National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM) is an apex institute of global standards set up by the Ministry of Food Processing Industry, on a 100 acres piece of land near Delhi at Kundli, district Sonepat, Haryana, with an initial cost of Rs500 crores. It works as a Sector Promotion Organisation for the Food Processing Industries by catering to the needs of entrepreneurs, industry, the Government and other institutions. The pillars on which NIFTEM stands include education, research, extension and outreach, technology and enterprise incubation.
They have a unique programme known as Village Adoption Programme (VAP) which is a step towards linking students to the grass roots of our country and make them contribute to nation building. In this unique initiative, B Tech and M Tech students go to the villages every semester with a mentor to understand village life, interact with farmers, and educate the farmers on sanitation, hygiene, good agricultural practices and entrepreneurship developments. The main focus of this VAP programme is to create awareness in the farmers regarding value addition, preservation, reduction of wastages and ultimately link agriculture to food processing industry so as to provide a business model to agriculture in our country resulting in enhancement of farmer’s income. Every year around 35-40 batches consisting of 10-15 students each go to different villages in the country and stay for 10 days in the villages and work for all round development of the adopted village. We have adopted 38 villages spread across 19 states of the country.
The aim of VAP is to help the Indian Food Processing sector accomplish its objective of all- inclusive growth and facilitate the process of integrating the under privileged sections of our population with the main stream economy. Since VAP is a unique programme taken by a university in the public sector for the upliftment of the farmer’s life.
photo Ranjan Dimri