100 youngsters to turn ‘barefoot engineers’ soon to better farm productivity

This August, 100 village boys and girls will set out on a mission to learn skills to help in building rural infrastructure and boost farm productivity.

These youngsters will receive training for 90 days to become "barefoot engineers" as part of a revamped rural job guarantee scheme. Nearly 80% of the students picked are girls. Government officials told Economic Times that the term “barefoot engineers” was originally coined during the fag end of the previous UPA government's regime last year.

The present government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set a target of training 3,000 barefoot engineers by the end of this financial year. To train them, a group of qualified senior engineers have been identified.

To be a barefoot engineer, a class 10 pass or fail certificate is all that is required. The first batch would be trained at two centres including Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

"The youth who would get trained could be employed back in the MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) and use the skills to add to infrastructure in rural areas," a senior government official told Economic Times.

Students would be taught basic mensuration, geometry and trigonometry to create basic infrastructure, which could be used for agriculture and irrigation purposes.
They will also receive a certificate by the National Skill Council at the end of the 90-day course.

ET reported the programme is part of the NDA government's drive to revamp the rural job guarantee scheme to link it to asset creation and capacity building. As part of this, the rural development ministry is also running a Livelihood of Full Employment (Life) project to build entrepreneurship and infrastructure in the rural areas.

People who have worked for at least 100 days in MGNREGS and have basic education could make use of this project to upgrade their skills.

(Image: Indiatimes)