The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Hyderabad-based Heartfulness Education Trust’s (HET) Heartful Campus have signed a MoU aimed at HET offering various agriculture programmes as credit courses, which will be jointly certified as undergraduate and postgraduate curricula offered by universities and institutes under the purview of National Agricultural Research System (NARS) of ICAR (ICAR-AU system).
The MoU will bring in all the university students on a meditate module that will help improve the outlook and approach towards humanity, relationships, ways towards balancing material life, approach towards occupation or profession, and developing humility, love, care and being close to divinity. Each student will be able to connect to a Heartful Campus trainer and there are at least 1400 such trainers around the world.
The HET courses will be free of cost with 2 credit points on the overall curriculum. The partnership is aimed at collaboration for the programme offerings of HET as Heartful Campus modules across India to all ICAR-AUs that comprise 75 state universities with 2,00,000 students in the field of agriculture.
The MoU intends to grant the students, staff, faculty and counsellors of colleges, institutes and universities and the administrative staff under ICAR the access to HET courses and programmes. The courses which will be developed by HET will be aligned with the goals of education, training and research in environmental sustainability and sustainable technologies – in line with the recommendations of the National Education Policy. Also, Internship programs for students of ICAR-approved institutions will be offered under the agreement. The students will benefit from Heartful campus modules beginning with Heartfulness meditation in their respective campuses for the betterment and well-being of these future youth of India.
As part of the agreement a three-week induction programme as recommended by ICAR shall encourage all the ICAR-AUs across India to include the ‘Start up program’. Certificates bearing both ICAR and HET logos will be issued to students for the programmes and the students will be able to earn credits for the same. For these programmes ICAR and HET may nominate coordinators for effective implementation.
Around 55 Vice Chancellors of universities from the agricultural sector across the country and Additional Deputy General of ICAR were present at the signing ceremony as the MoU between Shri Kamlesh Patel ‘Daaji’ the Guide of Heartfulness and Shri Rakesh Agarwal – Deputy General of ICAR.
Speaking on the signing of the MoU,Kamlesh Patel ‘Daaji’ – Guide of Heartfulness and President of HET said, “HET’s mission will be to generate curricula that will provide for both theoretical and practical application in a very cohesive way. Sustainability is at the core of our values. Sustainable practices will therefore be prominent part of the curricula. We wish to empower our students to produce organic yields with sustainable practices so that we can preserve our environment for our future generations as well. There must be balance at every level. Balance is essential in every aspect of our lives. With agricultural practices we want to intertwine the best of the modern technology with ancient wisdom. I am very happy that ICAR has associated with us for a good cause and together we hope to create wonders in training, knowledge transfer and enabling research at ICAR-AUs across the country.”
Rakesh Agarwal – Deputy Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research said, “We believe that this MoU will take education and research in agriculture in the country to a new phase that will amalgamate the best modern practices with sustainability on the fore and the traditional knowledge. India has primarily been an agricultural country. Much of our pedigree yield is also exported to other countries. We need to be able to produce pedigree crops every year not only for exports but also for our people at home to relish. I suppose with the knowledge transfer and research ensuing with this partnership will facilitate quality yields for the masses at affordable price and sustainability in place.”
This is the first of its kind partnership between HET and ICAR. Earlier this HET had also signed an MoU with AICTE to help students access the Heartfulness resources at all the academic institutions under AICTE.
