Aimed at encouraging higher education institutions to engage with
problems of rural India like sanitation and hygiene, water, health and
education and to provide appropriate solutions for them, the
government's recently launched Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA) can lead to
transformational change in the country if the technologies are
"relevant, robust and affordable", experts say.
The programme was
launched Nov 11, 2014, National Education Day, which also marked the
birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India's first education
minister.
"What is being attempted is rural development with
appropriate technology intervention. To the extent that the technologies
are relevant, robust and affordable, they will lead to transformational
change. This is what happened with the mobile phone revolution too,"
Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director of IIT Madras, one of the implementing
agencies, told IANS.
Elaborating, S.K. Saha, coordinator, Unnat
Bharat Abhiyan Cell (UBAC) at IIT Delhi, told IANS: "The main aim is to
take already developed solutions to the rural people and how to create
links with them so that problems faced by them can be taken up by the
IIT community as their academic problem or otherwise."
Under UBA
18 institutions of higher education have been roped in. These include
IITs at Bombay, Delhi, Gandhinagar, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Hyderabad,
Indore, Jodhpur, Kanpur, Madras, Kharagpur, Mandi, Patna, Roorkee and
Ropar, BHU Varanasi and also Indian Institute of Science Education and
Research, Bhopal, and Malviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur.
"Unnat
Bharat Abhiyaan will connect our institutions of higher education to
develop technical solutions to address challenges in rural India," Human
Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani said at the launch.
According
to UBA's website, 70 percent of India's population lives in rural
areas, engaged in an agrarian economy with agriculture and allied
sectors employing 51 percent of the workforce but accounting for only 17
percent of the GDP.
Each institute has adopted villages where it
will work. While IIT Delhi has adopted 32 villages across Haryana,
Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, IIT Bombay has adopted 27
villages and IIT Madras 11 villages.
"The villages were selected
based on earlier interactions with some of the faculty members of IIT
Delhi. It is emphasized here that the technical solutions whenever
available with any IIT will be taken to a village or a cluster of
villages that have similar requirements or demands," Saha said.
Explaining
how the institute will help "address development challenges through
appropriate technologies", A.K. Sharma, professor of sociology and
co-principal investigator of RuTAG (Rural Technology Action Group) at
IIT Kanpur, told IANS: "This will be done by identifying problems in
rural areas which need technical solution. However, we think that rural
development requires both technical and social scientific solutions.
Therefore, team work will be required."
How exactly will the model work and what will be the role of the village and IIT community?
"There
is no one model for making each project work. For example, the
affordable housing technology project using what has been developed by
IIT M is being implemented by the Kerala government. The rural ATM
developed at IIT M is being supplied by an IIT M startup to banks
operating rural branches," Ramamurthi said, explaining the work being
carried out by IIT M.
The UBA also aims to foster a new dialogue
within the larger community on science, society and the environment and
to develop a sense of dignity and collective destiny.
While
highlighting the role industries can play once the challenges are
identified and solutions demonstrated, experts said that the biggest
achievement of the programme would include linking knowledge to field;
technology transfer and technology development; solving small technical
problems of rural artisans; and interventions in education, health,
irrigation, and agricultural innovations.
Agreed Ramamurthi, who
said: "A corollary gain will be orientation of students towards rural
transformation and social enterprise."
