Government using colleges to promote its schemes

Central government is now using IITs and autonomous colleges for self promotion.

Leading educational institutions receiving grants from the Centre are being weighed down by government.

The HRD ministry has spelt out a rigorous schedule of “non-academic” activities.

These activities have to be carried out almost throughout the year.

These activities range from promotion of flagship missions such as Swachh Bharat to language lessons.

At a recent workshop in Delhi, social media coordinators from premier institutions such as IITs, IIMs and IISERs....

... were asked to make extensive use of their Twitter handles to endorse the ministry’s activities by retweeting their tweets regularly.

An official from one of the IITs said they were asked to tweet several times a day to gain traction on social media.

“While this is still doable, we are expected to hold a host of activities throughout.

It is difficult to find students who can take time out of their busy schedule.

Many directives come at the eleventh hour, making it tough for us to organize events and even if we manage...

...we are unable to show solid participation in the photographs,” said the IIT official.

A former IIT director said that the premier institutes find it difficult to organise cultural events.

“Our students will have to be trained for those cultural events, but we do not have trainers for classical singing and dancing.

The idea of holding such events could be gradually brought into the IIT system and it cannot happen overnight,” said the director.

Students from these colleges are engaged in number of non-academic activities.

These flagship engagements have been disturbing the busy academic schedule of students.

Under these government programmes cultural exchange between paired colleges from different states is scheduled.

A teacher and 50 students from each college were to visit different state for a week.

But no one is directed to go about it. Mails to the programme officers in Delhi went unanswered.

In another bizarre activity, students from colleges funded under the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shikshan Abhiyan (RUSA) ....

....were asked to promote the Central government’s pension scheme in the unorganised sector.

Students are made to approach their domestic help, drivers, gardeners or watchmen to promote the scheme.

A principal said colleges are being directed to submit a regular report and upload photos and videos on designated websites.

Colleges are asked to hold close to 20 activities in a span of two weeks on a very short notice.

The compulsion of submitting daily reports and uploading photos is a cumbersome task for the colleges.