By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Despite the government spending crores of rupees on equipments for learning process, these equipments were yet to be utilized optimally by the researchers and the end users, lamented NEHU Vice Chancellor, Prof AN Rai.
Addressing the valedictory function of the 21-day Summer School on “Qualitative Techniques in Policy Planning, Monitoring, Modeling, Analysis Impact Assessment of Hill Agriculture organized by the Division of Agricultural Economics and Statistics of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research at Umiam on Tuesday, Prof Rai said many facilities established by the government were unutilized.
“Some of these equipments cost above Rs 1 crore. These costly equipments were yet to be utilized optimally,” he said while adding that various equipments should be allowed for common use to benefit the researchers and the end users.
Lamenting on the fact that reading habit has gone down with the introduction of internet, he said resources in the form of books could still be useful to them besides the availability of the latest equipments for analyzing data and internet facilities.
“NEHU has about 4000 post graduate students and only about 500 of them used the library per day on an average” he said.
Speaking on the occasion, the ICAR Director, S.V. Ngachan informed that ICAR had developed numerous agricultural tools to benefit the farmers of the North Eastern Region and it was left to the State Governments to use them optimally.
Meanwhile, Agricultural scientist and Course Director, Dr. SB Singh informed that the participants had benefited from the 21-day ICAR Summer School, as they were taught the use of various software the analyzing the agriculture and environment.
He said the imparting of the Qualitative Techniques which was becoming very popular amongst the agricultural scientists was also taught to the participants to analyze the fragile agricultural situation in the region including erosion, pollution and climate change.
Later, NEHU VC Prof Rai gave away the certificates to the participants.