MYSURU: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in his 16th budget has paid a perfect ‘Guru Dakshina’ to one of his political mentors and Raitha Sangha founder Prof M D Nanjundaswamy announcing the establishment of a study chair at the University of Mysore on the life and contributions of MDN, as he was known to many.
The dynamic farmer leader, who had a global vision, strongly opposed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a precursor to the World Trade Organisation that had planned to reduce trade barriers and agreements through the Dunkel Draft and also campaigned against Monsanto-engineered seeds. He had a deep understanding of Indian agriculture and appointed Siddaramaiah as Mysuru district Raitha Sangha general secretary. Later, Nanjundaswamy became the force behind Siddaramaiah entering active politics.
However, the budgetary announcement of setting up a Study Chair without any financial allocation raises doubts about serving the purpose of setting up a chair in honour of stalwarts from various domains. Barring Basava Chair, Gubbi Veeranna Chair, Ambedkar and Babu Jagjivan Ram, a few others have taken off but are defunct now. Out of these many Chairs, a few have restricted their activity to annual seminars and many have not been active in recent years due to lack of funds to work as per the objectives of the Chair.
Apprehensions are being expressed by many MDN followers, activists, and others about whether this Chair too would join the list of those ‘namesake chairs’. According to available information, there are about 26 Chairs in the University of Mysore, of which seven are funded by the government and one is funded by the state government and the UGC. Seven chairs are non-functional. Though Rs 11.09 crore is deposited in these chairs, 80 per cent of the interest earned goes to expenditure and the rest of the interest is taken care by the Chair.
Retired professor and KRRS leader Prof Basavaraju said that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has announced a Chair after his mentor Prof MDN. He said that the government should announce financial support in the budget that will give leverage to the university and the departments concerned to work on Prof Nanjunadswamy’s contributions, his vision, observation of various agreements and the status of the present-day farmers and the agro-economics in details by organising seminars and talks by stakeholders.
Basavaraju feared that lack of financial support might force Prof MDN Chair to end up as a defunct chair like others. However, he said financial support given by the then government has made Basava Chair to carry out research activities and Ambedkar Chair, Babu Jagjivan Ram, Gubbi Veeranna Chair and a few other Chairs are active. A few people observed that many Chairs organise annual workshops to show that the ChaIr is functioning. Many Raitha Sangha activists felt that the Chair should be set up at the Agriculture University as he was closely associated with the farmer’s welfare and their income.