After 7 years, tribal varsity still remains a dream

Mulugu: Alas, instead of turning into a stepping stone for the better living of Adivasis, the proposed Tribal University has become more an issue for the political parties to take a dig at each other rather than making it a dream come true for the ethnological groups, who never enjoyed their slice of the pie. It's apparent that yet another academic year is about to slip away as there is no move to initiate functioning of the tribal university even from the makeshift building.

It's been seven years since the promise for establishing a tribal university in Telangana was made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act-2014. Except for the allocation of Rs 10 crore in 2017-18 budget, the tribal varsity remains a nonstarter.

The State government has had its cup of woes in acquiring 500 acres for the varsity. Although it claims enough land is in its possession near Gattamma temple, adjacent to NH-163, it's said that the administration is yet to complete the land acquisition process. Against this backdrop, the State government has come forward to give away its Youth Training Centre (YTC) to run the varsity before it gets a full-fledged establishment. The YTC has enough space to house the administrative office and also to run classes.

A Central team led by the Secretary of the Higher Education in the Ministry of Human Resources Development R Subrahmanyam inspected the proposed site for the varsity in December 2018 opined that YTC was ideal to commence varsity operations from the 2019-20 academic year. However, the move never got forwarded. Then it was also said that the government entrusted the responsibility of tribal varsity affairs, such as admissions and classes, with the Hyderabad Central University (HCU).

But the admissions of tribal varsity never figured in the admission notifications of HCU in the last three academic years. The tribal students who were expecting admissions into undergraduate courses – BCA, BA (Hotel Management) and BBA (Logistics), postgraduate courses - MCA, Master in Tribal Culture (Folklore) and MBA (Marketing-Packaging) with an initial intake of 30 seats in each course, are a disappointed lot.

The top officials of the tribal welfare said that though they had sent proposals to make changes to the YTC so as to run the classes, they got nothing in reply.