Rama Krishna Sangem
Dr RC Agrawal, Deputy Director General, Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), has asked agricultural universities in the country to aim for global rankings. He said that the overall educational and research standards of agricultural varsities should go up to strengthen farm sector, in tune with the growth vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Dr Agrawal was participating in the three day conference of Vice-Chancellors of all India agricultural universities held at Kanha Shantivanam in Hyderabad, from September 30 to October 2. VCs and other top officials from around 46 agricultural universities participated in the meet, that took stock of the overall goals and condition of farm varsities. Dr Agrawal addressed the conference on the second day, October 1.
Dr Seema Jaggi, Assistant Director General of ICAR addressed the conference on the concluding day, October 2, Saturday. “Unlike other universities, agricultural universities should evolve as student skill development centers,” said Dr Seema. She too stressed on the need of our agricultural universities securing top places in the global rankings. “We must make our varsities student centric,” she said.
The discussions were held in elaborate on revenue generation models, sixth deans committee recommendations, natural farming, public private partnership, implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) -2022, draft HR recruitment in agriculture sector for next 20 years , global ranking, implementation of national education policy -2020 in agricultural universities.
Main deliberations:
VCs committees are formed on revenue generation models and problems in accreditation of private agri universities; NEP to be implemented; work on global ranking of universities; Universities are suggested to work for NAAC accreditation; two FPOs per university be formed; universities to comply with academic management system, CeRA (Consortium of e research in agriculture) and registration and uploading information in Digilocker.
Deliberations on possibility of BOT- Built, operate and transfer – for creation of infrastructure and amenities to the students and research and making university websites with student activities and with all the information of students. On the whole, the conference focused on making agricultural universities too come up on par with the best among the higher education institutions in the country.
Prof B.Neeraja Prabhakar,Vice Chancellor, Sri Konda Laxman Telangana state Horticultural University, Dr. PS Pandey, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and 46 of various agricultural,horticulture veterinary and fisheries universities for present in the program. Prof Neeraja Prabhakar and other distinguished guests also participated in Bathukamma festival, on the concluding day of the conference.
