The Village Water Survey
A Year 12 Hindi class of 24 students is preparing a bilingual report on water access for a partner school in a drought-affected district of Rajasthan. The students interviewed relatives and collected 60 responses. One student, Neha, wants to include her grandmother's account of walking 3 km daily for water. Another student points out that the sample is only relatives of a Sydney class, mostly from one district, and that the report may misrepresent the region. A third student has drafted a line saying the village 'has no water', which is not accurate. The teacher has one week before the report is due and wants the Hindi version to be authentic and respectful. A local NGO has offered to check the final draft but needs three days.
1. Identify the reliability and ethical problems in the class's data and draft, and explain how to address them within the deadline.
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The sample is not representative: 60 responses from relatives of one class, concentrated in one district, cannot support claims about a whole region. The draft line 'has no water' overstates the evidence and risks presenting a community as helpless, which is both inaccurate and disrespectful. Neha's grandmother's account is valuable as a personal testimony but must be labelled as one person's experience, not as a general finding. Within the week, the class should separate the report into a clearly framed section of personal accounts, where individual stories are attributed and dated, and a small data section that states the sample size, the location, and the limits of the sample. The phrase should be corrected to describe specific shortages, such as reduced supply or longer walking distances. The NGO's three-day check fits the deadline if the draft is sent immediately, so the class should send it before polishing the Hindi style.
2. Explain how the students should write the Hindi version so that it is both authentic and respectful.
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Authenticity here means using vocabulary that the partner school would recognise, keeping the register formal but not bureaucratic, and avoiding English loanwords where a standard Hindi term exists. Respect means describing people as agents rather than victims: instead of passive constructions that imply helplessness, the report can describe how households manage, adapt, and organise. Quotations should be attributed and kept in the speaker's own voice, with any translation noted. The students should also avoid generalising from their relatives' accounts to the entire district and should name the limits of the data in the Hindi text as clearly as in the English. Finally, they should invite the partner school to correct or add to the report, which turns the project from a one-way description into a dialogue and reduces the risk of misrepresentation.