Community engagement as a way forward for sustainable rural societies

Abstract

With over 70% of the Indian population residing in villages, it can be said that it is the 'villages, where the heart of India resides. Despite such a large rural population, the unsustainable socio-economic conditions plaguing our rural societies, even after 70 years of independence, is nothing short of a distress situation. This calls for immediate actions for improving rural conditions, and for this to happen, higher education, historically recognized as 'public institutions', needs to step in. With the sea of knowledge and resources at its disposal, it can ably pursue the agenda of sustainable development of rural societies. One of the potent tools for making this happen is community engagement. The core purpose of such engagement is to serve mutual interests of universities and communities alike. In practice, this can be executed in several ways such as engaged scholarship practices like service-learning, community based participatory research etc., with the initiatives focused on specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the rural context. This paper makes the case for such engagement for ensuring the creation of sustainable and self-reliant rural societies.