Surinder Sud: ICAR's new challenge

FARM VIEW

The council needs to check the deterioration in higher agriculture education.

India may have managed to develop one of the world's largest agricultural education network, but it is surely not among the best any more. The quality of the education has deteriorated over the years, leading to the failure of this basic sector to cater to the changing needs of science-led growth in the field.

Starting with a handful of colleges offering agricultural education at the time of Independence, the country today has nearly 47 universities or deemed universities with over 210 constituent colleges devoted exclusively to farm education. Besides, nearly 100 private colleges affiliated to different universities are also offering agricultural education.

Yet, this system is found to be inadequate, ill-equipped and incapable of churning out the kind of manpower that is needed for contemporary technology-driven agriculture. The problems with this system are many and far-ranging. The most significant among them being the paucity of funds. The Constitution has envisaged higher farm education to be a state subject. But, unfortunately, the state government's commitment to financing this system is waning due to their own difficult financial position. Although the Centre also contributes to the funding of agricultural education through the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), its share works out to a mere 23 per cent.

Not surprisingly, a whopping 87 per cent of the total budgetary support received by farm varsities goes to the salaries and establishment costs. Nearly 30 per cent of the total sanctioned faculty strength of 25,482 of this system were lying vacant in 2005. A general ban on recruitment since 2000 has made things worse.

As a result, the ratio of professors, associate professors and assistant professors, which stood at 1:2:14 in the early 1990s, has dropped sharply to 1:2:3. Ideally, for academic excellence, this ratio should be 1:2:6. What is worse, the lack of induction of fresh faculty members has led to an inversion of the cadre pyramid as the younger faculty kept on moving to higher ranks. This also resulted in the ageing of the faculty that is far from conducive to the much-needed constant reorienting of education to respond to the emerging concerns.

Indeed, the modern agricultural research system in the country originally had a solid foundation since it was based largely on the US Land Grant College model. Under this, teaching, research and extension are integrated into a single institution. Theoretically, this is an ideal arrangement for ensuring that the system remains dynamic and keeps changing and reorienting its education, research and extension strategies according to the changing requirements of the farmers on the basis of direct feedback from them. But its present state of affairs does not allow it to be so.

Fortunately, a significant stride was made towards revamping the farm education last week when the Union Cabinet gave its in-principle approval to the proposal for empowering the ICAR to regulate higher agricultural education in the country. It also approved the allocation of Rs 200 crore for this purpose for the remaining duration of the 10th Plan. The funding requirement for the 11th plan has been projected by the ICAR at around Rs 2,600 crore.

These funds are proposed to be utilised by the ICAR for initiating wide-ranging reforms in agriculture education. These would aim broadly at consolidation of teaching methodology, modernisation of existing educational facilities and human resource development for capacity building in areas that are deemed deficient to meet the needs of the new agriculture. Besides, it will facilitate competence building among the faculty to ensure continuous updating of knowledge and skills of teachers and trainers. It is also proposed to help state agricultural universities achieve excellence in selected areas of science and technology, including biotechnology.

Besides, the reforms process would focus on revising the course curriculum to incorporate professionalism so that farm graduates are able to create their own employment and not depend solely on public sector jobs. A significant measure in this endeavour would be to help the agricultural universities introduce need-based vocational education for farmers, labourers, farm women and even school dropouts and other unemployed people. These courses will help them get gainful employment and contribute to production in areas such as animal husbandry, dairy technology, fisheries, horticulture, primary processing, storage and food preservation, custom-hiring of farm machinery and seed and nursery propagation. Such initiatives would, obviously, result in skill upgradation of agricultural human resource to alleviate distress in rural areas.