PATNA: In a major intervention to ensure “greater excellence and innovation” in the country’s higher education institutions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a Rs 10,000 crore fund to 20 universities for the next five years, with a vision to make them “world-class”.
“Top 10 public and private universities will be freed from all government control and get Rs 10,000 crore over five years. All these universities have to do is to demonstrate their potential to become world-class institutions,” Modi said at the centenary celebration of Patna University (PU). He said that the 20 universities will be not selected by him, or a CM or any other political figure; instead, their potential will be assessed through a contest judged by a third party. The announcement came after Bihar CM Nitish Kumar requested the Centre to grant Central status to PU, the country’s seventh old university.
Even as the PM extolled Bihar’s historically high standing as a land of knowledge, saying the state’s “heritage of knowledge is as old as the flow of the Ganga, on whose banks Patna University stands,” he gently rejected the demand for a Central university status. “Central university status is a talk of a bygone era. I want to take it a step higher,” Modi said.
Modi is the first Prime Minister to visit the 100-year-old Patna University. There was high hope among Bihar’s people, especially the academia, that he would fulfill this longstanding demand during this visit. Modi’s indifference to grant PU Central status quickly lent itself to a political slugfest in Bihar.
The state’s main Opposition RJD portrayed it as the PM’s “royal snub” to the CM and Bihar’s people.