Transforming lives in risk-friendly ways

The Rural Technology Park at National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD-RTP) is driving rural transformation driven by technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

For the first time, the RTP has planned to hold training programmes on Emitting Irrigation System, Rural Pottery and Bamboo Products at Wardha in Maharashtra for rural folk from States like Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

Earlier, rural folk were made to travel long distances from their native places to Hyderabad to train in innovative rural technologies at NIRD. However, to keep them safe from the pandemic, it has been decided to send the faculty teams from NIRD-RTP to focused areas where the rural folk could get the training at the drop of a hat.

RTP has tied up with Centre of Science for Villages (CSV) at Wardha. In every batch, around 30 rural folk will be imparted training at their own place.

Similar training is envisaged at Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad as well.

Training will be imparted in making Sheetal Pot, water filter, emitters, pottery jewellery, murals and wall hangings and terracotta tiles besides tree house from bamboo, treating bamboo for making it durable, making bamboo beams, lifting and fixing bamboo beam on a tree, supporting bamboo beam column on a tree and making a floor, making side railing on the tree and staircase on of bamboo etc.

"To stimulate water conservation practices and enhanced crop production with less water consumption especially for horticulture crops, the emitting irrigation system would be of great use. Though our primary focus is to train rural people of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh by holding training programs at Wardha but we also hold similar programs on emitting irrigation system in Anantapur of Andhra Pradesh considered as drought prone area besides one such program at Hyderabad city," said an official.

RTP is conducting a webinar and a workshop on rural technology transformation on April 16. Prof Virendra Kumar Vijay, National Coordinator Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA), MHRD, Government of India, will be addressing the webinar. Besides the NIRD faculty members, there are a total 165 institutions from across the country have registered for the programme which will go on air for two hours from 11 am to 1 pm on the schedule date.

"The webinar would showcase the importance of technology transfer in catalysing rural transformation to bring the desired behavioural change of rural folk in interacting with the technology enabled world through adopting various modern techniques. This would help amplifying the rural produce and rural skills directly to real time entrepreneurship," informed Mohammed Khan, Senior Consultant RTP-NIRD Rajendranagar.