Bhopal: Ambassador Professor, Talent Bank Schemes die a silent death

Bhopal: Ambassador Professor and Talent Bank Schemes launched in 2011 to ensure better higher education to students studying in colleges situated in rural and remote areas is dying a silent death.

The schemes, aimed to impart quality higher education to students, initially gave good results, however, today they merely exist on papers and of course on the website of higher education department. Lack of willingness on the part of college administration and the negligence of officials have led to the failure of the two ambitious schemes. As the department has not issued any directives in connection with the implementation of the schemes since 2015-16 academic session, the college administration too have turned a blind eye to it.

In 2011-12, when the scheme was started, around 300 faculty members applied under Ambassador Professor Scheme expressing their willingness to teach in remote areas of the district once in a week after taking five-day regular classes in their degree colleges. The last direction regarding this scheme was issued in the year 2015 by the higher education department.

Besides, the Talent Bank Scheme was designed keeping in mind the people who were not only interested in teaching different subjects to the students of the remote areas, but were also ready to share their experiences to ensure overall development of the children. College principal were to play a very important role in this scheme as they were supposed to prepare list of the persons willing to take classes in remote-rural areas.

Talking to Free Press, Neeraj Agnihotri, principal of Motilal Vigyan Mahavidyalay claimed that government has already replaced the Ambassador Professor scheme due to its unfeasibility and under new scheme teachers are sent to these areas for two months. Speaking about Talent Bank Scheme, Agnihotri said that the department has not issued any directives for the on-going session.

Manjula Sharma, principal of Sarojini Naidu Govt Girls’ Post Graduate College said that the two schemes were very much in existence but stated that no Talent Bank list has been prepared.

Professor Kapurmall Jain, ex-joint director of the higher education department, questioned the intentions of the principal saying that “When the schemes are existing on papers, why are the principals waiting for new directives to take steps for improving the quality of the education?”

Claiming that the schemes proved beneficial to students and had given wonderful results in the past, Jain said that the schemes should be properly implemented on priority basis. DR Sudha Baisa, additional director, Bhopal Division refused to talk to this correspondent saying that she was ‘busy’.