State govt seeking loan from World Bank opposed

Bengaluru, NT Bureau: All India Democratic Students Organisation (AIDSO) has taken exception to the State government seeking a loan from the World Bank, mainly to meet educational needs.

The loan’s emphasis will be on the up gradation of government engineering colleges, the student organization argued.

“Don’t burden Government engineering colleges with a World bank loan. Let the people of this state fund these institutions,” AIDSO Karnataka State Committee State Secretary Ajay Kamath said.

“Government engineering colleges are in dire need of funds. Premier colleges like UVCE (University of Visvesvaraya College of Engineering) and other government engineering colleges of Karnataka state are running under-staffed. It has been more than a decade since new recruitments were made.

UVCE college administration has written to the government recently to release funds for running the college. Such a fund crisis in these colleges will be an obstacle to academic learning. Unless these problems are rectified, any slogan of up gradation will be a farce. AIDSO demands the government to allocate funds to improve infrastructure and staff recruitment,” he added.

“World bank loans come with several proposals which would affect the democratic, autonomous structure of these institutions. This is an agenda of the World Bank and an imperialist design.

Students will be forced to repay the loan in future. Hence AIDSO demands that the state government should allocate funds for government colleges from the state budget and not seek loan from the world bank,” Kamath said.