ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Bihar varsities exist in a time wrap

Soroor Ahmed in Patna

If you have ever wondered why the Bihar government has not been able to pay full salaries to its 17,000 odd teachers for the last many years, here is a clue: college and university students in this northern state pay the same amount as tuition fee as their fathers once did.

There has also been no upward revision in hostel charges for as long as anybody remembers. While the tuition fee is a paltry Rs 11 to 12 per month, a bed in a hostel costs anywhere between Rs 25 and 30 per month. This is in sharp contrast with private hostels in Patna where a bed could cost 20 to 30 times that.

No wonder then that the dwindling internal resources of colleges and universities and the government's inability to support them with fresh grants have seen the quality of education plummet in the state.

Several institutions do not have money to buy books for their libraries and equipment for laboratories. In the last two decades none of the universities in the state have been able to subscribe to any new journal.

Though the state's grant to universities has gone up from Rs 1.2 billion in 1985 to Rs 3 billion this year, considering the rise in expenditure this hike is inconsequential.

Thanks mainly to the populist measures adopted by successive governments, the higher education system in the state is on the verge of collapse.

The Jagannath Mishra government in 1989 made 40 private affiliated colleges constituent units of state's universities. A majority of these 40 colleges were attached to the Magadh University, Bodh Gaya and the Lalit Narayan Mithila University, Darbhanga.

In contrast, Patna University, which has just half a dozen colleges under it, is acutely under-staffed with only 550 teachers against 900 vacancies.

And while internal resources of colleges and universities have more or less stagnated in the last 20 years or so, salaries of both teaching and non-teaching staff have increased manifold during the same period.

For instance, a college teacher who earned Rs 700 per month in 1976, now takes home around Rs15,000.

The ruling Laloo-Rabri regime too has also failed in stemming the rot. While academic calendar has been more or less restored and unfair practice in examination checked to a large extent, nobody quite knows how to fix the financial health of educational institutions.

While a section of teachers and politicians agree that the universities could easily double or triple their internal resource generation by increasing tuition and hostel fees, some teachers' and students' organisations are dead against any such move.

"If the state government can pay 200,000 primary and 40,000 secondary school teachers why is it that it faces problem in case of 17,000 college and university teachers. After all ours is a welfare state where education should be imparted free of cost," says the state president of the Federation of University Service Teachers Association of Bihar (FUSTAB), Prof Ram Jatan Sinha, who is also a senior Congress leader.

Magadh University which has 42 colleges under its wings gets the highest grant of about Rs 50 crore annually, while Patna University which has six colleges attached to it gets around Rs 15 crore. Patna University's budgeted expenditure is Rs 37.64 crore. With its internal resources pegged at a measly Rs 3.39 crore per year, it needs Rs 34.25 crore more from the government every year.

Magadh University has not prepared its budget since 1985. An unsuccessful attempt was made last year to draw a full-fledged budget following pressure from the government.

Several universities have not been depositing deferred DA in their teachers' accounts. Provident fund contributions have also been pending for over five years. A few months back the Income Tax Department sealed the bank account of Patna University after it failed to pay income tax deducted from teachers' salaries.

And as if all this was not enough, the government is likely to implement revised pay scales for university and college teachers. While the University Grant Commission will bear 80 per cent of cost incurred by the government because of this revision, the strain on the state exchequer is likely to show sooner than later.

Tell us what you think of this report