She took these samples to the city and got them tested and returned to the villagers to tell them that their water was contaminated.

She was one of the eight students selected by Agilent Technologies under its corporate social responsibility initiative, We Heal.

The company in this new drive has decided to link students with development giving them an opportunity to apply their knowledge to the needs of the people in rural areas.

Says Pushp: "We had no clue what was in store when we got selected on campus. We just thought we would be associated with an MNC. But what we did was more than R&D. We got in touch with core village life. We met people who did not know they had a problem till we told them.

Their water had been contaminated with coliform bacteria as the tanks which received water from government supply were never cleaned and lids were open. Coliform travels in the air and the water was not fit for drinking."

The local NGO has agreed to take it up with the panchayat and the villagers have agreed to clean the over 10 tanks themselves rather than wait for government officials, she said.

The idea behind We Heal is that education can change the world. And no one could vouch for it better than Pushp or fellow students like Nandini Mitra, another student who was part of the two teams of eight students that Agilent sent on the village mission.

For Mitra of Jamshedpur, the visits to Kuppam and Kunigal in Tamil Nadu border were an eye opener as she and her friends returned with 18 samples of water. Water in Kuppam near the Kolar mines were contaminated and the water table was going down in the already dry area. The students in their second visit have advised villagers to change the patterns of vegetation to conserve water.

The students have now written to their university to involve more students in similar initiatives in the rural areas where they can use their knowledge for development.  Agilent is planning to go bigger this year with more students from other institutions to be involved in the education for development drive.

Says Agilent President and  Country General Manager Venkatesh Valluri: "We are world leaders in measurement science and so we can recommend ways to improve living standards, how people can at least stop using contaminated water, pesticide contaminated food grains and so on.

We want students to tell villagers what they can do if soil is not suitable and how to maximise gains from agriculture. They conduct water, food and soil testing after being trained by us for ten days."

NGO Agastya coordinates the programme with Agilent providing the ideas and funds. He adds that though the programme is called 'We heal', it is actually education for the students in the living conditions of the people around them. However the key objective is to improve health in villages, says Valluri.

Valluri wants to expand the $25,000-programme to more villages and more colleges. This time it was just Vellore Institute of Technology and a handful of villages in two districts.

Agilent Technologies CSR programmes have always had a sub-text of science and education. This year, the company decided to link it with the people and development.

It runs mobile science vans for educating rural children. The vans run in partnership with NGO Agastya in Karnataka villages displaying live scientific experiments. Valluri says the science vans funded by Agilent have so far created an impact on 20,000 kids in the last three years.

The company also funds training of teachers in government schools by teachers drawn from affluent private schools. Three schools in Bangalore and three in Gurgaon in Haryana have already undergone the Agilent intervention.

The company, which is present in seven cities in Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Ahmedabad, plans to scale up the newest programme We Heal there.