Politicians, not doctors keep these sick colleges alive

When there is a political will, there is a way out. That's the situation of the Ayurveda and Unani colleges in the country.

While 180 colleges across India were asked to close shop due to inadequate infrastructure and teaching staff by the Central Council of Indian Medicine (CCIM) this year, almost all continue to function, courtesy political approval. Surprisingly, 60 per cent of the non-approved colleges are from Karnataka, which ranks second in the number of Ayurveda colleges in the country.

Consider this: The CCIM disapproved 39 of the 57 recognised Ayurveda colleges in Karnataka. The list of disapproved colleges included two government colleges - in Mysore and Bellary - and one private-aided college.

Yet, the Central government gave permission to seven colleges, including the two government colleges, to run under graduate (UG) as well as post graduate (PG) courses and 20 colleges to enroll students for UG course. The remaining 12 colleges have not been permitted to operate by the government. Interestingly, 75 per cent of the colleges which continue to run, despite the non-approval, are private ones. “In government colleges, faculty was an issue. But in private colleges, infrastructure also did not comply with the guidelines,” said a CCIM official on condition of anonymity.  Besides this, all the five Unani Colleges in the state, were ‘not recommended’ by CCIM for UG and PG courses.

However, the government allowed four of them to conduct UG course and one to start PG course.

"The government’s approval amounts to a mockery of the CCIM technical committee," said the official. The situation is not much different in other states. Maharashtra, for instance, which has the highest number of Ayurveda colleges, has 31 disapproved colleges out of the total 64. But many of these colleges have been given permission to run UG and PG courses. 

The Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha Colleges in the country are facing 35 per cent deficiency of faculty. To address this problem, 4,000 lecturers, readers and professors were appointed, when the new CCIM members were appointed three years ago.

Interestingly, the faculty strength before 2008 was 120 per cent. However, when CCIM created the faculty database, it found duplicity of names and fake experience affidavits being submitted in many cases, thus bringing down the actual faculty strength to 65 per cent. Many teachers had their names listed in more than one state, the official said.

Solutions

To make sure that unqualified teachers do not continue in the college payrolls, CCIM detected 300 teachers - 25 per cent from Karnataka - who had given false experience affidavits, last year. "CCIM has sent notices to these teachers and has given time for them to clarify. We will be through with this procedure by January, 2011 and post the names of blacklisted teachers on the CCIM website thereafter, so that they are not appointed by any college," the official said. 

In addition to this, CCIM recently collected residential addresses of all the teachers, after receiving complaints that the full faculty strength was only on paper.

"We plan to verify the addresses, by taking the help of the police," the official said.