Rajasthan Being A Lot More Than Desert To Longwa Being Part Of Two Countries- Content Creator Kavya Karnatac Unveils The Beauty Of India

In a conversation with ABP Live, Kavya shared what made her fall in love with geography, the interesting facts she uncovered and her favourite myths that she busted on the social media platform.

Kavya Karnatac

Source : Special Arrangement

Kavya Karnatac is a content creator who aims at reshaping education through captivating content. She is India's fastest-rising educational creator, hitting 1 million followers on Instagram in just 10 months. She left their comfy media job to craft a legacy education platform fueled by her love for geography and content creation which has quickly become a hive for engagement with their posts receiving an average of 1 Million views and earning accolades from government officials and the industry. 

Born in Nainital, Uttarakhand, Kavya's journey is a whirlwind of passion and innovation. Her captivating content deals in several myth busters and she also highlights lesser known facts about India and the world. 

In a conversation with ABP Live over email, Kavya shared what made her fall in love with geography, the interesting facts she uncovered and her favourite myths that she busted on the social media platform.

Here are a few excerpts from the interview:

What made you fall in love with geography?

When I started my content creation, I in fact started with geopolitics because that was the thing every content creator in the information realm was getting into. But I very soon realised that, hey, to understand geopolitics, I need to understand geography first. As I've started making videos on that, I realised that this is such a beautiful interdisciplinary subject, which is not just about mountains and rivers, as a lot of us are made to believe, but also about our food, our language, and the businesses that are the most popular in our states. Just about everything comes from geography, and to understand India, I genuinely think you need to understand geography. That was the first reason why I'm interested in this subject.

Myth-busting can be a fascinating endeavor. Can you share an example of a myth related to geography that you found particularly interesting to debunk?

Yes, I think myth-busting is one of the best categories that we have under geography, especially. I'll talk about, like, three of the myths that we have broken on our page. People usually think Rajasthan is a desert that is full of just sand. But that's not true; Rajasthan is one of the most diverse states in India. It has a district called the City of 100 Islands. It has a city of lakes called Udaipur. It is the largest producer of wool, milk, bajra, garlic, mustard, lead, and zinc. It has Asia's second-largest man-made lake, 41 rivers, and the oldest mountain range in India. So basically, even though popular culture has made us believe that Rajasthan is just a desert, it's actually not.

 

 

 

 

 

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The second myth that I am for sure very proud of breaking is that North Indians don't speak only Hindi. We are made to believe that Hindi is the only language of North Indians. But that's not true. In fact, there are 22 languages that are recognised by our constitution. Rajasthan has Rajasthani and so many other dialects. Gujarat has Gujarati, so many other dialects, Punjab has Punjabi, and so many other dialects. Bihar has so many other dialects.

Another myth that we have talked about on our page is that India's Northeast is not just a forest. When we think of the Northeast, we think of beautiful green landscapes, right? But that's not all there is to the northeast of India. The Northeast region has Asia's cleanest village; it has Asia's first green village; it is the birthplace of India's oil industry; it has the world's largest river island; and it also has a market where, which is run solely by females, there are more than 200 tribes and, more than that, more than 200 languages.

What has been the most surprising or eye-opening geographical fact or myth you've come across in your content creation journey?

There are so many interesting, eye-opening geographical facts that I’ve come across.

• First, there is a house in India that is actually half in Maharashtra and half in Telangana; it is on the border of both states and in a district called Chandrapur.
• The second amusing fact that I love telling people is that there is this one village in India where citizens living there have the citizenship of two different countries, Myanmar and India; it's a village called Longwa.
• The third one is that there was once a part of India, that is, one circle of India, which was inside a circle of Bangladesh, and that circle was inside a circle of India. So if you walked for like 100 metres in a straight line, you would change countries eight times. These small pieces of country that are inside another country are called conclaves, and this one conclave was a third conclave.
• And the last fact is that we know that Puducherry is a Union Territory, but what we don't know is that parts of Puducherry are present in 3 different states: some in Kerala, some in Andhra Pradesh, and some in Tamil Nadu.

Can you share some myths related to the Delhi NCR region? 

I think that what most believe is that Delhi is the capital of India, which is not the case, New Delhi is the capital of India. When you add 10 more districts to New Delhi is when Delhi is formed which is called National Capital Territory and then when you add parts of 3 different states to Delhi, is when NCR is formed. NCR includes regions of UP, Rajasthan and Haryana.

You also do paid partnerships on your page, how do you connect geography with such content?

That's the beauty of a subject like geography. It's so interdisciplinary that anything that we are, literally, that is a part of our lives every day, can be connected to geography. For example, the food that we are eating is highly connected to geography, and that can be linked to brands like Swiggy. The clothes that we are wearing are highly connected to the area that we are a part of, and that can be connected to any clothing brand. The businesses that are flourishing in our state are because of geography, and we can connect that to any brand that is working in different sections of the business. So, essentially, the interdisciplinary nature of this subject allows me to seamlessly integrate with any brand.

Tell us more about your new Series on YouTube. Why did you choose NCERT and what outcomes are you hoping to achieve via this series.

Our new series on YouTube is called NCERT Made Fun, where we are trying to release one short video every day that focuses on one topic that is in our NCERT. What I'm trying to do with that series is primarily just make my base very strong. As creators, we usually tend to delve into a lot of different topics, but we usually avoid the basics. I think as a creator, it's my responsibility to make them very strong.

Second, I think I have the capability to tell stories in a much more interesting and interactive manner than our school books have been able to do. So I want to use NCERT and make it more fun by using my interactive capabilities. Third, I want to create content that is evergreen, right? Any student who is currently studying NCERT will be able to benefit from this content. And any teacher who's currently teaching through NCERT in their classrooms will be able to benefit from this content. Those are some of the reasons why I've chosen NCERT.