Rural Development and Panchayat Raj
We are working with the Rural Libraries network run by the Panchayat Raj department of the Govt. of Karnataka to promote astronomy in rural areas through these libraries and in Kannada.
A comprehensive and annotated e-library of freely available astronomy related multimedia material (posters, videos, podcasts, articles, etc) in Kannada has been collated and sent to the libraries for use in their computer labs.
Information in Kannada on upcoming naked-eye astronomy events is created in the form of posters, audio messages, etc, and are sent to the entire library network for dissemination.
A few in-person astronomy events including slideshows and telescope observations, have been organised through the IIA COSMOS-Mysuru program in a couple of rural libraries in person.
We are planning to ramp up our interaction with the libraries in the coming months.