Former Deputy Speaker of State Assembly Rama Chandra Panda in a statement on Friday put the onus of the weakening of the Berhampur University, the nerve centre of higher education in south Odisha, on the State Government for not even meeting its basic financial requirements which has crippled the university system.
Pointing out that the university is now unable to function as a vibrant centre of advanced research and productive excellence, Panda alleged that three years back the State Government failed to undertake the post-five years financial management of the proposed Post-Graduate Departments like Pharmacy, Geophysics, Microbiology and Education which are professional and job-oriented courses for which approval of the UGC for the new departments could not be obtained.
This has caused irremediable loss to the students of the region.
Had the State Government given assurance to the UGC to take the financial liability of these professional courses in post-five years period onwards, a lot of meritorious and enthusiastic students of this region by now could have got enormous job positions in various organisations of national repute, he pointed out.
The university is annually provided a grant of about Rs 32 crore which is insufficient even to meet the annual salary liability of the teaching and non-teaching staff, resulting in a shortfall Rs 1 crore per month which is being met from the university’s own sources such as raising examination fees, Panda said.
Such a sorry state of financial position has pushed the university from an excellent centre of research to a mere examination conducting body, frustrating the citizens of the region who wished to see it as an institution of academic excellence for which the citizens had agitated for its establishment in the 1960s, he said.
The State Government for last three years have not conducted any meeting of the Vice-Chancellors to discuss on the fiscal status and problems of the universities where the grievances of the universities could have been properly ventilated by the VCs so that the fiscal crisis could have been resolved, Panda said.
This is a clear indicator of Government’s apathy towards higher education in general and the Berhampur University in particular, he alleged.