Cabinet approves continuation of agriculture education development plan

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday approved continuation of the Three Year Action Plan (2017-2020) of the scheme for Agricultural Education Division and ICAR Institutes to strengthen and develop higher agricultural education in the country.

"The scheme is aimed to generate quality human resources from the institutions of higher agricultural education," Union Finance Minister Piyush Goyal told reporters after the Cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The total outlay for the scheme is Rs 2,225.46 crore including the states' share of Rs 27.95 crore.

According to a release, the scheme encompasses several new initiatives including steps to attract talented students, reducing academic inbreeding and addressing faculty shortage.

"It will also take care of green initiatives, mitigating faculty shortage, international ranking, alumni involvement, promoting innovations, inspired teacher network, reducing inbreeding, academia interface, technology enabled learning, post-doctoral fellowships, agriculture education portal, scientific social responsibility," said an official statement.

"Support for strengthening and modernization of infrastructure related to student and faculty amenities and capacity building of both faculty and students in cutting edge areas through niche area of excellence programme will improve teaching and encouraging holistic development of the students," it said.

It will lead to generation of competitive and confident human resource, it added.

"In addition, research on gender issues in agriculture and allied fields, formulating gender-equitable agricultural, policies/programmes and gender-sensitive agricultural-sector responses will be undertaken by ICAR-CIWA and capacity building needs of the human resources and stakeholders of the entire National Agricultural Research & Education System (NARES) will be catered leading to enhancing of competencies and capacities of the stakeholders including farmers, young scientists, students and agri-industry in NARES by ICAR-NAARM," said the statement.

--IANS

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