Coordinated by the office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Rural Technology Action Groups (RuTAGs) have been set up to act as application oriented Research and Development (R&D;) nuclei in order to provide much-needed science and technology (S&T;) support for rural entrepreneurs and users and to promote potential technologies for them.

RuTAG-IIT Kharagpur was initiated in the year 2008 under Prof. PBS Bhadoria as coordinator. Since then, it has been actively interacting with NGOs in the adjoining region including the states of West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar to contribute to the needful.

During the last eight years RuTAG - Eastern India has connected with more than 50 NGOs and taken up technological initiatives aiming to improve the livelihood of clusters of rural population. It aims to identify the technological problems and bottlenecks in rural areas through NGOs, SHG and entrepreneurs; to develop or fabricate processes/products/equipment; to solve the identified problems through peoples participation; to disseminate established technologies through training, workshops and demonstrations and finally, to orient and expose the undergraduate students to rural problems in order to develop innovative solutions.

Contact: Prof. PBS Bhadoria pbsb@agfe.iitkgp.ac.in