Higher education opportunities are slowly opening up in the educationally backward district of Bidar. Several courses are being offered at Jnana Karanji, the Gulbarga University's postgraduate centre at Halahalli in Bhalki taluk. Some other courses are also being offered in government first grade colleges and private colleges.
Bidar's educational backwardness is historic. The first high school in the district was started in 1920, four years after the establishment of a world class university in Mysore. From 1949 to 1980, Bidar and its surrounding districts of the Hyderabad-Karnataka region were under the jurisdiction of Karnataka University, Dharwad. Few students from the district could aspire for admission to postgraduate courses after travelling 500 km to reach Dharwad.
“It was only after the establishment of Gulbarga University that a significant number of students from Bidar began taking up postgraduate courses,” said Basavaraj Ballur who passed MA Kannada from Gulbarga University in 1995.
“The second reason for the low enrolment in higher education of our students is their low pass percentage in SSLC and PUC,'' says Vithaldas Pyage, who teaches in the Government Pre-University College. “Around 20 per cent students pass SSLC and 17 per cent pass PUC. Thus, only around three per cent of students who enrol in high schools pass Pre-University. Of these, less than half opt for postgraduate courses. That is just over one per cent. However, the national average of high school students entering universities is seven per cent. The divide is huge,'' he said.
After a prolonged agitation in the district for the setting up of a postgraduate centre in Bidar, the Gulbarga University agreed to start a campus in 1992. However, the only course approved was M.Sc sugar technology. Six students opted for the course in the first year. The number of students decreased over the years. At the suggestion of the then Governor and Chancellor Khurshid Alam Khan, courses in Urdu and Hindi were started a few years later.
Expansion
The University took a long time to expand the PG centre into a full-fledged centre. Additional courses were started only from 2009. However, now, the Jnana Karanji centre offers 12 courses in humanities, commerce and science.
Students can do MA in Economics, English, Kannada, Political Science, Social Work, Sociology, Urdu and Persian, M.Sc in Mathematics, Organic Chemistry and Sugar Technology, and M.Com in Master of Commerce. The campus has a special officer, over 50 teachers and some ministerial staff. “We have a very high potential for excellence as our admissions are based on merit and roster,” the centre's special officer, Ravindranth Gabade, said.
Students can opt for regular or part-time doctoral courses at Jnana Karanji. “I was surprised at the opportunity of taking up higher studies in a town far away from the metros,” says Lucknow born Neha Shukla, who is pursuing her Ph.D. in commerce and management here. She shifted to Bidar after her husband, who is in government service, was transferred here.
The campus spread on 310 acres is in a scenic setting with the Khanapur reserve forest on one side and the backwaters of the Karanja dam on the other. There are 460 students on campus now. As many as 100 boys and girls stay in the hostels on the campus. The rest commute from the city that is 15 km away. The North-East Karnataka Transport Corporation operates omnibuses to the campus four times a day. The centre is well connected to Bidar, Humnabad and Gulbarga.
“A stone wall is being built around the whole campus to protect the land from encroachers and to provide a sense of security to students,” university officials said. “We plan to expand the intake in the hostels and acquire some more land to build guest houses for senior officers. The land acquisition process is in the final stages and construction will start once that is over. We will soon have a dedicated power line to the campus and Internet facilities for our students,” an official said.
Demands
Jnana Karanji suffers from long standing vacancies of permanent teachers. Most of the teachers now are guest lecturers who come from Bidar, Gulbarga and other places. “We have been demanding that the Bidar centre should have as many courses as those on the main campus in Gulbarga and that there should not be any difference between the quality of teaching in the two campuses,” said MLC Khaji Arshed Ali. He requested the University to start vocational courses and courses tailored to suit women.
“We have urged the State Government to allow us to start Master of Physical Education and bachelor courses such as Bachelor of Education. This will ensure that there will be two batches of students who stay on campus all the time. This will also lead to development of supporting infrastructure on the campus,” said Syndicate member Maharudra Hugar. A request for starting a diploma course on the Halahalli campus is also pending with the government, he said.
“We are in the final stage of recruiting teachers and non-teaching staff for all our three campuses in Gulbarga, Bidar and Raichur,” Gulbarga University Vice-Chancellor E.T. Puttaiah said. “We are working towards appointing 110 teachers and 260 non-teaching employees in the three campuses.”
