Heartful Campus, ICAR Inks MoU

An MoU was signed today between Heartfulness Education Trust’s (HET) Heartful Campus and Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) at the meditation hall at Kanha Shanti Vanam – the Heartfulness Headquarters in the outskirts of Hyderabad. A team of least 55 state Vice Chancellors from the agricultural sector from across the country and Additional Deputy General of ICAR were present at the signing ceremony as the MoU was signed by Kamlesh Patel ‘Daaji’ the Guide of Heartfulness and Rakesh Agarwal – Deputy General of ICAR. The team was welcomed by Dr Nivedita Shreyans – Programme Coordinator on behalf of Heartful Campus and Ramesh Krishnan – Director of Heartful Campus programme.

The MoU is aimed at HET offering various programmes as credit courses 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 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 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 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.