know how to extract the location of schools and now if I put a buffer using the vector analysis tool buffer then I could say that within 300 meters how many houses are there. I can extract the number of houses and then say that this school is very very optimal for the houses within 300 meters or 400 meters because the students the kids can walk and come to school and then go back first. If they take like how my father and my family had to struggle to go to school like it takes like two three hours a day just one way then the student gets very tired right and it is it is the energy is lost mostly for commuting and then once you go commute and then you sit in the lecture or the class then you're not in a very good position to grasp all the the education. That is one of the reasons you see that these school buses and college buses nowadays have a lot of people sleeping just keep on sleeping so that when they go there they're fresh or and or they don't have energy to to work on after class. So this is very important. Please understand that the vector tool buffer played a very vital role in week five. We shifted to the other part of the data system which is raster data. We differentiated how vector and raster are different and for rural development raster data is a is a boon because it gives a continuous data across the surface not only one two data points but across the surface you have data continuous data and we gave introduction to the raster tools. One of the raster tools is masking and then how the data should be stored. This is very important why because we have a global data that comes in as raster. The pan world, pan India will come. How do you extract just your village? So therefore that we had discussed masking tools and also I need to introduce here again that we have given links to authentic boundary data for India which is very very important. I still see a lot of boundaries that are misrepresented across publications. It is as per the law of Indian government you cannot have wrong boundaries on your publications reports etc. Under the penal code it is not allowed and strict actions would be taken. So please be careful and don't tell that we didn't inform while teaching. The boundaries of India should be intact. It is our integral property and I recommend everyone to use the sources that are recommended by the government which is the survey of India maps. We have given the links as I said these get updated very very accurately by the government of India and cite them. So you can cite that these are the boundaries I use. This is the citations I have. You could see that India is actually bombarded on all angles on the boundaries. We are always under tension for boundaries because the people misplace their boundaries and India is fighting back. It is our integral property. So we should also as citizens through this course make sure that we use correct boundaries. For example in the waterways there is a particular boundary. In the Himalayas there's a boundary. On the northeast there's a boundary. All these places have boundary issues. So please make sure that we follow what is the government's rule and make sure that we support the government's activities. Then we have the week six where we talked about the CRS and projections. The coordinate reference systems and projections intro we gave which are very important but nowadays because the data is so dynamically you can change using GIS software. These are very very quickly you can change. In those times you have to go to the catalog, change it, copy paste it, etc. Now just click up a button it changes. And then you also had a hands-on tutorial of converting a print image to raster, georeferencing an image. And then once you georeference you can extract data and information from it through extraction tools or new shape files. That was very very important because a lot of data is not available and so we had to use a scanned map downscaled into your, so for example a map could be this big a bigger of a table. You scan it in a commercial scanner, make it as a small PDF, zoom it in and then not out, zoom it in and then you put it into your GIS map because the whole world is in your GIS. So this map cannot be bigger than that. So you can put it to fit and then play with it in terms of zooming in and out and then extracting the data out. So that was very key. It's a good trick that I've taught a lot of students because the maps have a lot of value and data. However it was not digitalized. There was a lot of money that was need to be spent in those days to digitalizing it. But now you can do it with very very quick time and an open source software. So all you need is your time. Within an hour you can actually geo-reference an image, take the data out and then put it on a map, which is no one will have this data. So only the paper data is there and now you've converted to digital data. Then there is week seven. In week seven we have the Google Earth Pro. We introduced the another open source software platform dashboard where a lot of data can be stored and extracted based on your regions. And also it was very handy to extract ground control points for geo-referencing. Then we looked at the QGIS plugin called pick map, which gives you a base layer behind your maps so that you can extract more data or information. Suppose you're making a new shapefile, you wanted to make sure that there is a base map under your map to negotiate the locations and accuracies. Then we jumped into the digital elevation models which are very very important. It captures the elevation gradient across the area and we gave them an introduction to these models and resources and how do you extract it out using the raster data tools, which is the mask. In week eight and nine, we devoted two weeks on land use, land cover change. This was very important because as I said, to consider and support further rural development, we need to understand the resources available, which starts with land, fertility, soil and water availability. Then you say, okay, an industry, a small-scale industry can come or not, a decentralized processing can come or not. These kind of things can be done. For example, there's no herb medicine gardens available. So we do have the folk medicines, very, very traditional medicines in a very non-traditional way. We just hear, okay, these herbs can be cured, but we don't have an industry that is being developed all around there. There are industries coming, but we need all parts of India to be mapped because depending on the region, India has rich knowledge of traditional medicine. These can be developed if you have more understanding of the LULC. Then this LULC was also contributing to the water and land management. We discussed a lot of these proxy data that LULC can give to support water and land management. We also looked at multiple sources for LULC, starting from Bhuvan, Google, Earth Probe, on the fly, LULC, et cetera. We also discussed that there are some data issues and capacity issues across. So you see outdated maps mostly. And the classification is not following a particular method. It is very important to use one common ideology across India. And there are literature, traditional literature that talks about these land. For example, since I was growing up in Tamil Nadu and taking literature, in those days, the land was divided as per the water and fertility available. So for example, Kurunji means it's a land type. It's a land use classification, land cover classification, Kurunji, which means that those land parcels, the label parcel, it represents the land that is on mountains, hills, and around it, very, very close to the hotels. So you will see that the growing of crops was different. Flowers was different. Jackfruit, for example, is one which only grows in those kind of altitudes. And the process of livelihood options were different. I'm talking about thousands of years ago. So these schemes were already done. LULC was already done. And based on that, you will see the livelihood was assessed. If you were in the desert area, it is called Pali. There's not much work you could do, but there are some works that were done. Nadal was near the coastal regions where fisheries was important, aqua was important, aqua, culture, and most are fishing and processing the fish. Nadal would be more on land, flat land where you did cultivations, rice, millets. Millets was more important. So this is also another thing that we need to understand. With the LULC classifications, there was a lot of ideologies from the past that what did we grow now, what was grown before, and why this transition has happened and how it impacts the land. For example, we have converted from millets to rice in the past. And because of that, the soil quality has changed. Because of that, the water availability has changed. Millets could use only one third or one fourth of the water that the rice used. And this is where we could save and then feed more people. Millets are more nutritious. And these were the traditional rural food. But now we have changed. Is it good or bad? We don't know because it is taking a toll on the water and soil industries. Then we also looked up on issues in water availability for crop irrigation, especially the Rabi and Zahid irrigation season. How do you assess these irrigation seasons? We looked at using the different indicators. So LULC also gives you options to look at NDVI's and other indicators, Gugan indicators we have seen. And then we stopped saying that even though these are there, there is more need for crop type, crop acreage and crop yield mapping. So if you know the crop type, then we can say, okay, the same color is there from the spectral image. So we can make a parcel of sugarcane, for example. And then we know the area of sugarcane that is called crop acreage. Once we know the acreage, a particular yield estimate is there, let's say one ton per acre. And if this one ton is not reached, then there is some issues there. So how can we help them? This is rural development. So just supporting and developing more for their livelihood options is very, very key for rural development. We looked at that in week nine. And then in the week 10, we looked at the crop statistics, how we can use a more sensing for crop statistics. And indicators for crop health and growth. Again, NDVI was key because the greenness of the plant indicates how good the crop is growing, how healthy the crop is going. And based on the healthiness, the yield changes. So you get that if the health is of the plant is deteriorating, the farmer has to rush to put fertilizers, pesticides or water, which cost money. And if the farmer is being told that don't just let it grow, we will pay the money that you're going to invest because your yield is not going to come that much. You don't spend 1000 rupees to get 50 rupees. So that is what unfortunately happens in rural regions. So you would see a lot of times on the news that farmers throwing down the tomatoes for low price or letting the cattle and livestock just eat the tomatoes and flowers and vegetables. Why? Because they don't even have money to harvest it and bring it to the market when the market rate is so low. And tomatoes are very good examples. Sometimes you buy tomatoes for 100 rupees. Sometimes you buy for five rupees. Look at the difference. So if the farmer thinks, oh, I'm going to get 100 rupees. So I'm going to spend 70 rupees to harvest it, take it to the market. And then right there I do some commissioning and sell it. So at the end of the day, I make 20 rupees profit. If this profit is there, it's fine. But if you're going to the market price only five rupees because of the bumper crops, then what is the point of taking this to the market? And the market taking the to the market is also going to be expensive. You have to pay for transportation. So this is what the crop growth, acreage and health can help. And as I said, above and gives you data, but still there's more data needed. And then in week 11, we said, we discussed about the RS indicators, which are very important that can help just the bands, just the satellite data may not be enough. You would need more data along with the remote sensing indicators. So that for that, we said crowdsourcing will be a way forward. And we found OSM app as a very good crowdsourcing tool, which everyone should be using for working under the rural development. Not only you are downloading the data, but you can also contribute so that others can be able to use it. So in the exercise also, we found that my own village school was not mapped, my father's school was not mapped. So we created the map and now if you open OSM, there is a map of my father's education. So which is good. Like now through the course, we could work with students and then showcase and have a live example that the database is for rural schools, but there is missing this school and I know that school exists because when I go to the village, I see it. I see it on the map, but it is not on the database. So we can as a crowdsourcing initiative, we can also download the data and input the data. So that was looked upon and most importantly schools and healthcare because this plays vital role for rural development. If students get opportunity for higher education and education, they get access to more and more development scenarios. Same as healthcare, we have more healthcare options and if their health is better, then we have better access for them and they can concentrate on rural development issues, not their health issues. So if you're always sick, you cannot concentrate on your studies. So same thing like this. If the rural population is not healthy, they have to be given the right opportunities for healthcare and healthy as in they don't, if they are sick, they should not be walking or going one day travel for different villages and stuff. So they have to have access to good quality healthcare systems. So then the last one we looked at is the government databases for Mandrega and IWMP. So Mandrega is the 100 day scheme as I mentioned, but more importantly, it covers the data sets of where these structures are coming up. So as I said, initially it was only 100 rupees, but now we have them giving data for where the locations, where are they put to use? So the farmers and people, rural people, where are they going and putting their systems in? So that is what the Mandrega database has and how that IWMPs are done, the integrated water management plans and projects. So the government databases we have discovered and how can we use that for indicators we covered in week 12. And this book was just recently released by one of my colleagues in the World Bank and he had put it on his social media. So I just thought, this couple of days ago, irrigation from space, as correctly says, using remote sensing for agricultural water management. Water management is very, very key for the remote sensing applications and also for rural development. So I encourage you to go and read this book. It's free open source and it is, this is what most of the governments will follow because it has been written and published along with the FAO, which is the Food and Agricultural Organizations of the United Nations with active funding from the World Bank. So we are here on the last last slide for this NPTEL course, which as I said, I enjoyed as much as you had taken it. To conclude, the NPTEL course of remote sensing and GIS for rural development was discussed. We started with the concept of rural development. We work backwards. So we said the topic is remote sensing and GIS for rural development, but we start what is the rural development? We went into remote sensing than GIS. We defined and elaborated these schemes of rural development and how that works for everyone who work on the rural development scenario. What are the key players? What are the key stakeholders, who are them and where are they located and how data has been transferred? Then the key concept was analyzed for rural development. What do you mean by rural development and how can you access these key concepts? So this part was covered using studies and also government reports because we have to follow the government regulations in assessing the concepts. Then we had open source remote sensing and GIS source discussion. This was important because when you work on a system, we should not be crippled is what I would use. Without data, you cannot work. So someone should not come to me and say, I'd like to work on it, but there's no data. So that is the only reason that there is a lot of efficiencies lost in the rural schemes. So that is where we said open source remote sensing data and GIS can be used. And these links were also finding the data is also a big task. So I think I can even go on a lecture just sitting with you and looking at how to search for data, how to collect data. It takes time. But still we shared with you the class what data we had. And I still remember like many times when I present even the top stakeholders like, for example, accommodations or government officials who say, where did you get this data? I didn't know this data existed. So this comment comes because they are not aware. And also maybe I was not aware, I was told by someone or I searched, I was lucky, I got it. So this part is to be done. And that is where I said we shared an indicator database. I shared a database with hundreds, 250 plus indicators using remote sensing and the links to where you can find the bands and the links where you can find and download the data. So all these links were given for you to understand the concept of remote sensing and bring it together for using data. Then the last thing we discussed was how do you synergize all this data? You have remote sensing data, you have government observation data, you have crowdsourcing data. How can you synergize them into a particular output? And that was called synergized mapping which has been, as I can say, has been trademarked, but still feel free to use with a simple TM. And it has been very, very helpful for creating a new understanding and database across the system. So application of remote sensing and JS can lead to better understanding. This is the conclusion. And management for rural resources that can aid for rural development. So you can see that application of RS and GIS first increases the understanding for management and the rural resources, identifies new resources, potential, and this can lead for rural development. Then we also shared across how the government is working, how the FAO is working on these things. There's a lot of books, links, and I'd be happy to keep on updating on our websites throughout the course and stuff, so that you could definitely get into more data. If this was a live course, I would have given a project as a final exam, but since it's an NPTEL online course, I would encourage you to think about these things and most of your questions will be, or all of your questions will be from the slides that we discussed. The recordings serve as notes. The slides serve as your reading materials along with the concepts and links that I have shared. With this, I would like to conclude finally with a thank you note. I thank all the government of India sources where they give the observation data and the platforms, the dashboards, without which we cannot even start thinking on these processes. So the initiation came from the observation data and then the QGIS team for giving us this beautiful software for working on, they still keep on updating it, and there's a strong community of people who work free for this software on their volunteer time. Then we also thank the remote sensing data platforms, especially ISRO, NASA, ESA, because we use them a lot in this course. Again, all of them are open source that it is supported by some governments, but we are using it for our rural development, which is very, very good. This is how science and data should be. It should be across everyone, everyone should have access to it. Data should flow like water, I heard, and that is a good term to say, like how water flows, data should also flow so that everyone gets access to it. I also like to thank my collaborators and NGOs because they give us good understanding of the problem of good data through crowdsourcing, which has now been put on the web. Then the NPTEL team from ITB and IITM for giving us the chance and supporting us throughout this work. I'd like to thank my TA, especially Pranath, because he has been very active in the forum discussion and answering your queries. My team, Rudra, which is standing for the Rural Data Research Analysis Lab, this is the team that supports me in understanding the problems, bringing new problems and data sets that come up. You would have seen a lot of papers and outputs, dashboards that were discussed. All of them came from the Rudra team. I also would like to thank the departments that I'm associated with, SITARA, IDPS, CPSC, MINDS, four departments in IT Bombay that I work across, and all the participants without you in this course would not have been possible. I would like to thank all of you for putting your time on this course, and I will see you in future courses that work on development scenarios. Thank you.


Assalamu alaikum viewers, welcome to virtual university, now if you remember in the last lesson we looked at the three structural parts of a paragraph. In addition you will learn that a good paragraph has the elements of unity and coherence. We will first look at unity in a paragraph, how unity is created in a paragraph. A good paragraph has unity that is that each paragraph is about one main idea, only one main idea is discussed. Unity again has two parts. Every supporting sentence in the paragraph must be directly related to the main idea, this is the first part of unity. Remember do not include information which is not directly supporting the topic sentence, that is do not include irrelevant material, do not talk about irrelevant things. Example if your paragraph is about the advantages of foreign travel, discuss only that, do not discuss travelling locally, the advantages of travelling locally because your topic was advantages of foreign travel. To make it better discuss only one advantage in each paragraph, however sometimes it is possible to discuss two or three aspects of the same idea in one paragraph, but only if they are closely related to each other, mind you the emphasis is on there being closely related to one another. The second part of unity is that every supporting sentence must directly explain or prove the main idea which is expressed in the topic sentence. Students often write supporting sentences that are way of the topic, but if you go on to write three or four sentences on inflation and the difficulty of educating three or four children of a family, then you are wide off the mark, wide off the topic and your paragraph will lack unity. So, the unity of a paragraph is determined by the terms of the topic sentence, your topic sentence sets the terms, the key terms of the paragraph, otherwise if your sentences they must relate to the key terms, otherwise it must be left out. Look at the following paragraph and see which sentence does not contribute to a unified effect. Now, I am just giving you practice, you look at paragraphs and notice once you begin to spot a sentence that is not part of the paragraph, you will realize and I hope you will go on when you write yourself, not to write such sentences. In the following paragraphs, there are sentences which do not contribute to a unified effect. The first one is about playing tennis, playing tennis keeps my mother fit. The first sentence says running around the courts keeps her muscles toned up and gives them the flexibility of a teenager, fine. The second sentence says we still have the cup she won for finishing first in the one mile race in her college annual sports. Number three, the sentence says serving especially gives her a sense of balance and sentence number four says even at the age of 50 my mother continues to play tennis and she plays it well. Now notice out of those four sentences, there is one sentence which is a bit off the mark. It does not contribute to a unified effect, it does not contribute to giving the paragraph a unified effect and which sentence would that be? That would be sentence number two. Sentence number one running around the courts, sentence number three is about serving and sentence number four says that even at this age she plays tennis and she plays it well. So those three sentences are more or less they go together but sentence number two which talks about the cup that she won when she was in her college days that has nothing to do with mother playing tennis well. I hope you have got the idea that your sentences must contribute to towards the unity of the paragraph. Let us look at another example. In this paragraph notice how the details are unified they are all about the same subject they are all about the same topic of the paragraph. Now in the first example that you had about tennis there was one sentence that was not in place in this example you will notice that one sentence after another builds up the unity of the paragraph I will read it out for you.   He had a passion for food and a passion for ideas. Now take the constitution for instance I cannot believe that we have made a mess of it there is only one way to come out of this practical mess. He would continue examining one idea after another his strong protruding teeth would glisten from far away as he sat in the midst of friends eating and discussing. Now how do you determine that this is a unified paragraph notice that the specific terms of the subject or the topic and the specific terms of the comment about the subject Hamid is the subject and it is obvious that only concrete explanations would maintain unity. The first sentence says that Hamid is a big bouncy guileless man right and the sentences that follow they pack in one example after another and unity would be maintained only by giving providing concrete explanations and not just any vague comment about him. Now notice that comment is Hamid is a subject the comment on Hamid is that he is a big bouncy guileless guileless means somebody who is straight forward and then you have got another comment on him that he has a passion for food and a passion for ideas and notice that the paragraph talks about his passion for food and it talks about his passion for ideas and how he continues talking and eating in the midst of friends. So that would be considered a unified paragraph. Now there is another example here is another example and you notice note the details that have been selected to develop the topic. And these details are more specific more concrete than the topic idea. Now one thing you must remember that you must not lengthen paragraphs by throwing in more generalities this is a very interesting paragraph. Notice that in this paragraph there is a sentence which is not concrete and notice that it is the same idea that is repeated. The young Pakistani woman has become a puppet in the hands of fashion gurus. She does everything they tell her to do. She raises hemlines when they give her the nod. They are lowered when a new look is needed to raise sales and at their suggestion she wears bright colors and when they propose dull colors she takes to wearing drab colors. Now in that paragraph it is sentence number two which merely repeats what the topic sentence says. The topic sentence says that the young Pakistani woman is a puppet in the hands of the fashion gurus. Sentence number two says that she does whatever they tell her to do which is a repeat of what is said in the first one. You not only repeat the same statement in different but equally general words. Now in the examples that you have seen so far all the details have been equal to one another. Now this does not happen all the time. The details of a paragraph may have other logical relationships to each other. There may be subdivisions and further subdivisions of subdivisions. For example if you are asked to write on the characteristics of a good Pakistani citizen you may break down those characteristics into three subdivisions. You could say awareness, you could say knowledge and action. These are three characteristics. Now these three characteristics can be further broken down and you may provide concrete examples, concrete details of all or some of the subdivisions and it need not be in the same quantity for each. Now have you got what I said? I said that when you are writing you can break down at times, subdivide it and those major divisions can be further broken down. The breakdown need not be the same for each major division. Look at this topic characteristics of a good Pakistani citizen and I said that we can break it down three major characteristics. Number one is awareness and you can break it down into that by awareness you mean his awareness of what is happening in the world around him at the local level, at the national level and at the international level. You have broken down the characteristic of awareness into further subdivisions. In the same way a good Pakistani citizen you would expect him to have knowledge, knowledge of what? Knowledge of his basic human rights, knowledge of his constitutional rights. So you notice that over there the major division was further subdivided into two and for the third one action we have participation in community work. You would expect a good Pakistani citizen to participate in community work. You would expect him to participate in political work, political activity said by casting votes by taking part in campaigns right. Now that was one way of breaking down topics into divisions and further subdivisions. A good effective paragraph should be long enough to clinch its point. Now I am talking about the length and the type of paragraph. Your paragraph as I said it should be just long enough that long enough to clinch the point it is trying to make. Now how can that come about will depend on the topic and the purpose or the audience who are going to read what you are writing right. It will depend on the topic and the audience who is going to read the writing. For instance a strong argumentative position might require proof and you will have to see if the terms of the topic have been discussed. It varies from purpose to purpose. Let us have some practice you will have topic sentences and you look at the key terms the topic sentence sets out the key terms. Look at the topic sentence and its key terms then decide which detail would not be related to the key term. The topic sentence is folk songs are popular because of their greater realism. Folk songs are popular because of their greater realism. Now the topic is folk songs but what are the key terms. The key terms are popular and greater realism and the details decide which detail would not be related to the key terms and you have got four choices. This participation A, B honesty about love we are talking about folk songs and folk songs are generally people participate in them spontaneously and the love that they discuss there is somehow a genuineness about it. Point number three is that they are they deal with very powerful down to earth emotions and if you add a detail such as how folk songs are involved with ecology now would that be appropriate detail no over there any talk about involvement with ecology. Of course you can make a far fetched illusion to it and say that folk singers are related to the soil and no in fact detail A B and C can be used to talk about the topic sentence to expand the topic sentence. Let us look at another one. You have a sentence which says inflation has affected a varied cross section of the public. Inflation has affected a varied cross section of the public. The topic sentence the topic is inflation and the key terms are affected and cross section cross section of the public and the details that you would that you would normally have would be that you talk about people with fixed incomes you talk about inflation affecting petty shop owners you talk about medicines inflation affecting medicine and hospital charges how these things have gone up. But would your paragraph need sentences about overcrowded hospitals and conditions in hospitals the overcrowded conditions. Then detail D detail number D is would be inappropriate it would not hammer in the point that A B C would do. Let us look at another one these are all samples to make you realize that when you write a paragraph your paragraph has to be a united whole now look at the topic sentence over here and see the details that are given you which detail would not be unified with the regard to the key terms of the topic sentence. The topic sentence is the pollution problem has increased in great proportions. The topic sentence is the pollution problem and the key term is increased your paragraph could have sentences about cars and buses on city streets you could talk about deforestation you could talk about polluted rivers. But if you have a paragraph if one of the details that you include in the paragraph is about the competition of imported vehicles between the different companies the car companies that sell their cars in Pakistan would that be adding to the unity of the paragraph no that is that would be totally irrelevant. Now let us look at another example it is a paragraph on historical novels and you have three major details which detail would not be considered a subdivision one appeal to patriotic feelings B historical novels are usually based on fictitious events C historical novels usually present events in a very simplified way and D historical novels glorify war now out of these four which detail is not a subdivision in the development of a paragraph on historical novels which one I would consider number D that it does not help in the development of a paragraph on historical novels. Let us look at another example for example you were asked if you are asked to write a paragraph on Urdu films which three details would be grouped under a major subdivision about the qualities of a hero of the hero in a Pakistani film. Now the qualities are A he can sing and dance B he emerges from fights without a scratch C he can jump from great heights and D that Urdu films have monotonous plots out of those four details there is one which three details would be grouped under a major subdivision it would be A B and C number D would not come under the qualities of the hero let us look at another example now over here you are asked to write three sentences that develop the following topic sentence the sentences modern technology has helped the housewife modern technology has helped the housewife that is the sentence the key terms are helped and housewife I will just give you a few hints you can write them down one hint would be that modern technology some of the gadgets they help they in saving time this saving labor saving effort look at all the gadgets in the modern kitchen in the same way if you were to include a sentence about modern gadgets like the washing machine it makes your washing efficient more easier and cleaner number three you can have a sentence about the fridge the modern fridge it saves housewives who are working women they can cook for they can cook a number of meals and store them in the fridge so this is just to give you practice that if you had this sentence modern technology helps has helped the housewife you would write three sentences of four sentences of five sentences in a paragraph all talking about the help that modern gadgets provide the housewife and I have given you examples right now up till now we were looking at the unity of a paragraph now we are going to look at coherence what is it that makes a good paragraph go here now coherence means to hold together now coherence in writing refers to the movement from one sentence to another to the next one and this movement must be smooth and it must be logical in the same way we are while we are talking about the paragraph in the same way in a longer piece of writing say an essay the movement from one paragraph to another must be smooth and logical in other words it means that there should not be sudden jumps sudden jumps in thought each sentence should flow smoothly into the next now coherence can be achieved in two ways one by using transition transition signals to show how one idea is related to the next and by arranging sentences in a logical order now let us talk about transitional transition signals I am sure you will say that we have had a lot of transition signals in our earlier lessons true we did but that was from the perspective of reading now we will we are now we are going to look at transition transition signals from the perspective of writing some writers think of transition signals as similar to roadside signs traffic signs which tell the reader which tell the reader the direction he or she has to take in other words they tell the reader when the writer is taking a similar route and it is words like similar more over furthermore in addition this these are signals for the reader to know that the writer is taking the same route and when the writer takes the opposite direction he uses he or she will use words like on the other hand however in contrast these are all signals for the reader or when he is giving examples he will give you signals like for example for instance and the reader knows that the writer is giving examples or he may use a phrase like as a result or he may use a phrase like in conclusion these are all signals for the reader now by using transition words you guide your reader and you make it easier for him or her to follow the writer's ideas it is transition words that give coherence to your paragraph let me repeat again it is transition words that give coherence to your paragraph now we will have a quick practice you look at two paragraphs and both the paragraph both the paragraphs give the same idea the same information yet one is easier to follow than the other because of the use of transition signals paragraph one I will read it out for you and you notice the difference students who come to college from high school find that at first they have a few problems their college is usually much bigger than their high school the new first year student often does not know any of the students of the higher classes these students are not always friendly to him or to her they play tricks on him or her or tease him or her before he or she was one of the biggest students in his or her in his or her school now he or she is one of the smallest another problem is that he or she is no has no longer his or her classroom he or she has to go to a different classroom for every subject the unfortunate student has to carry all his things with him or with her he or she is not used to this our first year student does not have a class teacher either instead of one teacher whom he or she knows well he or she has six or seven teachers whom he hardly knows at all the boy or girl starting college often finds it finds it rather strange at first now in this paragraph I wonder if you noticed let us read the second paragraph and then you yourself will notice the difference who come into college from high school find that at first they have a few problems the main problem is that their college is much bigger than their high school another thing is that the new first year student often does not know any of the students of the higher classes as well these students are not always friendly to him sometimes they play tricks on him or tease him another change is that before he or she was one of the bigger students in his or her school now he or she is one of the smallest yet another problem is that he or she is no longer he or she no longer has his or her classroom now he or she has to go to a different classroom for every subject and the unfortunate student has to carry all his things with him he is he or she is not used to this moreover our first year student does not have a class teacher either instead of one teacher whom he knows well he or she has six or seven teachers whom he hardly knows at all there is no doubt that the boy or girl starting college often finds it rather strange at first now I am sure you noticed the smoothness of the second paragraph if you look at that paragraph again you will yourself notice it each transition signal has a special meaning each one shows how the following sentence relates to the preceding one the sentence that has gone before it now it does not mean that you use a transitional signal in front of every sentence do you get my point it does not mean that you start every sentence with the transitional signal that would be just as confusing as having too few transitional signals so good writing requires that you use enough transitional signals to make the relationship the relationships among your ideas clear let us have a short practice of choosing transitional signals now we will have a couple of paragraphs and you have to choose the transition signal which is appropriate in that situation number one a recent article in the herald suggested ways to reduce inflation the article suggested that the prime minister reduce the central budget dash blank it suggested that the government reduce central provincial and local taxes which transition signal should be used in the blank space over there it has to be furthermore number two the writer said that the causes of inflation were easy to find dash blank the cure for inflation was not easy to prescribe which signal is required over there to make it smooth reading and the signal the word would be however number three in physics the weight of an object is the gravitational force with which the earth attracts it dash blank if a man weighs 150 pounds this means that the earth pulls him down with the force of 150 pounds which transition signal is required over there you can use for example right now that was one way of using of achieving coherence you can achieve coherence in a paragraph by using transition signals right now the other way the second way of achieving coherence in a paragraph is by arranging the sentences in some kind of logical order now as there are different kinds of logical relationships just as there are different kinds of logical relationships there are different ways of organizing ideas and sentences in a paragraph your choice of one kind of logical order over another will depend on the topic and the purpose of your writing it is possible to combine two or more different logical orders in the same paragraph and the two most common ways of logical order in the English way of writing are chronological and order of importance the word chronological is related to the word time chronological order therefore is a way of organizing the ideas in a paragraph in the order of their occurrence in time you could use this order of organization for something as simple as a recipe and you could use it for something as complex as a history as writing the history of any political movement however chronological order is not just used for historical events it is also used for explaining processes and procedures business science and engineering concerns a paragraph that explains how to solve a problem perform an experiment these are known as process or how to paragraphs a paragraph that tells you how to do a thing how to polish a shoes how to polish a car right you can write a paragraph how to mix this gas with this gas right now there are two important points that you have to keep in mind when you are writing a good chronological paragraph number one discuss the events all the steps in a process in the order in which they take place what comes first must be described first what comes next must be described next what comes after that must be described you have to keep that order number two use chronological transitional signals words like first next after then in 1940 1960 right you will not talk about 1960 first and then talk about 1940 you will keep the chronological order intact now look at two paragraphs the following two paragraphs they are organized according to time number one the first paragraph is the history of computers I will read it out for you the first generation of computers which used vacuum tubes came out in 1950 Univac one is an example of these computers which could perform thousands of calculations per second in 1960 the second generation of computers was developed and these could perform work ten times faster than their predecessor second generation computers were smaller faster and more dependable than first generation computers the third generation computers appeared on the market in 1965 right now if you look at that paragraph notice that its words like the first generation then you got the second generation then you got the third generation you got came out in 1950 then you got in 1960 and then you got in 1965 the chronological order has been maintained in that paragraph now this is another paragraph for you and this is a how to paragraph a paragraph that explains to you how to make something and this is how to make carrot pudding if you want to cook something that is delicious and quick quick to make try this recipe for carrot pudding first scrape the carrots one kilo and then grate them boil milk one kilo and add the grated carrots let them boil add one cup of sugar next beat one egg thoroughly pour the beaten egg into the boiling milk and carrots stir the mixture add two tablespoons of finely grated coconut mix well cook till mixture becomes thick turn off the gas when the mixture cools pour it into a dish notice in that paragraph the words first then next when right all related with steps all right let us move on now the topic sentence of a chronological paragraph in some way indicates the time order in the paragraph on computers phrases such as 1950 1960 was developed they give the reader a hint that this is a chronological paragraph in a process paragraph such as the one on how to make carrot pudding the process to be described is named in the topic sentence. Now, here is a quick exercise check with a tick mark those sentence those sentences that suggest a chronological paragraph will follow right and circle the word or words that indicate the chronological order the first one is done for you look at this sentence in the past thirty five years developments in the field of electronics have revolutionized the computer industry. Now, in that example it is the topic sentence in the past thirty five years that is the topic and then it talks about developments look at the next two three four sentences the worst day in my life was the day I left my family and my friends to come to Canada it is the day I left my family next one the life cycle of the Pacific salmon is one of nature's most fascinating phenomena and it is the word the life cycle gold is prize for two important characteristics it is gold and the two characteristics all right. Now, the other way of organizing a paragraph is to organize ideas in order of their importance this is done in two ways you can discuss the most important idea first the most important point first and work down to the least important point or you can begin with the least important point and end your paragraph with the most important the way you choose will depend on your topic and on your purpose of writing both ways can be effective. Now, suppose you were asked to write about two important influences on your life besides your family and you decide to write about a teacher who had so much influence on you that it somehow the influence change here again you would discuss the two influences in the order of importance how strongly each affected you again as with chronological order it is important to use transition signals to guide your reader from one point to the next now look at the two model paragraphs notice how they are organized the first paragraph it is a model paragraph as a child my favorite food was salted peanuts and I never seem to have to get enough every time I stepped out of the house I would think of some excuse to visit the corner shop which sold small packets of salted peanuts I even devised elaborate techniques for eating the stuff some I would eat from the from beginning to end starting at the top of the packet and ending at the salty base others I would throw casually into the air letting them land in my wide open mouths now the next paragraph that again is a model paragraph for more time more than 75 years my father functioned like a well oiled machine no matter what the time of the year what the weather he got up at 4 a.m. while it was still dark and went out for a long brisk walk with his dog he came back at 7 and went to work at exactly 7 30 but then one day nobody knows why the machine came to a halt my father just lay in bed it did not matter it did not matter anymore what time it was he just did not care his connections with the world seem to have snapped the lights seem to have gone out my father had decided not to live anymore and that was it now for homework you got two groups of paragraphs choose from group A and one from choose I am sorry and choose one from from group B write a paragraph on any topic that you would like to and remember to use transitional signals one is group A the paragraph will be on the order of importance and you will write on why it is important either to learn English to stop smoking or to reduce pollution any one of them and group B in chronological order you can write upon a typical day in your life a typical the happiest day in your life or the unhappiest day of my life so with that we come to the end of today's lesson Allah Hafiz see you next time.