With an objective to promote rural community engagement of students as part of the education, the Telangana University on Friday entered into a memorandum of understanding with the National Council of Rural Institutes (NCRI).
The MoU will facilitate inclusion of rural community engagement of students in curriculum of various subjects and will also help promote disaster risk resilience in rural areas. MoU papers were exchanged by TU Vice-Chancellor P Sambaiah and NCRI chairperson W. G Prasanna Kumar in the presence of Registrar B. Vidya Vardhini and NCRI member secretary R. Manoj Kumar at a function in the campus here.
Rural focus
Speaking on the occasion, the Vice-Chancellor hailed the agreement as a big step in the direction of the revamp of syllabus in tune with rural needs. “It is high time that the curriculum reflects the rural issues and helps come out with solutions for various problems that plague rural areas,” he added.
He stated that syllabus of various courses would soon be changed to give priority to rural issues and concerns of rural masses. “NCRI has a great role to play in the revamp of syllabus to make it more application oriented in terms of rural concerns,” Professor Sambaiah said.
Villages to classroom
NCRI chairman Prasanna Kumar said that the institution had entered the MoUs with 14 universities, including 13 Central universities across the country. “It is time that we bring the villages into our classrooms and take them to villages,” he added.
Elaborating the concept, he stated that the world should take a rural perspective to ameliorate conditions there.
It is important that students need to get exposure to rural issues with an aim to learn from and to contribute to the rural concerns.
Research support
NCRI member secretary R. Manoj Kumar stated that the institute would soon conduct a workshop for the teachers of various disciplines and would facilitate the inclusion of inputs in the curriculum of subjects. He explained that the NCRI would extend scholarships and grants to researchers, faculty members and students to carry out research on rural issues.
NCRI programme coordinator Shastry, NSS coordinator Praveena Bai, MoU coordinator Kankata Raja Ram, UGC coordinator Vasam Chandra Shekar and other faculty members were present.