Union Minister for Agriculture, Radha Mohan Singh, inaugurated a two day brain storming programme “Optimizing talent search for the National Agricultural Research & Education System” at ICAR-NDRI, Karnal on January 16, 2015. The brain storming programme is being organized by Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board (ASRB) – an apex body involved in the recruitment of scientists in the country.
While addressing the gathering, Union Agriculture Minister stressed upon the need to attract youth to agriculture and to make the scientist selection process more effective. On this occasion, he also emphasized the role of local and need based research and said that it should be the integral part of the career development process of scientists. He also stressed the need of crop persification to make the agriculture more remunerative to farmers. He informed that Agriculture Ministry has a plan to introduce soil health card to farmers for improving the agricultural production. He also indicated that the policies are being framed to increase the availability of water for irrigation purpose, especially for small farmers. He said that in the changing climate, the local breeds of dairy animals are more resilient and thus, more research should be done in this direction. He also announced the setup of two National Breeding Centers – one in southern India and another in Northern India to augment the breeding of dairy animals in the country. He informed that the infrastructure available at Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) would be strengthened further, as KVKs have important role in the extension of agricultural technologies. He also interacted with the students of ICAR-NDRI.
Minister of State for Agriculture, Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, stressed upon the need of attracting researchers/ scientists of Indian origin working in the premier foreign laboratories to the national agricultural research & education system. The ASRB should frame policies to attract such talent as part of the brain gain. He also called upon the policy makers to raise the standards of education and research in state agriculture universities at par with ICAR institutes. He encouraged the ICAR-NDRI scientists to work in the Sex Semen Technology to further boost the breeding of elite animals in the country. Speaking on this occasion, Dr. S. Ayyappan, Director General, ICAR complimented Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board. Prof. D.P. Agarwal, former Chairman, UPSC also presented his views on the present education system and emphasized that we should all work together to find ways to bring in structured reforms in the education system.
While speaking on the occasion, Dr. Gurbachan Singh, Chairman, ASRB said that the present two day brainstorming–cum-workshop is an attempt by the ASRB to frame the policies to bring the best talent in the National Agriculture Research System. He also emphasized that agriculture growth in the country has to go in tandem with development in other areas as more than 60% population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. In this direction, more efforts would be made to make the recruitment process more transparent. Dr. A.K Srivastava, Director and Vice-chancellor, ICAR-NDRI, Karnal informed the gathering about the recent achievements of ICAR-NDRI in cloning of dairy animals, ovum pick-up technique, starting of farmers’ school and success of women self-help group supported by the research of ICAR-NDRI.