The Hindu : New Delhi News : New library timings affecting research work

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 09, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

New library timings affecting research work

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 8. Not all seems well with Delhi University's prestigious Maulana Azad Centre for Elementary and Social Education (MACESE). Operating without a co-ordinator for almost a year, scholars who relied on its exhaustive library are now facing a new dilemma of limited access with the library now open only for three hours, a duration seen as too short for a reference library.

Although the University maintains that the step had to be taken because of a slash in funds from the Union Human Resource and Development Ministry, students and professionals are upset over the reduction in working hours which they feel has grossly affected their research.

Troubled by recent developments, students of the Central Institute of Education had written to the head urging a return to the old timings and independent functioning of the MACESE library which has been functioning under a funding granted to the Resource Support for Practitioners in Elementary Education (RSPEE), one of the Centre's ambitious projects for the past four years.

"Since the library did not issue books, it was one place where students from across the Capital came to collect material. With just three hours now and no proper help available in terms of staff it has become very difficult for us. As researchers we have no holidays and without the required material our work is suffering," said one of the students.

Set up in 1989 by Delhi University's Faculty of Education, it was a Centrally sponsored scheme of the Union Ministry of Human Resource and Development and was meant to function as a modified Institute of Advanced Studies in Education (IASE). Unlike other IASE centres, the focus area of this one was identified as elementary and social education.

University authorities point out that with the Ministry withdrawing funding, grants had dried up last year and with no money to support the library or the centre it was decided to put in place a part-time arrangement.

"Since we were not getting any grant from the Department, a letter was written to the RSPEE co-coordinator asking them to wind up work before the deadline of March 31, 2004. After this period, we had to put a temporary arrangement in place with our own research associates working in the library to ensure it kept working," said the former Dean of the Department of Education and University Proctor, Shyam Menon.

As far as the difficulty faced by students is concerned, Prof. Menon maintains that since a majority of the students come after college hours, the interim Core Group of MACESE wrote to colleges informing them about the shift in timings.

But RSPEE co-ordinator Poonam Batra is clearly not satisfied. "We received a letter pointing from the Dean citing cut in Ministry funds as the reason for the need to minimise expenditure on MACESE. When we checked with the Ministry to find out why the funds had been turned down, we were told by the Secretary that the University had never made a demand for any fund, so the question of offering any grant did not arise. So, the library has to be shut not because the government was not ready to give money but because no effort was made to get any."

The solution to the problem, feel many, is with the yet-to-be-tabled A.K. Sharma Committee report on the relationship between the sub-units of the Central Institute of Education (CIE). Constituted to suggest ways in which the organisation work could be managed, the report was submitted in June.

"The report provides some excellent recommendations to solve the problems faced by MACESE and the CIE. There has already been enough delay in tabling the report. It's time it is taken up now and discussed," feels the Director of the National Council for Educational Research and Training, Krishna Kumar, who was a member of the committee as well as the Academic and Resource Advisory Panel.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi