Task force for agri education under NCHER

Agricultural education, a state subject, may soon come under a proposed regulatory body for higher education, if the Centre accepts the recommendation of a task force appointed by it.

The task force for creation and functioning of the National Council for Higher Education and Research (NCHER), said it would recommend that the government include agricultural education in the concurrent list.

“All education should be under the purview of the NCHER. The revised draft Bill envisages a federal structure of the proposed NCHER. We will ask the government to bring medical, legal and agricultural education under its purview,” said N R Madhava Menon, a member of the task force.

The health, law and education ministries, meanwhile, appear to be opposed to the recommendation.

A couple of days ago, the health ministry ruled out giving up control of medical education, despite efforts by the human resource development ministry (MHRD) to bring it under the NCHER.

“Health is too technical an issue. The education ministry is working on its separate overarching body and we are working on ours. So, there are two separate overarching bodies for health and general education being set up by their respective ministries,” Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had told reporters.

And it was only recently that the Ministry of Law made public its apprehensions over letting law education be a part of general education.

Despite reservations of the Bar Council of India, Union HRD minister Sibal hoped that law education would come under the ambit of the NCHER. “The structure of the NCHER will be decided by the government of India and not by the education and health ministries,” he said after coming out of a meeting where he discussed the draft NCHER Bill with the stakeholders concerned.

The matter may get compounded when the role of the agriculture ministry comes into play. At present, the NCHER Bill excludes health, law and agricultural education. How Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar will take this suggestion will be significant considering that it is a state subject, say observers.