The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Accountability only for teachers, staff in varsities regretted

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 16, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Accountability only for teachers, staff in varsities regretted

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: Yoginder K. Alagh, former Union Minister and Chairman, Institute for Human Development, Delhi, has called for an end to the practice of making teachers and staff alone accountable in universities.

Delivering the inaugural address at the 49th annual conference of Indian Society of Labour Economics here on Saturday, Prof. Alagh regretted that university administrators, Ministers and bureaucrats in New Delhi and State capitals were not being made accountable.

He said the autonomy for any institution was legitimised only by accountability. However, accountability in universities was meant for teachers and staff for too long. He wanted a civil society initiative to supervise that accountability and autonomy went hand-in-hand in education. The system should be structured and protected.

Prof. Alagh wanted networking of universities with knowledge centres outside as also businesses and users. It would be useful not just for funds but to assess the role of knowledge in a reform process. It could also help prepare for the Doha Round and give a legal base for Foreign Direct Investment and domestic investment in knowledge sector.

In his presidential address, G.S. Bhalla of Jawaharlal Nehru University said India had experienced negative results post-reforms as far as moving faster towards industrial revolution and diversifying employment to higher productivity non-agricultural jobs was concerned.

More self-employment

The growth rate of employment had indeed accelerated in response to higher growth of the economy from 2000 to 2005 as 60 million new jobs were created during the period. However, a major portion of the increase was in self-employment. As a result, the entire increase of 60 million workers was accounted by increase in number of unorganised workers, he said.

Labour Minister G. Vinod, who inaugurated the conference, said the State government was making sincere efforts to strengthen labour market institutions for unorganised workers

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