Harish Hande, Chairman of Selco Foundation, said on Monday that the Rural Community Lab of the Foundation would try to find solutions to problems in rural areas by sourcing inputs from the grassroots level.
Addressing presspersons on the sidelines of the inauguration of the Rural Community Lab here, Dr. Hande, a Magsaysay award winner, said that policymakers often looked for solutions without knowledge of the problems at the grassroots. This trend needed to be reversed. “Besides Make in India, it is necessary to ‘Think and Innovate in India,’” he said.
The lab inaugurated at the Bharatiya Vikas Trust Campus here would address various issues in rural areas including water conservation, income generation, designing low cost houses, manufacturing low cost cotton spindles, energy for agriculture, clean cooking, healthcare and sanitation. “We want to follow a bottom-up approach in dealing with the problems of rural areas,” he said.
Since India was a diverse country, there could be no ‘one size fits all’ approach. Hence, solutions developed by the lab would take into account the specifics of the particular region. The lab would get an in-depth understanding of relevant issues faced by rural communities, especially the un-served or under-served, and develop workable models to these issues in a holistic and sustainable manner.
It would undertake comprehensive needs assessment, resource mapping, stakeholder analysis and determine the actual requirement and involve the communities throughout to ensure their ownership in the programmes.
