Page 71 - EducationWorld October 2020

ICAR campus, Delhi: obstinate public accountability deficit

sector enterprises (PSEs) which were naively expected to dia. Curiously, ICAR and vice chancellors and faculty of the
generate vast surpluses for investment in public education, country’s agriculture universities have maintained a deafen-
health and rural infrastructure. ing silence on the issue of forced march of an estimated 10
Tragically, PSEs managed by business-illiterate bureau- million migrant labour to their village homes after they were
crats and government clerks never produced the budgeted thrown out of their jobs and modest lodgings and all public
surpluses with the result that contemporary India is among transport was shutdown at four hours’ notice on March 24
the world’s most under-educated, medically under-served by the Central government following the outbreak of the
countries with a desperately poor rural citizenry. These infir- Coronavirus pandemic. Nor have any of them joined the
mities of the Indian economy have been brought into sharp public debate on the three controversial agriculture reform
focus during the current Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting Bills passed by Parliament last month which have divided
that the country has neither the intellectual capital nor eco- the country.
nomic resilience to effectively combat the sweeping virus The popular perception of ICAR and its affiliated 71 gov-
devastating Indian society. ernment agriculture universities is that they are ivory tower
Widespread rural poverty which prompts mass annual institutions filled with ritually qualified kith and kin of the
migration of rural youth to work in urban India in humiliat- neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) brotherhood which has
ing conditions and live in Dickensian squalor, has exposed hijacked post-independence India’s economy. These uni-
the problems-solving inadequacy of central planners and versities are established on huge, beautifully landscaped
the neta-babu brotherhood, which the industry liberalisa- 100-acres-plus estates on urban peripheries, and pay their
tion and deregulation of 1991 notwithstanding, continues faculty very comfortable Seventh Pay Commission salaries
to micro-manage the economy. Persistent rural poverty and and perks. Typically, they are defined by huge establish-
backwardness has also raised questions about the compe- ment expenses, low tuition fees for students, and have large
tence and contribution of the apex-level Delhi-based Indian research budgets. Moreover, all of them manage model farms
Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR, estb.1929) and the sustained with best fertiliser and pesticide inputs and impres-
country’s 71 agriculture universities towards modernising sively high yields, but maintain minimal connect with rural
Indian agriculture and raising living standards in rural In- communities and farmers. Their ‘extension services’, i.e,

OCTOBER 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 71