HSTP program also created its own curriculum and books, the uniqueness of these books was that these were workbooks in contrast of textbooks, all the books demanded exploring, performing activities, experiments to come to answers, in this process students curiosity used to get triggered and they used to come up with plenty of questions on daily basis, to address these answers a fictitious character called ‘Sawaliram’ was created who answered questions by thousands of children by mail each day! Students used to write postcards with their questions and several academicians, scientists from different parts of country took an active part to answer these questions.
At Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, the ‘Shanka-samadhan’ (‘Curiosity satisfied’) program addressed questions mailed in by children. In Kerala members of ‘Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP)’ who were also publishing magazines for children also used to respond to their questions. KSSP’s ideal of a ‘People’s Science Movement’ was adopted by popular groups in other States of India, leading in 1988 to the ‘All India People’s Science Network’. Currently, an online site, especially for Sawaliram, is created by HBCSE, TIFR former Director Jayshree Ramdas, which archives questions which were asked by students and their responses, the site (https://sawaliram.org/) is a current online version of Sawaliram where student’s questions can be submitted, viewed, answered, queried and analyzed.