Need for RuTAG
As identified by the Office of the Prinicipal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, India has remarkable potential to harness the benefits of technology for improving productivity of everyday life and livelihoods in rural areas. This may be achieved by reducing drudgery and increasing efficiency by dissemination of improved/ new technologies. The bottlenecks faced in various stages of development may be identification of problems, development of solutions, their scale-up/ scale-down and finally dissemination to the end users. Once these are surpassed, the rural economy would get a major boost along with improved living conditions of rural populations. In order to streamline and synergize efforts in this direction, an idea was conceived to establish points of contact across India and Rural Technology Action Groups (RuTAGs) were born. At present, RuTAGs have been established in seven IITs (Madras, Guwahati, Kharagpur, Roorkee, Delhi, Mumbai and Kanpur) to cater to surrounding areas.
Objectives
- Addressing defused rural economy through the S&T Platform.
- Dissemination of refined technologies to reach rural areas
- Technology delivery for non-farm/ agriculture sectors
- Benefiting Rural groups through a network of NGOs.
- Adding value to the produce and enhancing the quality of rural life.
Methodology
Established in June 2004, RuTAG IITM was the second one to be set up. RuTAG IITM fulfills the objectives of RuTAG by carrying out the following activities:
- Identifying products/processes developed to cater to rural needs and providing technology inputs to improve them
- Organizing training programmes in adaptation/upgradation of technologies for the benefit of the rural masses
- Liaising between people/organizations in rural areas who need information/technology and agencies that already have the required knowledge by organizing workshops/Seminars bringing together technical institutions/NGOs/governmental agencies/individual entrepreneurs on a single platform
The development work on any technology is being taken up with the participation of the interested NGO and by a faculty member of IIT Madras or any other Technical Institution supported by students/project associates. The technical institutions provide expertise on a case-by-case basis. RuTAG has the role of a facilitator, while meeting the travel and other contingency expenditures of the project. All technical information arising out of RuTAG projects will be available for dissemination to other rural agencies also.