Maharashtra: Govt grants ‘professional status’ to 11 undergraduate, post-graduate courses in 4 agricultural universities

The Maharashtra government and Cornell University are planning to join hands in setting up business incubation centres across the state. These centres will train at least 60 entrepreneurs and youngsters to set up startups every year.




Following sustained protests by students, the state government has granted ‘professional status’ to eleven undergraduate and post-graduate courses conducted by all four agriculture universities in the state. In July 2017, the state government had accorded the status to nine undergraduate courses following a similar move by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which monitors agricultural education in the country.

However, the government has kept out diploma courses and doctoral courses from the tag, although the protesting students had demanded ‘professional status’ for them as well.

But as several other undergraduate courses — including those dealing with management courses held by agricultural universities — diploma courses, and post-graduate and doctoral courses remained out of the ambit of this announcement, students studying in these streams were unhappy as this, according to them, would reduce their employability.

The issue had heated up in January 2019, when a government resolution issued to bring clarity in nomenclatures of various courses condcuted by state agricultural universities for the purpose of providing benefit of ‘free-ship’ (reimbursement of tution fee) to students from economically weaker sections, specifically mentioned diploma, post-graduate and doctoral courses as ‘non-professional’ ones.

Since then, the students of Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth in Rahuri, Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth (VNMKV) in Parbhani, Dr Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth in Dapoli and Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth in Akola, had started to demand that like undergraduate courses, they should also be granted ‘professional status’.

Last month, as many as a hundred students from various agriculture colleges in the state had staged a sit-in protest at Maharashtra Council of Agricultural Education and Reseach (MCAER) in Bhosale Nagar. A group of at least a dozen students had also tonsured their heads as a mark of helplessness. Following this, the MCAER authorities had sent a communication to the state agriculture ministry requesting that the demand be considered.

The state government, finally, issued a government resolution on March 5 announcing that 11 couses will now have professional courses tag.

“We are happy that, finally, the government has agreed to our demand and has issued the requisite GR. Due to marking of post-graduate courses as non-professional, we were not getting benefits of freeships and getting educational loans was proving to be very difficult. We are happy with what the government has done,” said Abhijeet Katkar, a student.

State govt, Cornell University to sign pact to set up incubation centres

The Maharashtra government and Cornell University are planning to join hands in setting up business incubation centres across the state. These centres will train at least 60 entrepreneurs and youngsters to set up startups every year. The two institutions are likely to sign a formal agreement in this regard soon, a press statement said.

The business accelerator will mainly target youth and entrepreneurs, who will be offered skills training during the three years that the agreement will be valid for.

The yearly budget required towards training and rest skilling is estimated to be Rs 7 crore. Of the total budget sum, Rs 5 crore annually will be supported by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation. The remaining Rs 2 crore will be shared by the Social Justice and Special Assistance and Tribal Development Department each year.

The incubates will be screened through a defined process that will be conducted every year. In the recent budget, the state government had agreed to bear 75 per cent of the stipend cost of youth who are undergoing training.

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