The National Council of Rural Institutes (NCRI) has tied up with state and central universities, National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to start courses on rural management and rural technology management.
"Huge dearth of professionally trained and qualified rural managers will be met with curricular interventions by the National Council of Rural Institutes, which will work with 370 state and 47 central varsities, 31 NITs and 23 IITs under the Mahatma Gandhi Grameen Prabandh Vidya Abhiyan," Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar said in a statement on Tuesday.
The move is "expected" to engage more than 1,000 faculty members and 40,000 students as well as research scholars in addressing challenges of rural management in over 6,70,000 villages across the country, he added.
The NCRI, based in Hyderabad, functions under the HRD Ministry.
As part of the initiative, several roundtables will be held for identifying "the critical gap areas" and developing the curriculum for the proposed courses in rural management.
"Workshops will be held to develop tailor-made and area specific curriculum and faculty development programmes to impart knowledge and skills required for rural management," the Minister said.
Mahatma's anniversary
This is part of the Narendra Modi government's effort to gear up for celebrating 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2, 2019, he said.
"By then, all the higher education institutions in the country would be involved to address rural issues as part of their academic and field engagement activities," he added.
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