Union Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday expressed confidence that the shortage of qualified rural managers would be met with the curricular interventions of National Council of Rural Institute (NCRI) as it has taken the onus to work with 370 State universities, 47 central universities, 31 NITs and 23 IITs under Mahatma Gandhi Grameen Prabandh Vidya Abhiyaan.
Rural internships
As part of the campaign, the higher education institutions would initiate rural management education, rural case studies, rural action research and internships. It is expected to engage more than 1,000 faculty members and 40,000 students as well as research scholars in addressing the challenges of rural management in over 6,70,000 villages across the country.
The Minister, at an event held in New Delhi, said round tables would be held for identifying critical gap areas; curriculum development workshops to develop tailor-made and area-specific curriculum; faculty development programmes to impart knowledge and skills; small research projects would be taken up to address critical rural challenges and rural internships to engage students practically with rural challenges. The campaign is part of the effort to gear up for celebrating 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2, 2019 by when all the higher education institutions in the country would be involved in addressing the rural issues as part of their academic and field-engagement activities.
He congratulated NCRI, an autonomous council under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, for choosing to focus on rural management education.
Poster launched
“We are going to focus on HRD and capacity-building of formal institutes and universities to address issues concerning rural India through higher education,” said NCRI Chairman W.G. Prasanna Kumar. A campaign poster was also launched by the Minister, a press release said.
