Elaborating on the paper presented by the noted scholar Mahendra Narayan Karna on Higher Education in Bihar Prof Pandey in his presidential speech said that here the state government had made a unique condition for the allotment of land for the Central University of Bihar. “If you do not open the University at that particular place you would not get the land,” he said referring to Nitish Kumar’s insistence to the Centre to open the University in Motihari and nowhere else in the state.

He said that education of Bihar has been lost in what can be said Bhul Bhuliyan of Lucknow. He regretted how the people are tolerating such a situation.

Those who also presented their papers on the occasion included Dr Vinay Kanth, Dr P P Ghosh, Prof Shahnawaz Abdin, Prof Shamshad Husain, Prof Qamar Ahsan, Shabbir Alam and others.

Earlier, on Friday Uttarakhand Governor, Margaret Alva, inaugurated the three-day international conference on Global Trends in Education: Review and Options organised by the Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi, and AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna.

Speaking on the occasion she stressed on education reforms and added that with liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, the economy of many developing countries are bouncing back and in such a scenario education has a major role to play.
She said no society can develop if education is not given priority. By 2015, the average age of the population of India would be 27 years, while in China it would be 37. With such a huge young population, India has an edge in the race to be a super power, she added.

In his keynote address Dr Mohammad Ghazali Mohammad Noor, who works as senior adjunct at Tindakan Strategi Sdn Bhd, Malaysia, said education is now universally considered to be the next most important investment after health care in any society.

He said Global trend in education is not uniform. It varies in coverage, content quality and access in different societies The developed nations follow a policy of inclusive education with a dominant role of the public authority up to high school level, but private investment on non-profit basis is dominant at the higher educational level.

Others who spoke on the occasion included IOS chairman Manzoor Alam and general secretary Z M Khan, Bihar Human Rights Commission chairman Justice (retired) S N Jha, John Arul Phillips of Asia e-University, Malaysia and former VC Qamar Ahsan.

Comment

comments...

It now really seems that Nitish Kumar has no intention to cleanse the education and research condition in Bihar. From every corner the complains are coming up. The pain of Prof Janak Pandey is very well understandable, where just due to non-cooperative attitude of the state government, the state is paying price of. Nitish Kumar can get lands for so many Tom Dick Harry kind of things but for him CUB matters nothing, NIU matters nothing...but this man shamelessly says that he wants to see a better Bihar in future. You can never see a better Bihar where your education hungry people who deserve the best institutions in Bihar have to walk out of Bihar for basic education while the central government gives you something huge like NIU and CUB and you spoil them, discourage and demotivate the mission and intention of academicians. Asking CUB to open in Motihari is not less than a dirty joke which Nitish has been doing.

Its not only fault of Nitish Kumar and team but opposition parties, who can only yell when they get some communal line, some caste line to manage their bread butter, but not even for single time they did voice out strongly for the academic tragedcies recently appeared in Bihar with CUB and NIU. I am a committee member of Central University, opened in parallel with the one in Bihar, but I feel ashamed when I see that this central university despite of several problems is picking up, where even the state government has given land at best possible locations which is well connected by rail, road and air, and guest faculties from all over don't mind coming there; and CUB has become and epitome of apathy of Nitish Kumar. But what we are doing with CUB? Not only spoiling the golden chance given to Bihar to revamp its education, but also killing any hope for a better Bihar, if you are able to read between the lines. Because our politicians, be those in power or those sitting in opposition, are really not "educated enough to understand this all". God knows what will happen. At present we have to choose between bad and worst, between Nitish and Laloo, with no third option and among these one will definitely choose bad, over the worst, otherwise we will be back to those days where such talk would deserve only laugh and lampooning. Its a real sorry state and in noway I find the present government and present lot of politicians from Bihar even an inch serious about building an academic Bihar, give serious support to missions like CUB and NIU. what a sheer misfortune!

Ravi Shankar