Teaching, research, and community engagement are interrelated and interdependent. Several committees and commissions on higher education have highlighted the importance of community engagement. The Government of India launched the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan in 2014 to renew the focus on community engagement. The National Education Policy 2020 prioritizes fostering social responsibility and community engagement by Higher Educational Institutions. In line with this, the University Grants Commission in New Delhi has mandated that all Higher Educational Institutions in India offer a compulsory credit course for fostering social responsibility and community engagement for undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Against this backdrop, to motivate and actively involve students, faculty members, and Higher Education Institutions in India in community engagement, this book elaborates on the principles and practices of community engagement. The book consists of seven chapters: Principles and Practices of Community Engagement, Methods, Challenges, and Strategies in Community Engagement, Theories of Community Engagement, Best Practices in Community Engagement, Village Placement Programme, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, and Sustainable Development Goals and Community Engagement. Best practices are included to help students and faculty members understand various aspects of community engagement.

It is hoped that this book will provide inputs and ideas for the community engagement teams and administrators of Higher Education Institutions in India to drive forward and devise an appropriate institutional strategy for community engagement.

Prof. K. Ravichandran (b.1965) currently serves as a Professor and Regional Coordinator (Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, a flagship programme of the Ministry of Education, Government of India), Department of Cooperation, Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University), Gandhigram, Tamil Nadu. With a distinguished academic career spanning over three decades, he possesses extensive experience in teaching, research, cooperative training and consultancy, and community engagement. He guided sixteen Ph.D Research Scholars, completed ten funded projects, and collaborated with more than one hundred Gram Panchayats to prepare and implement GPDPs. Prof. K.Ravichandran worked as a Consultant for Integrated Cooperative Development Projects of NCDC, New Delhi, and has authored numerous papers on cooperative finance, rural finance, and management in reputable journals. His publications include works such as “Crop Loan System and Overdue,” “Marketing Research,” “New World Through Cooperatives,” “Functional Management,” “Recent Trends in Insurance Sector in India,” “Rural Credit Markets,” “Non-Performing Asset in Cooperative Banks,” “Rural Non-Farm Sector,” “Principles of Management,” and “Cooperative Law in Tamil Nadu.”