Reservations essential for marginalised: Knowledge Commission

New Delhi, Jan 12 (UNI) The National Knowledge Commission, appointed by the Prime Minister in 2005, has accepted reservation as part of various measures to ensure access of knowledge to all.

It has also recommended adoption of a ''needs blind admission policy'', under which institutions would not take any finacial factor into count for giving or refusing admission.

In its first annual report presented to the Prime Minister today, it called for undertaking more proactive forms of affirmative action to ensure inclusion of marginal and excluded groups.

''Reserevations are essential but are a part, and one form of, affirmative action,'' it said in the Report for 2006.

While accepting disparities in educational attainments were related to caste and social groups, it, however, sought to underline that they were also strongly related to other indicators such as income, gender, region and place of residence.

The Commission said economic barrier to higher education can be addressed by ensuring financial viablity for all students wanting access to it.

This can be done through various measures like adopting a ''needs blind admission''policy, which would make it unlawful for educational institutions to take into accoun financial factor while deciding whether or not to admit a student. Every institution will be free to use a variety of instruments like schoilarships or cross sibsidies to achieve this aim, it said.

It also mooted the idea of launching a National Scholarship Scheme targetting economically underprivileged students.

Among other recommendatioins relating to higher education were creation of more universities, at least, and splitting large universities into smaller one.

It has also called for setting up an independent regulatory authority for institutions of higher learning and making the procedure for setting up new univeristies and colleges more flexible.

It is of the view that large universities had become outdated and were not able to manage their academic affairs because of their size.

Out of a large number of colleges, some can be grouped together and given autonomy in their academic affairs, the Report has suggested.

The independent regulatory authority may give licence to various accreditation agenencies to make the the process more transparent and competitive.

The Knowledge Commision is a high-level advisory body to the Prime Minister. It has been mandated to guide policy and direct reforms, focusing on certain key areas such as education, science and technology, agriculture, industry, e-governance etc.

Easy access to knowledge, creation and preservation of knowledge systems, dissemination of knowledge and better knowledge services are core concerns of the commission.

The Commission was constituted on June 30, 2005 with a time-frame of three years.

UNI