Dec 19, 2008

India - World Bank's Rs 14000-cr largess for Indian tech institutes

NEW DELHI: The technical educational institutes in the country are set for massive upgrade in infrastructure and software facilities with World Bank
assisted Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) entering the second phase this year.

The Ministry of HRD has signed an MoU with the World Bank for the second phase of the project which will be implemented for another three years.

"The engineering institutions will be provided assistance to upgrade their infrastructure and software facilities. Besides, faculty development will be a focused area under the second phase of the project," a senior ministry official told PTI.

As per the agreement, World Bank will provide Rs 14,000 crore, while HRD Ministry will contribute Rs 500 crore for the project. The states will have a share in the project.

"Forty per cent of the amount will be spent on infrastructure," he said.

However, the government is yet to finalise the institutes to be provided with the benefits.

The World Bank is understood to have objected to the idea of providing assistance on the criteria of backwardness of the area where the institute is located.

It is not yet decided whether quality or backwardness would be criteria for providing the assistance.

The TEQIP project was first launched in 2002, aiming to up-scale and support ongoing efforts in improving quality of technical education and enhancing existing capacities of the institutes to become demand-driven, quality conscious, efficient and responsive to rapid economic and technological developments both at national and international levels.

In the first phase, the total cost of the project was Rs 1,550 crore. About 127 institutes, including 18 Centrally funded and 109 state institutions, participated in first phase of TEQIP.

The state Institutes were from 13 States -- Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

The 18 Central institutes include 17 NITs and NIFFT, Ranchi. The 109 state institutions included 90 engineering colleges and 19 polytechnics.

No comments: