Architectural education in india though have been an aspiration of urban & semi urban regions. While the number of Indians living in urban areas has increased over the last two decades, about 67% of people still live in rural areas.
As major India resides in village it has been on the national agendas & national missions to improve education & livelihood in rural areas.
Pradhanmantri Awas Yojna provides the needy with the required funds at large to rural India. This attracts architectural scope majorly for aspiring professionals for developments in rural areas.
The present situation demands education to be more flexible with the understanding of rural mindsets.
Priorly they should be able to adopt with the different elaborated formats throughout the world.
1. Earn & learn
2. Students volunteering (from urban Institutions)
3. Faculty volunteering
4. Professionals volunteering.
5. NGO’s, Trust, society’s support.
National missions should also make compulsory work donation for different organisations throughout the mentioned range of volunteers, academic profession and society.
“Awareness among the masses is the main key”.
The superior cause of nation building may it be any, it only can be given justice to its pace by the catalysts called Architects. Sense of realisation of the thought to build something greater than what our ancestors have left us with.
The talented youth of India is to be awakened with the thought of education in architecture and its wide spectrum which opens the window to showcase globally their talents & nations developing aspirations.
Major steps can be through voluntary missions of colleges in urban areas with the rural areas nearby.
This type of efforts can be made part of syllabus & incorporated in student’s logbooks to go visit rural schools & to give a basic introduction of architectural education to schools. Not only the students should be kept informed but volunteering students can give a presentation to the rural people through gram panchayat sabhas etc.
No doubt we can also take benefit of local radio, digital marketing and social media to reach remote corners, but the tribal regions will still remain untapped. The tribal region will always have to volunteer by the goodness among the volunteers will.
Awareness alone won’t be sufficient but the affordability of education and its academia through long five years should also be in view. Can it be reduced to 3 or 4 years as technology has reduced the efforts in designing & drafting a project.
Rural scholarships or earn & learn opportunities can be an effective solution for rural students within the campus or with faculties who comes to teach. Institutes may offer them the infrastructure for well-designed earn & learn programs in campus. Making them available with place to display their talents.
Even education systems in rural schools may include a briefing in their syllabus at school level to let them know about the profession & its benefit for country’s development.
Architect budding or professional should look forward to dedicate some time of their career to study and attempt to solve problems in rural India and thereby create a positive social impression.
Rural India is where an architect can observe many principles of sustainability, social planning and ecology getting practiced. Here positive social impact with very fewer negative footprints can be achieved. This realisation that most of the problems in rural India are worldwide and these can be tackled wherever one is.
These students who are not prejudiced by any concepts have a raw thinking ability. This rare quality, if properly moulded, will help them achieve great heights. Our motto should not only involve the numbers of rural graduates but those graduates should be transformed into personalities with a vision of better tommorow.
We are committed of creating personalities & not just graduates, making world-class education facilities available to the aspiring students of architecture as they will be building the future in sync with national missions like smart cities etc. Personalities who are a responsible citizen human resource who will be always striving to build understanding the future and sustainable need of the society; wherever they plan to design on the face of the globe they will be equipped with the visionary techniques and skillsets along with International etiquettes through different accreditation, affiliation and association of global market leaders in academics and profession.
Today’s development is said to be dependent on the urban infrastructure to the most for to be termed as developed country, so by addressing issues and sowing the seeds of sensitively understanding the built environment, construction industry & its humongous environmental side effects trough education might help us to conclude towards overall Development. We are suggesting developing environmental awareness in today’s deteriorating nature through education and its prism of opportunities.