Surprise gift for Rajasthan,gets an IIM after IIT

With the UPA Government on Monday announcing the setting up of an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Congress-ruled Rajasthan,the state is set to join the elite ranks of states boasting an IIT as well as an IIM. The largesse at the end of the UPA’s term comes as a surprise since the state did not figure on the list of states slated to get an IIM announced by the HRD Ministry in March 2008. An Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) was also set up in the state last year and is currently being mentored by IIT Kanpur which also houses its campus.

The interim Budget unveiled on Monday announced that four of the six new IIMs planned for the 11th plan period would be located in Haryana,Rajasthan,Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu and would start their academic session in 2009-10. While Haryana,Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu were among the six states earlier earmarked by the HRD Ministry for an IIM,Rajasthan had been given an IIT in keeping with the idea that a state should have either an IIT or IIM. The other states on the Ministry’s IIM list included Jammu & Kashmir,Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh. Meanwhile,the budget was silent on the location of the other two IIMs leaving open to speculation which state will be axed from the list in lieu of Rajasthan.

“Teaching is expected to commence from academic year 2009-10 in four out of six new Indian Institutes of Management proposed for the Eleventh Plan in Haryana,Rajasthan,Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu”,Pranab Mukherjee,who holds the additional charge of Finance,said. Rajasthan will now join the ranks of Uttar Pradesh,Tamilnadu,West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh which also have the distinction of hosting both the prestigious institutes. Officials from the HRD ministry,however were tight lipped on the issue.

Continuing its thrust on the education sector,the UPA government has allocated Rs 8,000 crore for the Mid-day Meal Scheme and Rs 13,000 crore for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for the year 2009-10. A whopping Rs 1,143.46 crore has been earmarked for the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA),a new scheme to give a boost to secondary education. In the sphere of higher education,the University Grants Commission (UGC) has been given an additional Rs 1062.75 crore in the interim budget with a total of Rs 6,545.11 crore earmarked for UGC as against Rs 5,482.36 crore in the revised estimate for 2008-09.