The second stage of the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan — a scheme of the Centre aimed at making higher education institutions provide solutions for problems of villages — is set to take off with a much wider spread than its first stage.

While just 143 premier institutions like IITs and NITs took part in the first stage, UBA 2.0 will see open and much wider participation from many higher educational institutions.

“It is an open call for participation. Thousands of institutions have applied and 750 institutions have been selected,” higher education secretary R. Subrahmanyam said at the launch of UBA 2.0 here on Wednesday.

He added that both technical and non-technical institutions have been invited to build systems in villages as per their strengths.

Two-way learning

The idea is to have a coordinated approach where the government and institutions work together to facilitate rural development.

Mr. Subrahmanyam said this was expected to be a two-way learning process, where institutions share their knowledge with villages and also learn from the wisdom and commonsense of rural folk.

The key points include helping villages achieve 100% school results, creating 25 jobs each in four sectors in each village where work would take place, increasing rural incomes, providing drinking water and sanitation to villages, disposing village garbage, among other things.