Vision – To enable technical and higher educational institutions identify development challenges and evolve appropriate solutions for promoting sustainable development by working with the people of rural India.

Mission – To develop the necessary information system to reorient the academic curricula and the research programs in the institutions to make them more compatible with the national, regional and local needs, especially those of rural areas.

Objectives – The SEG’s mandate is to strengthen the UBA framework and enable UBA institutions to achieve the goals of the program. Broadly speaking, the key objectives of the SEG are -

• To build skills of observation, analysis and documentation.
• To create mechanisms for institutions to interact with the regional agencies.
• To connect science with development and develop an understanding of the village scenario and also improve student employability.

The way forward – The Ethos in Technical Institutes, UBA – SEG will build an understanding of the development agenda within the higher education institutes by providing them training relevant to the national, regional, and local needs, especially those of rural areas. It will enable the UBA institutions develop linkages with the regional agencies and engage in dialogues on topics of regional interest. This SEG will help create avenues so that the students of the institutions apply their classroom knowledge of courses to field realities and thereby improve the quality of learning. This will also provide rural India and the regional agencies with access to professional resources of the institutions. We are also looking forward to collaborating with SEG on ‘Curriculum Reforms and Educational Institutions Social Responsibility’ which is handled by UGC in order to align curriculum and research with the development agenda and introduce CTARA approach to the concerned SEG. Along with this, we are also looking forward to building upon the synergy between the provisions under the National Education Policy of India (NEP) 2020 and the goal of this SEG so that the UBA PIs would benefit from the same.