Hyderabad may get India’s first Dalits-only varsity next year
university by 2018-19 academic year,” TSWREIS secretary Dr R S Praveen Kumar told Hindustan Times.
Once established, it will be the first of its kind university for Dalit students in the country. At present, there are universities exclusively for women and religious minorities but not for weaker sections, though they are given reservations in various state-run universities.
Praveen said the objective of establishing an exclusive university for Dalit students is to provide them a comprehensive education, so that they would come out as complete and knowledgeable citizens.
“Till a couple of years ago, we had been providing education to our students from primary school up to Intermediate. Later, we started degree colleges with under-graduate courses. At present, we have 30 degree colleges with over 3,500 students. In the next step, we want to groom them as post-graduates by establishing our own university. Thus, we want to empower our students with higher education so that they face any challenges in the world and compete with any other social groups,” he said.
Once the Dalit university comes into existence, all degree colleges which are now affiliated to other universities, would come under it.
“The medium of instruction in all our institutions from schooling to graduation is English. Our students are not inferior to students of any other English medium institutes,” Praveen said.
More than 1,00,000 students from India’s 1,151 Kendriya Vidyalayas can now visit the best of India’s labs in a partnership designed to inculcate scientific curiosity in young minds.
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) launched the student-scientist connect programme called Jigyasa (curiosity) to extend student’s classroom learning to research lab-based learning.
The programme will connect 1,151 KVs with 38 national laboratories of CSIR, targeting 1,00,000 students and nearly 1,000 teachers annually. “CSIR will also hunt for talent among the visiting students for furthering the cause of scientific development,” said Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union minister for science and technology.
“The initiative will allow students and teachers to practically live the theoretical scientific concepts by visiting the labs and participating in projects,” he said.
“Science has played a very important role in changing our lives. To inculcate scientific temper among the students we have to make them aware about the impact of science on the society,” said Prakash Javadekar, Union human resource development minister.