PAU lacks focus as it steps up efforts to address the issue of financial crunch

From here,PAU V-C Dr Manjit Singh Kang met the then Chairman,Planning Commission,Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia in February 2009 and raised a demand for corpus fund of Rs 1,000 crores from the Center and also a central university status for PAU. But this figure then rose to Rs 1,500 crores which the VC put forward to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee during a recent meeting on pre-budget discussion. All this while PAU gets Rs 100 crore from the state and 45 schemes financed by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) on a sharing basis.

Dr PS Rangi,Consultant,Punjab Farmer Commission,who is also a well known economist,suggests,“If the state government and the ICAR continue to fund PAU just the way it is doing now the PAU needs Rs 200 crores per annum. The amount is calculated after taking into account that with new pay commission in place salaries of PAU staff are going to shoot up and then PAU also has to take care of pension fund. From this Rs 200 crore,PAU can keep a contingency fund of Rs 10-Rs 15 crore that can be used for priority research.”

When asked about PAU V-C’s demand of Rs 1,500 crore,Dr Rangi explained,“I am sure that when the V-C had suggested this amount he must be planning to make PAU a self-sufficient organization. A corpus fund of Rs 1,500 crore would mean an interest income of Rs 150 crores per annum. So the figures come to the same but the only difference here is that after this,state government would not need to fund PAU at all.”

Well-known economist,Dr SS Johl adds,“If the state government agrees to this farmers’ cess,PAU will not need to go anywhere asking for money and I do not see any hitch in levying this cess which actually would mean Guru Dakshina for the university. And if we want corpus fund,then why not ask for Rs 2,000 crore. “

So while PAU is on one hand harping on research suffering due to lack of funds,Dr PS Minhas,Director,Research,PAU,does not agree to this. He says,“Before I joined PAU a year ago,we held a department-wise review of the research projects. And yes,at that time,the feed-back was due to lack of proper staff and funds,our research was suffering. But then I asked our scientists to submit research projects,for which we raised funds.”

Dr Minhas adds,“We received Rs 7 crore under the RKVY for research,then the payments of the Rs 100 crore grant which was given to us in 2006 have been coming regularly. So much so that we spent some Rs 60 crore this year in two months to upgrade all our labs. At present,we have a very good infrastructure. PAU also received Rs 7 crore from the state government under the non-planned schemes,then the ICAR has already sanctioned Rs 8 crore for modernization of our research stations. In short,our research side looks very healthy now though we will need some money for recurring funds and travel of the scientists. We are submitting another research project for this.”

Dr Minhas says,“It is the pension side that we need to look after. We were given Rs 10 crore by the sate government,which we have already exhausted in giving pensions and now we will have to look for more funds.”