Modernizing Higher Agricultural Education System in India to Meet the Challenges of 21st Century

摘要

Indian agriculture has come a long way from the situation "living from ship to mouth " to "food self sufficiency". The agricultural sector is getting more complex due to globalization, impact of climate change, entry of corporate sector in agriculturevalue-chain, expanding demand for processed food, and need for postharvest technology. India will need rich human capital of highly qualified, motivated, and well trained agricultural scientists to meet these challenges of 21st century. It is the responsibility of the State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) to provide such human resources. In the first green revolution, SA Us played a key role in generating technology and taking it to end users through effective integration of education, research, and extension. During the past 2—3 decades, the journey of higher agricultural education (HAE) got interrupted and SA Us are on fast track of deterioration. The paper indentifies major constraints facing HAE system in India. A few important ones include (i)difficulty in attracting bright/talented students, (ii) funding crunch, (Hi) large number of vacancies, (iv) inbreeding of faculty, (v) lack of autonomy to the Vice-chancellors, and (iv) poor state-center and state-SAU relationship. The paper makes specific suggestions to address these constraints; compares functions of Land Grant Universities in USA with SA Us; discusses the role of external donors like USAID and the World Bank in support for HAE and in conclusion makes specific recommendations to modernize HAE.