This proposal has been conceived after a series of interactions with scientists, social scientists, rural entrepreneurs, administrators, non-government organizations (NGO) working in rural areas, and research NGOs. In September 2012 a brainstorming session was held at the Mechanical Engineering Department of IIT Kanpur to explore possibilities of linking the centers for knowledge generation with areas of knowledge application, keeping various needs of rural society. It included village and allied industry, agriculture, watershed management and dairy activities.

The major departure of this project, from the earlier ones of the similar kind, lies in adopting an interactive and participatory model of action, rather than reaching the beneficiaries in the delivery mode. The project aims at involving the rural youths – artisans, entrepreneurs, farmers and development workers – in identifying problems for knowledge application, prioritizing them, evolving solutions, and applying them in the field.
While the centre envisaged under this project will be located in the Mechanical Engineering Department, the core group members will be drawn from various science and engineering departments of the institute, senior social scientists with long experience of working in the field of rural development, and research NGOs located in Kanpur.

Kanpur has several production units and research institutions in leather, chemicals, agricultural products, pulses, sugar, textile and food processing. The core group will network and interact with the professionals connected with these units and also from senior persons from the district level administration for help in developing and implementing specific projects. A number of such people were already invited to the brainstorming session and gave useful suggestions.

This project is expected to benefit all stake holders, which will undoubtedly help village economies. Additionally, it will also help scientists and engineers in identifying relevant problems for research, sensitizing graduate students to problems of rural society, examining indigenous knowledge systems, and generating new solutions with application of concepts from high technology areas such as nanotechnology, Geoinformatics, data mining and information and communication.