Guwahati: In a first in the country, the government has joined hands with Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to work on implementing the concept of ‘planning of villages’.
“Rural development is critical for us. If India wants to become a $5 trillion economy, we need to solve the problems in its villages. For the first time in India, the government, teaming up with top IITs, has come up with planning of villages,” said IIT-Guwahati director TG Sitharam.
He was addressing the valedictory session of a capacity-building programme on research and training-learning process for the faculty in social sciences at the University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya (USTM).
The programme was organised by the department of rural development and USTM with support from the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
Addressing the participants, Sitharam said the initiative of village planning is expected to be carried out by town planning or city planning, which is quite different from the existing concept of the development of villages.
This rural planning will be for a short as well as long term. The short-term planning is for five years, while the long-term planning is for 25 years.
“IIT-Guwahati has selected two villages from Kamrup (rural) district of Assam in the initial stage. We are finding out the prime locations or properties in the villages, exploring aspects such as solid waste management in the villages and water supply to households,” he said.
“Social entrepreneurship has to happen in a big way,” he emphasised.
“The village planning process is being started for the first time in India taking up only 20 villages across India as of now, which is being done by the Ministry of Panchayat Raj, all IITs, and 10 schools of planning,” he added.
Sitharam said funding for social science research was limited even though the government provides huge funds for science and technology research.
“Social scientists should bring scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs into its course. That will change the complete perspective. I strongly believe that social scientists should lead the research,” he said.
“Besides, people from humanities background should design research problems and involve scientists and technologists in the process as it is a key aspect of research. Then it will be much more fruitful as far as output is concerned,” the IIT-G director said.
At the end of the day, research and development are done for the common people. We should come out of the process in which we have been conducting research and broaden our perspective, he added.
He further said that development, be it healthcare, engineering solutions for flood control, disaster management, should emanate from our villages.
“Humanities play a major role in research and development with science and technology components coming into its purview,” he added.
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