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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

India's first tribal varsity starts working in MP

Tribal students of India have a better study option now as Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, country's first tribal varsity, has started functioning in Madhya Pradesh. Intake of students and recruitment of teaching faculty are underway.

India’s first tribal university has started functioning from 2008 session at Amarkantak, a town in Anuppur district in Madhya Pradesh.

The university has been set up with the aim to promote higher education among the Scheduled Tribes (ST). Authorities of the university like executive council, academic council, college development council, boards of studies, academic boards, management boards and finance committees will be chosen from among the ST community.

Union Human Resource Development (HRD) minister Arjun Singh had laid the foundation of the first of its kind university at Amarkantak on April 19, 2008. This tribal institution is yet to have its own academic council and currently it has adopted the syllabus of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) for the courses. Meanwhile, the varsity has started the recruiting process of its registrar and teaching faculty.

Named as Indira Gandhi National Tribal University (IGNTU), it has provided enrollment to 150 students this year. The university will offer courses in humanities, commerce and research on tribal affairs. CD Singh vice-chancellor of IGNTU informed mediapersons that the university has given admission to about 150 students, including 100 belonging to tribal communities. It is offering bachelors degree programmes in anthropology, tourism, political science, geography, history and commerce.

However, the university does not have teachers and a campus of its own. A major portion of the land area allocated for it comes under the forest land and it has not been transferred to the university till date. For the time being, it has hired a building of an ashram at Amarkantak where the classes will be conducted.

Amarkantak has been chosen as the university site because it is a central point of the tribal areas stretching between Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. With its headquarters at Amarkantak, the university will also have its regional centres and campuses in other tribal pockets of the country.

IGNTU has been founded under a Central law enacted last year. It will be funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and will have jurisdiction all over the country. Established on the pattern of existing central universities of the country, it will cater to the tribal people of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

The education of the tribal people has been a matter of concern for the Central government since 1947. In fact, gross enrolment ratio (GER), which is measured with the percentage of people of the relevant age group in the realm of higher education is very low among the tribals. While the national GER is 11.6 per cent, the GER of tribal people is just 6.6 per cent. Hopefully, the university will succeed in reducing the gap between the national and tribal GER percentage and also promote education among tribals.

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