RUTAG - developing rural India with technology Featured

By Guest Author

According to the 2011 Census, India has over 6 lakh

villages with nearly 70% of the total population residing in the rural areas of the country. We
have a number of organisations and NGOs working towards developing the rural India and the
people on multiple fronts. GyanCentral catches up with Professor S.Gopalakrishnan, project
consultant RuTAG (Rural Technology Action Group), Tamil Nadu - an initiative at making
technology available and accessible to the rural India - to know more about the work done by
them and the journey so far.
What is the Objective of RUTAG?
Rural Technology Action Group (RUTAG) was initiated and sponsored by the principal
scientific advisor to The Government of India in 2004 under Dr. Chidambaram, with the
objective of identifying technological gaps in various activities in rural villages in India. The
idea was to bring about development through improving technology, increasing productivity,
generate profit, improve production of power, energy efficiency and host of other developmental
work which would benefit rural people. There was an understanding in the group that we have
technology available in India but unfortunately it is not reaching villages, more over there are
many voluntary organizations and institutes which work on the social problems in rural areas but
there was no such institute looking into the technology development thus we thought this type of
a set up will be useful.

In what way does RUTAG conduct its activities?

RUTAG is not involved in rural entrepreneurship development but is more a demand driven
activity, which is concerned with the technological needs of people in villages. We identify the
needs of villagers with help of Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and get it improved. We
identify only technological gaps, if we feel the technology is not up to the desired level, we work
on it and hand it over to villagers. Depending on what the gap is,we may deliver a product or a
solution to a problem. It is presumed that our activities will affect desirable change to a sizable
rural population.

Does RUTAG provide technological solutions by developing prototype or it does much

more?

Since we do not have direct access to individual people or families; we work in co-ordination
with certain agencies like NGO's which have an established network. For Instance, initially we
started working with 'Gandhigram Trust' involved in various activities like processing and
providing sanitary napkins, natural dyes, soaps & host of other activities. They encountered a
technical difficulty in the process of producing natural dyes, so we identified the gap in the
process and developed on it with the help of faculty & students of various technical institutes like
IIT, Engineering colleges, independent Research & development institutes.

Where does RUTAG get its team support from, is there any opportunity for students to
work?

RUTAG gets students to work during summer vacations. We compensate them for their stay and
other related expenses. Like I pointed before we co-ordinate with various technological
institutions and get our work done with the help from both faculty and students. Thus, students
from these institutes get involved in the activities and if the students develop a model that has
been accepted by the NGO's and helped the rural needs then we award certificates to those
students. We are working with a number of technical institutes that include the IITs and other
engineering colleges and institutes like the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) and
Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) etc

RUTAG recently helped in providing technological solution to manufacturing Sanitary

Napkin, can you please elaborate on this.

Request to work on this problem came from Gandhigram Trust. A self- help group (SHG) who
was involved in manufacturing sanitary napkin for rural areas faced problems in material
collection, sealing, maintaining the quality and other related issues. During the process of
identifying the gaps and understanding the issues faced by the SHG we realized that since the
project was majorly textile based, it would be difficult to find students and institutes to work on
the same. We scouted for institutes that could work on this problem and provide a workable
technological solution for it. Finally Kumarkulam Institute of Technology in Coimbatore took up
the task of solving the issues and providing suitable solutions for them. The institute worked on
multiple aspects related to the materials required, quality standards, new methods of
development and adhering to the cost limits, designed a product. The design was handed over to
the Gandhigram trust that further developed the product which is now well accepted in rural
market. The product is not a branded product but is designed and developed in order to cater to
the needs of the rural population and not to compete with multinational brands.

Which organizations is RUTAG collaborating and working with?

Initially, we started working with Gandhigram Trust, which is one of the biggest NGO in Tamil
Nadu. We also work in collaboration with Vivekananda Kendra in KanyaKumari, Centre for
Social Development (CSD), Potter industries and a number of other governmental & nongovernmental organizations. Recently we have started connecting to more NGO's which are
capable of understanding technology and its related problems. Further we have also conducted
several presentations in engineering colleges with the aim of creating awareness among faculty
and students. Few colleges have come forward and engaged with us, like the Kumarkulam
Institute of Technology and PSG Institute of Technology. We have also signed an MOU with
Anna University. Our focus is to identify who can best solve the technological problems in
various fields - chemical, electrical, mechanical, textile and others. IIT's may not necessarily
have solutions to all these, so we seek help of other technical institutes as well who can provide
the best solution.

What are the present projects that RUTAG has been working on?

We are working on a number of projects, one being on the manufacturing process for charcoal in
villages. Our ultimate focus is productivity thereby profitability, safety and reliability. Reliability
is extremely important in rural ventures since if one product fails then the work stops.

In your opinion, how far has RUTAG been successful?

Success doesn't come over night it is a long drawn process. We have completed seven years now
and at present we have our presence with seven IIT's in the country. We have been able to
develop products like dye, sanitary napkins, solutions for hand-loom industry, LED lights and
are working on many more. There are some products which have picked up in fast in market and
have been successful rurally, but I would say our impact study is yet to be done.

What are the areas in which RUTAG plans to work in the future?

Importantly from 2012 onwards our focus is to concentrate more on the energy sector which will
be useful in decentralized sector in villages. We are looking at developing alternate source of
energy through wind, bio-gas, solar and in-fact we already have set up a bio-gas plant in
association with the Vivekananda Kendra. We believe that development in this area will be
extremely useful for the rural household.

With inputs from Ashish Korada

Last modified on Tuesday, 10 July 2012 18:10