The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has launched a programme called Unnat Bharat Abhiyan with an aim to connect institutions of higher education, including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Science Education & Research (IISERs) etc. with local communities to address the development challenges through appropriate technologies.

The objectives of Unnat Bharat Abhiyan are broadly two-fold:

i)                    Building institutional capacity in Institutes of higher education in research & training relevant to the needs of rural India.

ii)                  Provide rural India with professional resource support from institutes of higher education ,especially those which have acquired academic excellence in the field of Science, Engineering  & Technology  and Management

Under this programme, 132 villages have been identified for intervention by the following 16 institutes of higher education so far. 

The details of the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan programme are available at http://unnat.iitd.ac.in .

This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smt. Smriti Irani in a written reply to the Lok Sabha question.

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DS/RK/UNNAT BHARAT ABHIYAN