TECHNICAL EDUCATION
 

20.1 During the past four decades, there has been a phenomenal expansion of technical education in the country. In spite of this significant development, a lot more has to be accomplished in respect of increasing its coverage and enhancing its accessibility to various categories of people, and in improving its productivity. Moreover, the changing scenario by the turn of the century in socioeconomic, industrial and technological areas needs to be considered to enable the system to play its role with greater relevance and objectivity. Based on these considerations, the National Policy on Education(NPE) has rightly pointed to several new initiatives to further revamp the technical education system. Action taken to implement these directives is indicated below:

- The Bill to vest the All India Council for Technical Educa- tion (AICTE) with statutory powers has been passed by the Parliament. Necessary action is being taken to set up the requisite structure to make the AICTE operational.

- All on-going programmes have been re-oriented to take care of the thrusts/directives/goals indicated in the NPE.

- All central and centrally sponsored institutions were di- rected to prepare their POAs based on the NPE. They have re- defined their institutional goals and targets, and prepared perspective plans to cover the remaining period of the 7th Plan as also the 8th Plan period. Their Annual Plans have been prepared accordingly.

- The POA indicates about 79 initiatives to be taken during the 7th Plan. 23 schemes were formulated for this year. Twelve of them have been cleared by EFC with minor modifica- tions. Some of the related schemes have been grouped togeth- er for effective implementation.

- All technical education schemes based on the NPE have been discussed in detail with all the States and UTs. They have been requested to prepare proposals/schemes to complement and supplement the central efforts.

Some of the priority schemes, their scope and objective and the details of implementation during the year are described on the following pages:

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