As many as 57 agriculture universities of India would discuss their problems and means to strengthen relationship between Centre and State for enabling the agricultural universities to contribute meaningfully to the cause of national food and household livelihood security at the 38th Vice- Chancellor’s (VCs) conference titled ‘Centre-State Relationship in Agricultural Universities’ scheduled at Birsa Agricultural University (BAU) from December 18 to 20.
Recommendations from the speakers regarding solving these problems will be sent to Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and State Government for implementation leading to surplus food productivity. Briefing the details about the importance of this meet, BAU Vice-Chancellor (VC) Dr MP Pandey said, “Agriculture is a State subject. The target of agricultural growth fixed by the Central Government is not possible to achieve without cooperation of the State Government. ICAR plays only mentoring and facilitating role. The execution of ICAR policy and programmes depends to a great extent on the support of the State Government. Removal of bureaucratic hurdles through policy support of the State Government is must to enable State agricultural universities deliver fruitful results. The event is organised with this backdrop.”
He connected the need of this national-level discussion to his university. “The State Government is mulling to begin the eight colleges — including Agricultural colleges at Godda, Garhwa and Deoghar along with Dumka College of dairy technology, Gumla College of fisheries, Jamtara College of veterinary science, Chaibasa College of horticulture and Ranchi College of agriculture and engineering at Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode with the affiliation of BAU. But, this plan is against Jharkhand Agricultural State University Act 2000. The norms of this Act mentions that colleges should be constituent under BAU and cannot run on PPP mode,” said Dr Pandey.
However, he assured to begin the colleges by 2014-15 session since the student intake and teaching cum non teaching posts sanctioned notification is yet to be approved by the Governor House officials. Also, he stressed on ICAR’s five year programme termed Model Act 2009 which provides autonomy of financial and administration by agricultural universities.
The programme will be inaugurated by Governor Syed Ahmed on Wednesday evening while technical sessions on the theme will be held on Thursday and Friday. ICAR Director General Dr S Ayyappan and State Agriculture and Sugarcane department Principal Secretary Dr Nitin Madan Kulkarni will be present at the plenary session.
Dr Pandey informed that VCs of all the 57 universities will be given the chance to share the problems dealt by them in the recent scenario. “At the time of independence the contribution of farm sector to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 55.1 percent which is now only 12 percent. This is a matter of serious concern for the policy makers and agricultural scientists,” said BAU VC on Monday.