Delhi Image repair initiative The Eleventh Plan, approved by the National Development Council (comprising chief ministers of all the 29 states and five Union territories of India) on December 19, which envisages an aggregate ‘plan outlay’ (i.e capital investment) of Rs. 36,44,147 crore over the next five years (2007-12), has made stellar provision for education. Prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh who chaired the NDC meeting made it clear that spreading education across the country’s backward regions and marginalised groups is an integral component of the 17-party UPA government’s strategy for inclusive development. “The outlay on education goes up from 7.68 percent of the Central gross budgetary support allocation in the Tenth Plan to over 19 percent in the Eleventh Plan. In fact, education is the most favoured sector and the three-fold increase in its share and a five-fold increase in the actual outlay demonstrates the criticality of this sector in ensuring sustained inclusive growth in the future. Nothing will ensure an effective spread of opportunity to all sections of the population more than the availability of good quality education particularly in rural areas,” Singh told the NDC while presenting the Eleventh Plan for its approval. Awareness of the massive skills deficit confronting the country is belatedly dawning on the Union HRD (human resource development) ministry as well. Speaking at a national conference on ‘Development of Technical Education’ convened in Delhi by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) on December 17-18, minister of state in the HRD ministry D. Purandeswari, exhorted AICTE to desist from the temptation to control technical education and instead proactively encourage partnerships with stakeholders for improving quality and eliminating regional imbalances in technical and vocational education. “During the Eleventh Plan period, improving the quality of technical education is a focus area, with special emphasis on postgraduate and doctoral level programmes as we need to target a ten-fold increase in the supply of trained manpower countrywide,” said Purandeswari. “Funds won’t be a constraint with higher education getting eight-nine fold higher allocation in the Eleventh Plan period with Rs.8,500 crore budgeted for postgraduate education,” said R.P. Agarwal, secretary in the department of higher education of the HRD ministry. Stating that foreign higher education institutions are welcome into India, Agarwal also proposed convergence of the UGC promoted NAAC (National Assessment & Accreditation Council) with AICTE’s National Board of Accreditation (NBA) to smooth accreditation processes, as also frequent open house sessions for public grievances. Meanwhile, AICTE under provisional chairman R.A. Yadav (who recently succeeded the mysteriously transferred Dr. Damodar Acharya) is desperately trying to repair its image. “This is a beginning in the direction of initiating exchange, dialogue and discussions with stakeholders for propelling technical education to excellence. After winning provisional membership from the Washington Accord, NBA is now benchmarking the Accord’s best practices and striving for permanent membership,” says R.A. Yadav, acting (provisional) chairman of AICTE. AICTE which convened the December 17-18 national conference to debate ways and means to upgrade and contemporise technical education urgently needs an image…
