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THE Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore is
celebrating its centenary year. One of the premier farm institutions in
the country, it is also one of the oldest agricultural colleges after the
ones in Pusa (New Delhi), Nagpur (Maharashtra) and Lyalpur (Punjab).
According to TNAU Vice-Chancellor Prof. C. Ramasamy,
agricultural education in Tamil Nadu started in 1868 at Saidapet, a
Chennai suburb. The British, in 1906, decided to shift this institution to
Coimbatore considering its unique features - two soil types (black and
red) and three land types (Noyyal-irrigated wet land, well-irrigated
garden land and dry land).
In 1920, the institution started offering graduate
courses affiliated to the Madras University; in 1930 it was upgraded to
teach postgraduate students; and in 1971 it became a university under the
Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
The university has 32 research centres, 16 Krishi Vigyan
Kendras, five plant protection clinics, seven teaching campuses, 10
colleges, and several urban horticultural development centres. With
research in almost all crops, agronomy practices and farm technology, the
1,000-acre university has grown into one of the best in the country.
The university offers undergraduate and postgraduate
courses in 23 disciplines and Ph.D programmes in almost all of them. It
also has four self-supporting B.Tech courses in biotechnology,
horticulture, food processing and energy and environmental engineering.
The university has so far released 600 crop varieties,
apart from developing 125 farm equipment, and disseminating over 1,000
agronomy practices. Its many unique crop management techniques are
followed by farmers throughout the country. It is the first agricultural
college in the country to start open and distance learning. Even Class VI
students can join its six-month certificate course.
Market-driven changes: Among the new features at
the university are demand-, market- and employment-driven education, and
decentralisation of management and decision-making. "This," says Ramasamy,
"is primarily because in the 1980s and the 1990s, the unemployment rate of
agricultural graduates was very high. Thus, since 2000 we reoriented our
focus."
Centres of Excellence: The university has
introduced a new concept - of evolving centres of excellence - for
Agriculture and Rural Development, Plant Breeding and Genetics, Plant
Protection, Crop and Soil Management, Plant Molecular Biology and Water
Technology. Each of these centres has a director who coordinates research
throughout the State.
Research: According to Ramasamy, 60 per cent of
the university's manpower concentrates on research, 30 per cent on
teaching and 10 per cent on extension work. Nearly 40 per cent of the
resources are generated internally, primarily from research grants and
consultancy from the Department of Biotechnology, ICAR, international
institutions and, seed and fertilizer companies. The TNAU's research
system is now open to private organisations as well. If a project has
little relevance for stakeholders, it is closed down. But in all the work,
technology is emphasised. So much so that even basic research must have a
technology component. This focus enabled the university to bag three of
the six projects (each worth $ 300,000) given by USAID to any Indian
agricultural university that collaborates with an American university.
Education: Education, according to Ramasamy, is
now being reoriented to make it demand-driven so that every student
passing out of the university is employable. Without affecting science,
the university is strengthening technology to meet industry demands. The
thrust now is on bioinformatics, marketing, and so on. The TNAU is also
strengthening its placement cell.
Placements, says Ramasamy, happen in the banking,
insurance, and IT sectors as also the civil administration. Keeping this
in mind the university provides rigorous training on the field, including
industry visits and village studies. The focus is on such subjects as
economics, sociology, and agronomy with a focus on application in
agriculture. Placements occur also in agricultural extension and research
and development. Banks are one of the key absorbers of talent in this
field. According to Ramasamy, agricultural graduates head 40 banks in
Chennai.
The four-year graduate programme has a market-driven
curriculum. For instance, science is taught in the first year, application
in the second, technology in the third, and management, including
marketing and exports, in the fourth.
The university, focussing on entrepreneurship, has
included management and IT courses in the curriculum. According to
Ramasamy, nearly 30 per cent of the lectures for B-Tech students are now
given by people from the farm industry. Students are also encouraged to
visit business houses and commercial centres.
The university coaches students for GRE (Graduate Record
Examination) and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)
examinations for a nominal fee. With NIIT, it also conducts IT courses at
40 per cent of the actual fee.
The university's infrastructure is the best in the
country. While it subscribes to most online foreign journals, all lecture
notes are put online before the start of each semester. All lecture halls
are connected to audio and video systems. To aid research, the university
is setting up a technology park, which will house all project reports,
models and pilot projects.
According to Ramasamy, even the evaluation system has
changed; the emphasis is now on testing the ability of the student in
solving problems. For example, the student has to identify the soil
sample, find out the problem (if any) and provide a solution to enhance
its quality, or identify the disease of a plant given and provide a
treatment for it.
Extension: Considering that extension is an
important mandate for the university, as it is only through this that
technology can reach people, the TNAU has expanded its interface with
non-governmental organisations and the private sector to market its
technology. The university also has a technology information system for
farmers' use. It has a toll-free number (1551) for farmers to call when in
need. The university uses the media for extension work and also publishes
journals in Tamil to disseminate research work. It also conducts, every
year, an extension and research meet to discuss knowledge, technology and
products.
The university also helps the government formulate
specific policies for the farm sector, apart from sensitising policy
makers.
Says Ramasamy: "All changes are geared to make the
university borderless and globally competitive." The courses are
demand-driven, need-based and flexible. So much so that the number of
students in each course is constantly changed depending on their
employability. "We also dovetail course content to market demand," says
Ramasamy.
To enhance administrative efficiency and to aid the
market-oriented approach of the university, its governance has been
decentralised and decision-making has been delegated to affiliated
colleges.
With these changes, the TNAU hopes to integrate with
international farm research and markets.
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