“The idea is to make students aware about the disaster management process and inculcate basic training so that they can react to disaster,” said Arun Adsool, acting vice chancellor of the varsity. The officers of 145th battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) under the National Disaster Reserve Force (NDRF) that were involved in the relief operation after Kosi flood and Aila cyclone have started the training at Talegaon from Monday.

The initial training of the teachers will be done in six batches, each consisting of 50 teachers. The training will be done from 6 am to 8 pm from Monday to Saturday. Next Monday training of another batch will start. In this way six batches will be trained in a period of one and half month.

“All the 300 teachers are from 300 different colleges. Each teacher will train 50 students. That means 50 students of each of the 300 colleges will be trained,” said Adsool. “We have termed the training as nation building through character building along with career building,” he said.

After the training each of these 300 colleges will have a “resetting force.” “The contact details of this force will be displayed in colleges and in case of any calamity, be it flood or accident, the common people can call them for help,” said Adsool.

Sanjay Chakane, coordinator of the training programme, said there would be independent sessions for women teachers too. “The training involves activities like how to save human being sinking in river, human beings trapped on a tall building due to fire and so on,” he said.

The idea of disaster management training was mooted by the previous vice chancellor of the university Narendra Jadhav. He had also proposed of starting an independent department of disaster management studies. “We will setting it up shortly,” said Adsool.