What: Unnat Bharat Abhiyan 2.0
Why: To enrich Rural India.
When: April 25, 2018
- Union Human Resource Development Ministry on April 25, 2018 launches Unnat Bharat Abhiyan 2.0 in New Delhi.
- The Abhiyan was launched by Minister of Human Resource Development Shri Prakash Javadekar at AICTE headquarters through video message.
- As per the minister, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan 2.0 is in line with Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision to transform India, in which students from colleges and universities will go to nearby villages to get acquainted with the life of the village people and the problems faced by them in day to day life.
- This unique initiative of HRD ministry will serve as real Bharat Darshan for students and it is also an opportunity for them to learn about the basic challenges faced by rural people and to bring out practical solutions for their betterment.
- The government is hoping that the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan 2.0 will help to reverse migration from villages to towns.
- Under this initiative 45000 villages of the country will be covered which will require the participation of 8252 institutions of Higher Education.
About Unnat Bharat Abhiyan
- Unnat Bharat Abhiyan is a flagship programme of the Ministry of Human Resources Development, with the intention to enrich Rural India.
- The knowledge base and resources of the Premier Institutions of the country are to be leveraged to bring in transformational change in rural developmental process.
- It also aims to create a vibrant relationship between the society and the higher educational institutes, with the latter providing the knowledge and technology support to improve the livelihoods in rural areas and to upgrade the capabilities of both the public and private organisations in the society.
- Under the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan 2.0, the institutions have been selected on a Challenge Mode and the scheme has been extended to 750 reputed Higher Educational Institutes (both public and private) of the country.
- Also, scope for providing Subject Expert Groups and Regional Coordinating Institutes to handhold and guide the participating institutions has been strengthened. IIT Delhi has been designated to function as the National Coordinating Institute for this programme and the Ministry intends to extend the coverage to all the reputed Higher Educational Institutes, in a phased manner. Each selected institute would adopt a cluster of villages / panchayats and gradually expand the outreach over a period of time.
- Institutes through their faculty and students, will carry out studies of living conditions in the adopted villages, assess the local problems and needs, workout the possibilities of leveraging the technological interventions and the need to improve the processes in implementation of various government schemes, prepare workable action plans for the selected villages.
- Such knowledge inputs would make their way into the development programmes in rural areas. The Institutes would be expected to closely coordinate with the district administration, elected public representatives of panchayat / villages and other stakeholders and will become very much a part of the process of development planning and implementation.
- In this process, faculty and students of such institutes would be re-oriented and connected to the rural realities so that their learning and research work also becomes more relevant to the society.
