The agrarian state of Haryana also wants to become an education hub. Nearly 10,000 students will soon get quality education every year at the 14 upcoming institutes in the state which include medical and technical colleges, an Indian Institute of Management and an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
With an investment of Rs 2,000 crore, Haryana will see some state level institutes, a central university in Mahendra Garh, an IIM in Rohtak, an AIIMS in Jhajjar and a defence university in Gurgaon. A 2,500-acre Rajiv Gandhi Education City in Sonepat is also on the anvil.
The Centre had announced that the state will be given financial assistance to open degree colleges and polytechnics in those seven districts where the gross enrolment ratio is below the national average. Moreover, Rohtak’s Pandit B D Sharma Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences has been made a university of health sciences, and the Bhagat Phool Singh Women’s University has been set up at Khanpur Kalan where a medical college is also being established.
This transformation, according to the Haryana government, is a part of its effort to shift a large proportion if its labour force into secondary and tertiary sectors. “We are not only investing in education, but also in infrastructure and industry so as to improve employability. As of now, around 60 per cent of the labour force accounts for just 15 per cent of the gross domestic product,” Deepender Hooda, Member of Parliament from Rohtak and the son of Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, told Business Standard.
Rohtak, especially, is poised to become an education hub with three government institutions under construction with a cost of Rs 60 crore, besides six private ones and an integrated campus comprising institutes of fashion technology, film and TV, the fine arts and professional studies. The integrated campus will come up at an estimated cost of Rs 122 crore. The city will also see some Industrial Training Institutes soon.
“A Footwear Design & Development Institute is being built by the commerce ministry on 17 acres of land, whose session will commence from May. Its construction cost is around Rs 100 crore,” said an official from the Haryana State Industrial & Infrastructure Development Corporation. The institute will take around 120 students in its first year.
“We want to make Rohtak the new west of Delhi as there exists Noida in its east. Gurgaon is in its south and Sonepat in north. Rohtak is the unexplored west. We are especially focusing on medical colleges as there is only one medical college in Rohtak,” added Hooda.
| ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROHTAK # Indian Institute of Management # State Institute of Design and Fashion Technology # State Institute of Film and TV # State Institute of Professional Studies for Women # State Institute of Fine Arts # Institute of Hotel Management and Catering # Footwear Design and Development Institute |
Besides the two new medical colleges in Mewat and Khanpur Kalan (Sonepat), which are already under construction, another medical college is being established at Karnal in the memory of late Kalpana Chawla. One more medical college is being set up at Faridabad by ESI Corporation. All these institutes put together would churn out almost 10,000 students every year, claims the Haryana government. As for IIM Rohtak, Hooda said, “It was important to have another IIM in north India as the nearest IIM to Delhi is either Lucknow or Ahmedabad.”
Similar education hubs have been, or are being, set up in other parts of the country too. The Chandigarh Administration, for instance, is setting up a multi-institutional Education City at Sarangpur, for which 16 sites, measuring 6 acres each, have been set aside.
This should bring these northern cities and towns closer to a city like Pune, which boasts not only of the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research but, also private institutes like the Symbiosis International University, Bharati Vidyapeeth and Foundation for Liberal and Management Education.
