Stop proliferation of ill-equipped BT institutes: Expert

Bangalore, Sep 11 (UNI) The government should swiftly move forward to stop the mushrooming of ill-equipped institutions teaching Bio Technology as quality of education in the highly sophisticated field had taken a beating, Dr S Shantharam a noted BT expert said today.

Speaking at a colloquium on 'March of Agricultural BT in India' organised by Foundation for biotechnology awareness and Education (FBAE), he said there was an urgent need to shut down many of such institutions, mainly in the privately sector, as they lacked proper laboratory infrastructure and quality teaching staff.

"There are over 1000 institutions teaching BT in the country, and 45 in Bangalore city alone, which has proved to be a rapidly developing field that offers great prospects for the youth as well as the agriculture sector. Unfortunately the quality is being short changed by many of these institutions which are ill-equipped to provide quality education. Technology cannot be promoted without making heavy investment in infrastructure," he said.

He said research was vital for any technology to progress and active research was important for BT. "We should motivate students to take up research but in many of the institution the teaching faculty has no idea about research. They keep doing routing teaching year after year. This can badly harm the quality of BT education," he said.

Dr Shantharam who is the president of FBAE, said the foundation, comprising mainly of academic experts in the field, had recommended to the Union government on formation of a BT Accreditation Council in line with AICTE, but nothing had been done even after 18 months had passed by.

He called for better awareness over the BT among the Indian farmers and the public as there was a misconception about the usefulness of the technology. "The people are misinformed about the advantages of the BT and the academic and the students should remove such misunderstanding with a better interaction with the society," he said.

The Vice Chancellor of city-based University of Agricultural Sciences, P G Chengappa, highlighted the usefulness of BT saying that traditional methods of agriculture had reached its saturation level in India and BT was the answer to achieve higher yields.

"Not any longer can we sustain the yield levels and nutritional enrichment in agricultural crops as old methods have lost their usefulness. There is a fatigue in technology in the agriculture sector. BT can help us a lot and BT cotton which has become immensely popular is one example," he said.

UNI