ECONOMIC HORIZION AND EDUCATION VISION FOR FRO RAJASTHAN, 2011-2031 THE Educational vision for what President

Obama recently characterized as an Emerged Economy must subserve the sustainment needs of high-GNP growth-rates which not only India has been recording for more than a decade but, despite, its long-established image as a desert and desolate region with a long history of wars and a warrior-dominated society, which even Rajasthan, the largest, area-wise, constituent unit of the Republic of India, has been posting since 1980 as per Table1.1 RAJASTHAN ECONOMY; A BRIEF OVERVIEW 2..0 Almost be-reft of Heavy and medium Industries( even in 2010-11 registered manufacturing Industries contribute only 5% to 6% to the Rajasthan Gross State Domestic Product) and sharing less than 1% of India s total water resources, the Rajasthan economy has maintained impressive GNP growth-rates on account of its (a)SMEs( ranging from Village and Cottage industries to urban and metropolitan-oriented Handicrafts and other luxury products like Gem and Jeweler) (b) Animal Husbandry with its fast-growing Meat ,Wool, Milk and Poultry production ,(c) new Cash Crops like Mustard and Rapeseed and newly-valuated cash-crops like Moth, Onions and Guar Gum (d) Minerals like Gypsum, Manganese, Tungsten, Mica , Infrastructure Stones and , above all, (e)Trade , Hotels and Restaurants which contribute a very high proportion of its GSDP and are capable , together with its vast and history-rich Tourism Capital like Palaces , Have is , Forts, Bawris , Bazars and Fairs and Festivals , of much higher yields without much investment. 2.1 A special mention must be made of the galloping strides that Rajasthan is taking in the domain of Textiles(natural as well as synthetics) as well as Cement but while both these are not sunrise industries the emerging advancements in Oil technology need more attention and advance facilitation as does the Renewable Energy industry powered by Sun and Wind . 2.2 The agricultural potential of the Rajasthan economy, despite its being rain-fed, is also substantial even though its net sown area has already reached nearly 50% of its total area since the productivity and production of Cereal s like Bajra, Jowar and many nutritionally and medically useful Grasses can be easily raised by several notches. 2.3 A special note must be taken of the data for last four to five decades which shows that, despite irrigating its crops with many times more of Energy, Water, Fertilizers, HVY seeds and Pesticides, the Punjab farmer has rarely been able even to double-produce the annual Rajasthan agricultural output which nearly overtakes the Punjab produce in terms of Calories. Rajasthan: The Foundation of the University System 3.0 The foundations of the University system in the present Rajasthan were blue-printed before August, 15, 1947 with a university which was , primarily , restricted to Affiliation and conducting the examinations for a number of Under-Graduate and Post-Graduate Colleges ( but the terms Postgraduate at that time was restricted to Masters degree and there was no concept of M.Phil and Ph .D. programmes , let alone the idea of Post-Doctoral Fellowships which were , even at time, regarded as 1

the flagship of all research studies while the notion of Project was ,perhaps, not fully familiar because , the Indian University system had been moored in the famous Ox-bridge where M.Phil degrees could be obtained by lapse of time and Ph D degrees in Humanities and Arts were practically unknown with BA (Oxon) or MA ( Cantab) being highly prestigious degrees all over the Third world including British India as well as the Princely States . 3.1The jurisdiction of Rajasthan s first University continued to expand with the several stages of the evolution of Rajasthan till 1956 as did the number of UG and PG Colleges but most of the College affiliated to it remained owned and operated ( i.e. planned , staffed, funded and controlled by the State government of Rajasthan ( henceforth RSG) while the university continued to enjoy a great deal of autonomy in terms of affiliation of Colleges and conduct of examinations , the RSGs commitment to excellence and autonomy being exhibited in several policies e.g. sanction of teachers salaries at par with the prestigious Rajasthan administrative services, recruitment of subject-matter HODs in RSG PG Colleges by the R P S C and creation of two RSG-funded de luxe Colleges at Jaipur and Kaladera where the teachers salaries were even higher than in the RSG Colleges. 4.0 Rajasthans sole University started its first University Teaching Department (UTD) in 1949 and appointed its first Professor in Economics in 1954 as per its Statutes while UTDs in History, Philosophy and Law were instituted shortly afterwards and teachers like Prof M V Mathur, Prof P T Raju, and Prof G S Sharma brought many academic laurels to the University all through their life in, respectively, disciplines like Economics, Philosophy and Law. The luster and academic autonomy of the University went up by many-fold notches when Dr Mohan Sinha Mehta was its VC foe six years during 199-1966 when the number of UTDs grew ten-fold and the faculty also expanded with Dr Mehta being able to resort to several creative uses of Rajasthans traditions of University autonomy catapulting the University to the level of top-ranking Universities in India many more than 5 to 0 times older than itself 4.1Life is nothing but change and the academic luster of UOR began to wane on account of several changes viz establishment of several other RSG Universities in the sixties and eighties cutting down its territorial jurisdiction and the creation of an Open University with jurisdiction covering the entire Rajasthan and providing a convenient alternative to the UOR to the large number of what are known as Private students in Rajasthan. The process of University multiplication in RajastHan was carried further in the 21st century adding a new type viz Single-discipline Universities in Agriculture Health, Engineering and Animal Husbandry while a Union Government model of Agriculture University had to undergo several changes during the sixties before coming under the umbrella of the RSG. 4.2 The multiplicity of Universities in rajastHan created complex concerns of Co-ordination but the RSG response was very inadequate viz establishment of non-statutory Coo-ordination Committee ;( C) only in rare cases it served the positive function of the Chief Minister being present which met in the Rajbhawan blurring the statutory distinction between the Governor and the Chancellor, the latter being merely a Statutory office while the Governor held a Constitution-status office as decided in Judgment by the Rajasthan High Court in a case pertaining to the UOR. Moreover , the CC could neither offset all the weaknesses of thinly staffed Chancellors office to provide him the requisite case-analyses nor could it provide an ideal platform for all the VCs to interact with nearly a dozen senior IAS officers most of whom 2

were ranked lower than the VCs in terms of the formal State Protocol as well as in the favourite pecking-order of the bureaucracy viz pay; Even more unfortunately, most VC s were , until very recently , were not au fait with the intricate mazes of administrative procedures having seen the post being routinely placed in charge of Divisional Commissioners as a stop-gap measure, but, in many cases , such additional charge was held for more than a year or even more), a major lowering of University autonomy even though many persons holding such charges were personally more than qualified to be appointed as regular VCs University Autonomy in Rajasthan: Erasure and Erosion 5.0 Notwithstanding everything ,it certainly goes to the credit of the RSG that its political commanders rarely interfered in the academic autonomy of the university and were always courteous to all the VCs and senior University faculty , but the same cannot be said about the MLAs who were nominated , under a Statutory clause , to serve on the Syndicates and the Boards of Management of the various Universities ; In the beginning such RSG nominations were bipartisan but even when the nomination authority was vested in the Speaker the practice of bipartisan nominations was given up bringing into University policy-making councils an explicit political element which many VCs found difficult to negotiate on grounds of academic autonomy: It also gave an open invitation for the students and the faculty to plead their case with the MLAs concerned, a tendency reinforced by many University teachers successfully contesting Vidhan Sabha elections and gaining Cabinet berths directly , it is very difficult to assess the impact of this type of politicization upon the University autonomy ,but it is even more important to note that this process invited neither academic criticism not academic scrutiny. 5.1 A more significant de-traction of university autonomy started with the RSGs attempt to arrogate the power of appointing Registrars and Finance Officers in flagrant violation of the UOR Act which was left to be challenged in the Courts by a faculty but , it seems , that some sort of out-of court settlement was made arrived at although the Court did stipulate that the RSG can exercise this prerogative only at express request of the university concerned .However even this fig-leaf was soon forgotten and it is not unusual for the VCs to find out about the transfer of such key officers of their university from the morning newspapers. Many University Acts in rajastHan contain explicit provisions for the recruitment of the Registrar and while no none may , ordinarily , question the ability and integrity of the administrative officers appointed by the RSG in violation of these provisions ,the net effect on the University is injurious as far as autonomy is concerned and , more often than not, rarely compensated by quicker and more effective co-ordination between the RSG and University not even offsetting the ignominy that Universities have to suffer at the hands ( and minds) of the Officers on Special Duty ( OSDs) who handle the University papers in the RSG Department of Higher Education ( DHE) even if they sometimes happen to be of the rank of PG College Principals, a rank equivalent to that of the University Professors but which provides very little exposure to the advancing frontiers of knowledge which is the principal objective of UTD teaching and research 5.1.1 While this source of autonomy erosion can be easily plugged by appointment of a RES PG Principal as the OSD in the Chancellors office which would also enable the Chancellor to exercise more effective control over the Divisional Commissioners in their capacity as VCs during which the govermentalization 3

of Universities becomes palpably greater , it would also enable the VCs and other University faculty and officers to interact with greater ease with the Chancellor rather than going through the Governoratariol bureaucracy , the Chancellor having been provided almost negligible bureaucratic support for an office which handles two dozen Universities , nearly 500 State Colleges --- and the numbers are expected to triple by 2031. 5.2 A co-related issue is the growing size of the eduscape of the resurgent Indian economy which needs to , urgently, breach the lowly GER of 155 and ascend o the levels prevailing even inn many Developing Countries in South Asia : the total edu-spend has to rise many-fold and several SA-type campaigns have already made the annual RSG Education budget much higher than what is was in 2001 and a similar amplification is in offing in the next 5 to 10 years making it the weightiest, in monetary terms, amongst the RSG departmental portfolios but almost no thought seems to have been given to the commensurate up-gradation to the stat us of its Principal Secretary by reserving it to the officers of the additional Chief Secretary-status; this creates many negotiational fissures of administrative psychology for not only the VCs who are ACS status but also for the Principal Secretary and Secretary in the Education department since , in actual practice , very few senior IAS very rarely have an experience of sitting, as equals, at the same table with ACS-level non-IAS functionaries. 5.2.1 While no neat and ready solutions can be prescribed for gaps and lags in administrative psychology, some measure of smoothness can be introduced in education governance by requiring all in-coming senior education bureaucrats to attend short courses in education management at institutions like the NUEPA, New Delhi, Administrative Staff College, Hyderabad and Management development Institute, Gurgaoan.SRG senior IAS officers are already attending two-person training courses involving IAS and IPS officers and similar courses can also be blue-printed for the key Education executives and Vice Chancellors. 5.3 A greater , albeit indirect and incremental , erosion of the autonomy of the State Universities is occurring on account of the increasing novelty and complexity of the University system in India as a whole with the increase in the number of Deemed universities and mushrooming of Private Sector Universities ( PSU) which the State Governments have no statutory powers to control and regulate with the Rajasthan Governor happily approving a large number of PSUs with Chancellors who are no match in public stature to the persons who are ordinarily appointed as Governors by the President of India with Vice Chancellors whose selection procedures and criteria are anybodys guess. Further, while Statutory State Universities VCs are appointed after a rigorous selection process they have to rub shoulders with PSUs VCs with , in many cases, who have very little academic , let alone research, credentials and as a matter of fact, the latter would win hands down in any public rating because most PSU s provide only job-oriented degrees and diplomas in professional disciplines like Biotechnology , Management, Pharmacology , Journalism for which qualified faculty available can be counted on the fingers of ones one hand in the entire state of Rajasthan : Even the single-subject State Universities enjoy this employability premium while the autonomy of the multi-discipline State Universities becomes a matter of negligible concern even as they are plodding away with teaching of Basic disciplines which grapple with the life-long concerns of the citizens rather than only lubricating the job-market for urban and metropolitan youth between the ages of 18 to 25 bound for foot-loose employment not only far away 4

from rajastHan but also beyond the shores of the country and even if they execute brain drain in reverse after amassing billions of rupees it is only a very , very small fraction that returns to their Hindispeaking home-states. Re-inventing and Restructuring University Autonomy 6.0 Apparently , there seems to be very little that the RSG can do to improve the "brand value," of the multi-disciplinary Universities , but there does exist a simple solution : Let the RSG guarantee the unhindered flow of Staff funding , in its entirety, to the all the State Universities after an extensive discussion with all concerned authorities involving even reductions in the staff strengths thus taking off the VCs shoulders the interminable annual, periodical and quinquennial discussions on this score which become ego issues specially for newly-appointed VCs : unfortunately the number of such VCs is rising giving an even upper hand for the RSG officers as well the MLAs serving on the university policymaking bodies to exert an inordinate pressure upon University autonomy. However the suggestion for creation of a Statutory Consolidated University Fund may given provide even the shrinkage observed in VCs tenurial security because the prevailing device of Block Grant has a built-in potential for armtwisting of the University autonomy and at least the VCs deserve to be relieved from monthly tensions about the payment of salaries and pensions even though the Rajasthan University faculty is not l likely o ace problems of prolonged spells of salaries as seen in some other states but certainly the RSG needs to clear the gathering clouds over regular payment of Pensions out of the University Consolidated Fund. 6.1 Another source of autonomy erosion lies in the management of finances in the single-subject Universities which regularly receive huge grants from diverse Union agencies whose State-level accounting and management leaves much to be desired specially with regard to establishment of Pension Funds but even many State Universities find it nearly impossible to ensure timely initiation of Pension payment , a processual reform which has already brought great relief to would-be retiring State Government employees, but hardly any SRG R Ac S officers deputed as F.Os to the University have taken the steps necessary to duplicate them for the Universities. The sight of retired University employees running hither and thither acts, in fact, as a great diminuendo ; Exceptional cases apart , this is NOT a issue of Financial Management but directly affects , adversely , University autonomy. Accordingly , RSG should allow the State Universities to adopt the policies and procedures adopted by PSUs out of an approved list of best-practices suggested by Chartered Accountants just as does the UGC with reference to Project grants. 7.0 Over the years , the autonomy of the State Universities has also been , imperceptibly , eroded by semantic and substantive confusion about their exact legal-formal; Each State universities are , no doubt , established the Vidhan Sabha under a specific Statute , but, over the years , RSG and its executives have tended to gloss over the specificities of the separate Statutes and have canvassed , on different occasions , proposals for uniformization of the Statutes with even University faculties enthusiastically joining such efforts down to adoption of uniform syllabi : the recurrence of such demands not only betray a lack of faith in the autonomy of the Universities concerned , but also stifle all efforts to make diversity and innovations as growth-engines. Fortunately, the single-subject Universities seem to have

moved beyond such uniformity, but the Damocles sword continues to hang upon the multi-subject Universities and the RSG would do well to declare an unambiguous policy in this regard. 7.1 Considerable confusion also seems to prevail as to the precise status of the State Universities and , although , clarity prevails about the DHE being the sole link between the RSG and the Universities but there is no doubt that the DHE has adopted the mantle of a regulator rather than a proactive promoter of the Universities interests even with respect to the RSG UG and PG Colleges which are routinely equated with the UTDs even though the latter posses a much greater academic capital in terms of faculty , research output and all-India and international out-reach. In the wake of the Union 6th Pay Commission, even the UGC has adopted a parity approach in terms of salaries resulting in , sooner or later, Professorships becoming available to College teachers who will face a Expert-driven selection committee only once as a Assistant Professors . RSG will also do well to commission to undertake an impartial assessment of the academic benefits of the policy of PG government College Principals being equated in status with the UTD Professors which has rarely yielded any worthwhile positive pay-offs of this hybridization. Affiliated Colleges and University Autonomy 80.All said and done over the last 63 years , someday somebody would have to ask( and answer)the question as to how many RSGPG College principals have been even considered for selection as VCs in the State Universities of Rajasthan? 8.1 It is well-known that only a couple of years ago an in-office RSG Chief Secretary had put on Secretariat record his considered recommendation that the Government Colleges should be closed down , a very heavy dose of criticism which the-then Education Minister managed to push under the carpet , but in the years to come the proficiency of the RSG Colleges would have to be re-valuated in a more transparent manner and the entire Collegiate management reorganized as , at present , it is just limping along with a very high shortage of faculty ( for many years the shortfall is as much as 3%0of the total posts sanctioned funding by the Vidhan Sabha) making the Principals job a nightmare as they are not even in a position to paste a teacher-wise time table for all the classes required by the growing strengths of students admissions who consequently find it convenient to bunk their non-existent classes. The RSG DHE, therefore , deserves full credit for continuing to mange the show but it totally detracts from the Universities natural desire to play a leadership role vis-a vis their College counterpart via the numerous mechanisms devised and funded by the UGC and other union agencies to ensure that the College faculty gets periodical regular academic booster shots about the new developments in diverse disciplines though diverse University Leadership Programmes instituted during the last three decades; Admittedly , the State Universities ULP capacities have also declined over this period , but the RSG seems to be either unaware or indifferent towards this erosion of the University-College relationships and , on the other hand , merrily going on framing uniform Academic Calenders which make it more and more impossible for the College authorities to allow the College teachers from taking part in the University academic events even inside the state ; the question of ensuring the academic renewal of Private ( aided or unaided)College teachers does not simply arise even though proposals

for absorption of such teachers within the folds of RajastHan education service ( Collegiate branch0 are the active consideration of the RSG authorities currently. 8.2 The increase in the number of State universities in the last ten years has added further to the piquancy of the situation as some of these State universities have yet to secure the due recognition from the UGC and their teachers are, therefore, precluded from the ambit of UGC funding for academic upgradation of the faculty of the numerous UG and PG Colleges affiliated to such Universities. In fact , over the last fifty years the vibrancy has almost totally gone out of University-College relationships although in case of some disciplines all-Rajasthan academic associations are still able to hold annual meetings , but University-level Seminars are able to ensure the academic participation of only a few College faculty who mange to get the necessary Academic Leave and , in many cases ,see it as an opportunity to escape the pains of everyday up-down grind which takes a heavy toll of their energies. 8.2.1 the academic distance between affiliated colleges and the universities is also growing on account of proliferation of more and more universities which a development entirely in keeping with the GER growth needs , but since the GER growth also needs more and more Colleges there is an urgent requirement for evolving viable policies( and funding for the implementation thereof) for regular exchange of ideas and data between the Colleges located in small towns and villages and the existing Universities located in major cities. 8.2.1.1 A negative example that leaps to the eye in this context relates to the Central University of Rajasthan which lay at the centre of many political storms in the rajastHan political system for several t years before its establishment but now seems to have been in the marble-land of Kishangarh where the SRG has and isseveral bounties on it without any other State University in the state getting even an inkling of its academic activities, let alone the RSG from whose premises it is functioning. Similar appears to be the case with respect to IIT, Jodhpur and IIM, Udaipur whose out-flows are almost opaque for the academia s well as the media and if the SRG is being kept in their benefit-loops it must be a State Secret. Now that Education is located in the Concurrent List a strong case can be easily made out for these institutions evolving strong linkages with the SRG as well as their academic counter-parts such as State Universities; Otherwise, Union-State Concurrency mandated by the Constitution will become another word for Central Government tutelage. 9.0 The two decades following2011 are likely to witness the establishment of at least 500 Central Government Universities each with 2011 Rs worth of 500 to 600 Crore rupees spent over the first 5 years and even their annual edu-spend will be each around Rs 50 to 70 crores while, at present, the total annual outlay of all the multi-faculty State universities in Rajasthan is likely to be of the same order. It would , therefore , be appropriate for the SRG to evolve better resource-sharing arrangements with the Central Universities located on lands provided gratis by the SRG ; the economic magnetism of Central universities can be seen from the fact that now a Central University has been located at Kishangarh an airport is likely to sited soon in its vicinity and although it will certainly not be open exclusively only for University-related travel it is a fact that the political support in its favour has gained momentum only in the wake of the establishment of the CUR at Kishangarh.

10.0 Applying a Systems approach to the sculpting of educational policies , one may visualize Education to be a man-made tool for interfacing two broad, long-lasting macro-systems viz an ecosystem (henceforth ES) of products and processes largely un-amenable to human interventions and inventions except either by way of trial and error or by science and technology and a less-older but very fast growing eco-social system ( henceforth ESS) consisting of religions, traditions, customs on the one hand and law and public institutions , exchange markets , production and extractional institutions for conversion of natural resources for human use. 10.1 Historically education as a man-made organized sub-system was concerned ,primarily with law , public administration and other public administration with a very large ( but very largely diffused ) sub-system of household education existing , almost separately , as far as the rest of the ESS was concerned so that very important spectrum of human activities ( viz agriculture , animal husbandry , commence , trade , social acculturation and family socialization , sports , amusements and hand-made fabrication of a large number of household consumption goods ) was considered to be beyond the pale of education for more than two centuries after Vasco de Gama landed at Calicut in 1498. 10.1 Indias ancient and medieval systems of education started to feel the Winds of Change only after the British paramountcy acquired deep and wide roots during 1757 ( acquisition of Diana in Bengal) 1858( initiation of the direct rule under the British royalty) and 1877( conferment of the Queen-Empress title upon the reigning Queen of England).Almost in its entirety , the Princely States of Rajasthan with long lineages of bravery , chivalry and a passion for warriorship which was deeply impregnated in almost all the socio-cultural segments of the population which , in due course of time, generated many long-sustained Rajput-ruled States preserved against many odds for many centuries till some of them boldly took the lead in formal Accession with the Dominion of India during 1947-1950. 10.2 The Princely States of rajastHan were, thus, largely impervious to heterogametic changes on account of their long politico-cultural stability and British education which made its first ingress in the British India reached its dry-lands in rather small driblets starting with special facilities for the royalty and the nobility while others had to go to distant Colleges and universities for higher education till as late as 1946 as already recounted .Resultantly , Rajasthan produced only a very, very small quota of English-educated babus with almost no Rajasthan-educated person making it to the coveted I C S and even the first such entry into the I A S coming from the Ajmer-Merwara part with most seats in the rajastHan cadre IAS routinely going even in 2010 to persons born and educated in other states of the Union of India. 10.3 Non-proliferation of English-medium education in Rajasthan has , however , in no way diminished the economic enterprise of its numerous -and famous- commercial activists and mercantile communities whose economic ascendancy can be witnessed in every major cities in all parts of India and is slowly expanding overseas in such high-value merchandise as diamonds and gem and jwellery but their stakes are also high in the development and management of Tourism services , Healthcare and Handicraft exports; their children have started to make their mark in the examination-based recruitment for Charted Accountants and Company Secretaryships as well as Engineers and Medical Practionership

and many are acquiring prestigious MBA degrees from prestigious Universities in USA while their cohorts in RSG Colleges and Universities are struggling to master Hindi even for Social Science courses. 10.4 While Heavy industries are practically non-existent in Rajasthan ,its educational system is not even in synch with the footloose industries nucleated around Computers and Internet while Bollywood and its tentacles have yet to acquire much penetration beyond providing low-cost backdrops ( because the original capital costs were paid by the people who lived long, long ago ) for location shooting. However, the handicraft emporia of Rajasthan-made goods are providing employment for tens of thousands whose traditional skills are, however, in need of urgent up-gradation in terms of Vocational Education. 10.51While the multi-faculty Universities have obvious limits in terms of provision of Vocational Education even the single-discipline Universities have taken no leadership in devising such courses with even the RSG persisting to hold entrance examinations for technical courses for examinees who regularly prefer other pastures leaving a huge number of seats in Medical and Engineering Colleges in Rajasthan un-filled year after year. 10.6 The newfound craze of the Indian middle-class for Professional jobs led to booming of Coaching services ( no can explain as to why it is called an industry) which drew thousands of students and their parents to Kota and , eventually ,drew the ire of the GOI MHRD , but , for nearly two decades , the RSG remained totally oblivious to the ills of the Coaching services which , above all, seriously impaired the status of the State Universities , but even the rajastHan Technical University located in Kota and none of the other RSG Engineering Colleges ever tried to inform the public about the pros and cons of the type of the Coaching imparted at Kota, once a premier industrial town in the genuine sense; the long-time residents could hardly be expected to question the Coaching industry as it generated a lot of rental and other incomes , but the phenomenon deserves certainly academic scrutiny as it is now expanding to other towns like Jaipur and Jodhpur specially as it seriously de-rogates from the standards mandated for the statutory State Universities as well as Rajasthan Board of Secondary education as well as CBSE-recognized Senior Secondary schools concerned. 11.0 The 2001 Census delivered the good news that during 1991-2001 there was an unprecedented hike in the Rajasthan literacy and the 2011 census is likely to confirm the trend generating, in turn, the need for more Colleges and Universities for which the SRG does not seem to have set in motion anticipatory planning even though the National Knowledge Commission had validated the emergent necessity for doing so in its first report in 2006.Contrastively , the matter of location of the Central University generated so much political sound and fury that the specific recommendation of a high-power committee to assign it to Bikaner was altered without any explanation to the public and neither the Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha nor the Indian Lok Sabha thought it necessary to scrutinize this flip-flop without any academic substance whatever might be its pay-offs in the next round of elections. 12.0 The GDP growth projections for 2008-09 to 2020 show ( vide India Today January, 21, 2010) indicate that Rajasthans GDP will rise from Rs 2, 01,675 Crore to Rs 7, 68, 908 , a more than three-fold jump in one decade and even tough several other states are likely score higher jumps a worrying aspect 9

of these projection is that in terms of planned investments rajastHan is likely achieve only a measly figure of Rs , 2, 231 Crore while the comparable figures for Maharashtra is Rs 1.38 lakh Crore and Rs 1.32 lakh Crore for Gujrat highlighting, once again , the nil ( or , very little ) role of industries as a growth engine in the case of the Rajasthan economy. It is, therefore high time that the policy planners and policy analysts abandon the fetish of Industry as a growth-engine as far as Rajasthan is concerned for the next two decades. 12.1 However, in the case of Rajasthan the potential for production of Energy from various renewable and non-renewable sources like Solar Insolation, Wind and Oil is very high specially because, in most regions where such energy can be harvested at low costs, the arrival of water from the Indira Gandhi Canal has made life much more habitable than it was only a three decades ago. All these Rajasthan ES resources have remained hugely under-explored so far mainly because they are abundant mainly in regions which under-populated in terms of electoral articulation , but now the time seems to be ripe for their systematic exploitation with adequate University-level teaching , research and extension networks ; In fact , the Indira Gandhi canal command Area , by itself, can support a multi-disciplinary University . 2.3 Although the Rajasthan soil does not harbour any Major Minerals (despite recurrent hullaboos about the discovery of Uranium and Gold here and there), but RSG must realize that Rajasthan has a vast reservoir of minor minerals for which there is hardly any policy umbrella with the mine-workers being subjected to worst types of exploitation all over Rajasthan with the RICCO, RSMM and other StateCorporate developers also neglecting the Mine-workers employed in hazardous circumstances. In the next two decades, mining will be clothed with exceptionally high ESS premia all over the world and not only the mine-workers but even the residents of the areas with mineral wealth will attract much greater attention by MNCs (including Indian-owned MNCs) whose structures and strategies need academic study for formulation of appropriate public policies, but the requisite realization seems yet to dawn upon RSG which has no plans for such Universities. 12.4 As already mentioned the ESSs system of Trade, Hotels and Restaurants is a major player in Rajasthan GDP and has much more growth potential than most other states of India, its economic dynamism is not reflected in SRG polices even though the union Government has located a hotel Management Institute in Jaipur but the SRG can profit-fully finance many more such ventures and also secure funding for a full-ledged Trade Management Institute with a University status focused on domestic trade management of Luxury goods shops which foreign tourist throng in great numbers all over Rajasthan . It has recently come to light that, in spite of a contingent of Indian Forest service officers operative in Rajasthan, the SRG lacked a clear-cut forest policy , a very timely step because although Rajasthans forest cover is not very prominent , yet a large proportion of its Scheduled Tribes lives in mineral-rich areas which also have a excellent forest cover and only academic institutions like Universities can understand , in advance, the emerging tensions which are likely to proliferate in such areas . 12.5 Another area for research and extension activities by Universities in Rajasthan related to the monumental task of conservation. preservation and popularization relates to the extremely large 10

number of monuments which are scattered all over Rajasthan which their multi-generational owners/occupiers are hardly in a position to show-case as tourism heritage ; a couple of years ago the SRG did get the Vidhan Sabha sanction to endow funds to create one such facility in a University, but the original proposal has been diluted beyond recognition in the absence of Musicologists ,Taxidermists and others well-versed in preservation of Luxury goods lying in diverse Palaces , Havelis and lakhs of other locations subject to theft and transfer to cash-rich markets in USA and other countries. 12.5.1 While the arts of preservation need huge funds, many Universities can undertake the work of documentation and historical description with amounts which are plentifully available assistance should be more readily available on part of ex-Rulers, Jagirdars and Marwari Seths specially those taking active part in the democratic processes and holding charge of tourism-related portfolios. 12.6 It may be added that most the abovementioned can be best handled by the existing multi-faculty Universities even though , on the surface they may appear to be falling in the competence of the singlediscipline Universities most of which have never handled problems of public policies like these which involve not only technical and mechanical solutions but must try generate solutions which can cover the politics-policy-politics loops which are the primary growth-engines In all mature democracies. 13.0 The above-mentioned policy solutions in Indias growing educational sector are likely to assume greater significance in the next decade as successive Five Year Plans allocation for health and education are likely to grow at a much faster than in any other preceding decade. Thus, MOHRD has already before it a report to confer the Navratna upon a few selected universities which will be subjected to an precedent review every five years to retain such a tag, a n evaluation procedure in which several State universities are likely to be not even allowed to enter keeping in view the fact that at least two Sate universities in Rajasthan have yet to attain full-scope recognition by the UGC even after more than five years of existence and the previous SRG has already formally announced the establishment of two more such Universities which may, conceivably, materialize as the next Vidhan Sabha elections , scheduled for 2014 , approach nearer. 13.1 Whether or not the UPA SRG currently in power is or is not prepaid to make any public pronouncement about its political will to initiate the formation of new State Universities in rajastHan on the eve of 2-11 polls as it had done on the eve of the 2004 polls , it would be appropriate for it to sanction the mandatory UGC quota of the faculty ( at least six UDTs and least one professor , two readers and four Lecturers in any University) required f or the full-scope UGC recognition by 2012-13 so that the farcical spectacle of nonteaching State universities ceases to exist in Rajasthan and students in distant corners like Kota,Bikaner , Alwar/Bharatpur and Sikar can obtain the services of University level faculty while the residents of Ajmer can find a justification for enrolling at the State university at Ajmer which is now entering its third decade.

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