Vice Chancellors of different agricultural, horticultural, veterinary and fishery universities from across the country will gather at Birsa Agricultural University (BAU) on December 20-21 to discuss the strategies of improving standard, sustainability and societal impact of agricultural universities at the 45 Vice Chancellors’ Convention of Indian Agricultural Universities Association (IAUA). The event is being hosted by BAU.
Addressing media persons on Saturday, BAU Vice Chancellor Dr Onkar Nath Singh informed that Jharkhand Governor Ramesh Bais will inaugurate the Convention as chief guest on Monday at Ranchi Agriculture College Auditorium. However, technical sessions will be held in Senate Hall. Dr RC Agrawal, Deputy Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi will be the guest of honour at the inaugural session.
Aboobacker Siddique P, Secretary, Dept of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Cooperative, Government of Jharkhand will be special guest in plenary session on December 21 where rapporteurs of different technical sessions will present recommendations for discussion and adoption. BAU is hosting the annual convention of IAUA Vice Chancellors for the third time. In the year 2013 and 2007 too, the venue of vice chancellors’ convention of farm varsities was BAU.
Dr Singh said that ways and means of keeping the natural resources for agriculture safe for future generations will also be discussed and recommendations will be sent to all state and central governments. He said that the Jharkhand Government has recently sanctioned Rs 4 crore to BAU to establish a state-of-the art Disease Diagnostic Centre for Animals and Birds for diagnosing diseases with accuracy and suggesting remedial measures.
Besides, Dr RK Mittal, IAUA president and Vice Chancellor of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture & Technology, Meerut; Dr RC Srivastava, Secretary General, IAUA and Vice Chancellor, Dr Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Samastipur, Bihar. Vice chancellors of over 30 universities from UP, MP, Odisha, Maharashtra, Bihar, New Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, West Bengal, Gujarat, Kashmir have so far confirmed their participation.
Three technical sessions will be held on ‘Achieving international standard in agricultural education and research in the context of New National Education Policy’, ‘Strategies to increase and sustain agricultural productivity and profitability with development and application of appropriate technologies’ and ‘Enabling farmers’ access to technology, market, credit and extension services’. General Body meeting of IAUA will be held on December 20.
BAU VC stated that the IAUA was started with only 9 members in 1967 and during the past 54 years the number of its regular member universities has swelled up to 71. There are 44 Agricultural, six Horticultural, 17 Veterinary and Animal Sciences and three Fishery Science Universities.
India has one of the largest national networks of Agricultural Education System in the world, comprising 63 State Agricultural Universities (SAUs), 4 Deemed-to-be-Universities, 3 Central Agricultural Universities and 4 Central Universities with agriculture faculty.
The intake capacity of students in these institutions, which was less than 5,000 in 1960, has now gone up to over 45,000. With about 410 constituent colleges, these AUs enrol, on an annual basis, about 28,000 students at UG level and over 17,500 students at Master’s and PhD level.
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