An HRD Ministry’s Task Force has suggested measures to revive the country’s oldest language — Sanskrit.A Task Force on faculty shortage constituted by the HRD Ministry for taking corrective steps to ensure proper functioning of Sanskrit universities recommended at first instance for an urgent need of recruiting faculty by offering lucrative pay and perks since there are no takers for the job.
The HRD Ministry has given hindsight to the cause of ‘prosperity’ of the language and it has not maintained any academic information about faculty shortage and students intake in the existing Sanskrit Central and State universities and also its departments at various universities.
Further, the Ministry is neither maintaining details of the course curriculum of Sanskrit at various universities and departments nor does it have teacher-ratio comparison. “There has been no study till date to compare the teacher-students ratio in Sanskrit universities when compared with traditional universities. However, it is assumed that the ratio is lowest in comparison to prescribed ratio norms for other universities,” said an HRD Ministry official.
The Task Force under the chairmanship of former IIT-Kanpur Director Sanjay Dhande formed an Implementation Monitoring Committee which has suggested the Centre to take necessary steps for filing up the vacancies on an urgent basis.
“The implementation committee is monitoring the requirements and how do they invite interested people to take up Sanskrit teaching assignments. For the existing faculty, a performance appraisal system has been designed to retain them,” said an HRD Ministry official. Twelve Central universities of the total of 40 have Sanskrit departments under the aegis and complete funding of HRD Ministry and UGC.
The State-sponsored Sanskrit universities include Sree Sankaracharya University of Kerala, Kameshwar Singh Darbhanga Sanskrit University in Bihar, Sampurnanad Sanskrit University in Varanasi, Shri Jaggannath Sanskrit University at Puri in Odisha while three deemed Sanskrit universities one at Tirupati, and two in New Delhi - Shri lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanksrit Vidyapeeth and Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan. Among these States and deemed universities of the total of 1,153 sanctioned teaching posts, about 350 are lying vacant for the past couple of years.
According to Minister of State HRD Shashi Tharoor, higher education has seen vast expansion during the last decade, particularly during the 11th Five-Year Plan. “Due to this, the institutions of higher education in the country have been facing the problems of a shortage of qualified, and Sanskrit universities are no exception to this,” Tharoor said.