Student READY (Rural Entrepreneurship Awareness Development Yojana)

About Student READY (Rural Entrepreneurship Awareness Development Yojana)

Student READY (Rural Entrepreneurship Awareness Development Yojana), run by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India, gives undergraduate students awareness of rural entrepreneurship along with hands-on exposure to real agricultural settings and allied sciences. It builds confidence, skills, and Indigenous Technical Knowledge (ITK) of local practices, readying graduates for self-employment, while also opening avenues to gain practical and entrepreneurial experience. Recognising the need to reorient agriculture graduates towards employability and entrepreneurship for an increasingly knowledge-intensive farm sector, the programme was made a mandatory prerequisite for the degree in all Agricultural Universities (AUs), ensuring every graduate gets hands-on and practical training. The Fifth Deans’ Committee laid out a detailed Student READY curriculum spanning every discipline in agriculture and allied sciences, restructured to build the skills and entrepreneurial mindset graduates need for self-employment, stronger rural livelihoods and food security, sustainable agriculture, and driving agricultural transformation. The following components are proposed for carrying out one year Student READY program in all the Undergraduate (UG) disciplines

1. Experiential Learning on Business Model / Hands-on Training 1. Experiential Learning on Skill Development. 1. Rural Awareness Works Experience (RAWE). 1. Internship / In-Plant Training / Industrial attachment 1. Students Projects

Student READY program is introduced in fourth year of undergraduate education in the following subjects:

1. Agriculture 1. Agriculture Engineering 1. Bio-Technology 1. Dairy Technology 1. Fisheries 1. Food Technology 1. Forestry 1. Horticulture 1. Home Science (now Community Science) 1. Sericulture

Five components of student READY are:

1. Experiential Learning with business mode. 1. Hands-on training (HOT)/ Skill development training i.e. Experiential Learning without business mode. 1. Rural Awareness Work Experience (RAWE). 1. Internship/In-Plant Training/ Industrial attachment. 1. Students Projects.

Experiential Learning with business mode Experiential Learning (EL) with a business mode helps students build competence, capability, skills, expertise and the confidence to launch their own enterprise, turning them into job creators rather than job seekers, and furthering the “Earn while Learn” idea. This module is central to giving graduates high-quality professional competence and real-life practical exposure. Because it is oriented towards entrepreneurship across the production-to-consumption chain, it is expected to produce job providers rather than job seekers, letting students build analytical and entrepreneurial skills, gain knowledge through meaningful hands-on work, and grow confident in designing and executing their own project work. EL’s main objectives are:

• To build professional skills and knowledge through meaningful hands-on experience.
• To develop confidence and the ability to work in project mode.
• To gain enterprise management capability.

Rural Agricultural Work Experience (RAWE) Rural Agricultural Work Experience (RAWE) exposes agricultural students to the realities of village life, letting them work alongside farm families, identify their problems, and apply extension tools to pass on the latest agricultural technologies. Students also study various ongoing agriculture and rural development schemes and take part in implementing them. Thorough orientation to the issues farmers commonly face builds students’ competence and confidence in tackling problems in agriculture and allied sciences. RAWE runs in adopted villages under scientists’ supervision, with activities centred on close observation and analysis of the socio-economic and technological profile of rural farm families, a participatory extension approach, familiarity with farming situations and practices, and interaction with progressive farmers; soil testing is now an integral part of RAWE. This orients agriculture graduates towards participating in rural development programmes, and their attachment with identified agro-based industries gives them first-hand industry exposure. The stipend for village/rural training under Student READY has been raised to ₹3000/student/month, for a maximum of 6 months. In Plant Training (IPT)/ Industrial Attachment Technology and globalization are driving unprecedented change, making the pressure to innovate immense. To deepen students’ practical knowledge, in-plant training is compulsory: students study a problem from an industrial perspective and submit reports to the university. Such training exposes students to industry and helps shape careers suited to high-tech industrial demands, correlating theory with actual industrial practice, with the following goals:

• To expose students to an industrial environment that a university cannot replicate.
• To familiarize students with various materials, machines, processes, products and their applications, along with relevant shop-management aspects.
• To help students understand worker psychology and problem-solving approaches, along with factory practices.
• To help students grasp the scope, functions and job responsibilities across an organization’s various departments.
• To expose students to various aspects of entrepreneurship during the programme.

Students Projects Many students aspire to higher education and study abroad. With this in mind, the Student Project component lets them identify and understand a problem of interest in their field, set up experiments, take observations, and document their work as a thesis. Project work offers several learning opportunities that a classroom or laboratory cannot provide. To extend such opportunities to agricultural science graduates, Students Project is proposed as one of Student READY’s components, adopted based on student interest and the expertise and facilities available at the college. Its objectives are:

• To build analytical skills and the capacity to work independently.
• To conceptualize, design and implement a proposed work plan.
• To learn teamwork — sharing work within a group — and leadership.
• To learn how to resolve a problem through all its stages by applying project management skills.
• To learn implementation, fabrication, testing and troubleshooting.
• To build communication and report-writing skills.