CSIR sending its scientists to villages to identify technologies to help people earn some extra income

Updated on: Monday, March 04, 2013

Rural folks may soon be able to earn some supplementary income using technology interventions from the country's leading laboratories.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is sending its scientists to villages to identify technologies that would help people earn some extra income.

Under the CSIR-800 program, the TechVill initiative will make technologies developed at CSIR's 37 laboratories available to the villages.

Samir Brahmachari, Director-General, CSIR, said, "We have some amazing technologies like extracting oil from aromatic flowers, encouraging Tulsi cultivation in areas of water shortage, simple techniques to delay ripening of fruits."

The CSIR plans to set up 25 TechVills to begin with and later take the initiative to at least 100 locations.

Brahmachari said similar technology interventions were already benefiting horticulturists in Kashmir, who were now exporting lavender oil, extracted using CSIR technologies, instead of flowers.

At the beginning, five TechVills are coming up at two locations in West Bengal, one each in Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

"Students pursuing doctoral research at CSIR academy will be posted at TechVills for a period of eight weeks as part of their program," Brahmachari said.

Students will be posted at a TechVill, an outreach centre of CSIR, where they will identify technologies beneficial for the people there.

Each technology will be adopted by a maximum 200 families so that each one gets a decent remuneration for their produce. "We plan to reach two lakh families through this initiative," Brahmachari said.

Last week, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said in his budget speech that not enough attention was being paid to take science and technology to the common man.

Chidambaram had favoured using S&T innovations in manufacturing products and make them available to the people.

CSIR has 37 laboratories and 39 centres across the country and hopes to utilise them is servicing the 100 TechVills which it plans to set up.

CSIR sending its scientists to villages to identify technologies to help people earn some extra income

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