Even as it is trying to involve corporates in a big way to boost the education standard in the state through their CSR programme, the Punjab Government is mulling the creation of district cadres for teachers.
“This will ensure that the teachers remain posted in the same area, thus leading to social pressures on them to perform,” said the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh during discussions with researchers and professors of the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID) on a range of issues, including education and skill development, raising farm incomes and crop diversification.
Expressing concern over the challenges in education in Punjab, especially in rural areas, Capt Amarinder underlined the need to take up its upgradation on top priority.
The government was exploring various avenues to raise the quality of both school and higher education, and also to empower youngsters with the necessary skills to make them gainfully employable, said Capt Amarinder.
The state government was planning to use ITIs as skill centres after their closing time at 5 pm to provide state-wide skill development facilities to youth, said the Chief Minister, listing it as one of the ways in which the available resources were being optimized to maximise benefit, in view of the constrained fiscal condition of the state.
CRRID, on its part, suggested an Employment Policy to enable the state government to intervene in matters related to employment.
Pointing out that Punjab was giving maximum loan waiver despite financial problems faced by the government, which was preventing it from waiving off all loans, Capt Amarinder said that while crop diversification was the key to resolve the agrarian crisis, the depleting water levels were a serious hurdle.
Underscoring the need for the Centre to support the state’s efforts to save farmers, Capt Amarinder said that while the suggestion of Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari to go in for corn or maize-based ethanol was good, the problem was that the state did not have sufficient funds to extend the support price to the same.
The Centre should send companies that are interested in converting corn or maize to ethanol, he stressed.
Noting that his government was working on an Agriculture Policy for the state, the Chief Minister asked CRRID to send in their suggestions to make it more holistic and impactful. He welcomed the CRRID suggestion for the state to have a Water Policy as well.
While CRRID mooted the idea of setting up a Water Regulatory Authority in Punjab, the Chief Minister called for an aggressive movement for harvesting rain water.