Once a small college that started 50 years ago, the Agricultural University in Tandojam has expanded manifold, but the standards are now falling
WELL, of course, Tandojam is a small town about 21km north-east of Hyderabad on the road to Mirpurpkhas. Fifty years ago this sleepy little town was made the new home of Sindh Agriculture College.
The College had existed in Sakrand, another sleepy little town on the National Highway about 21km from Nawabshah, since its inception as King George V Institute of Agriculture in 1939. The colonial government had selected the original site at Sakrand after the completion of Lloyd Barrage, now called Sukkur Barrage, in 1932 and separation of Sindh from Bombay Presidency in 1936 to facilitate the growth of agriculture in Sindh. The college was also a research institute.
At the time of Independence, the college went through a major change in response to the exodus of Hindu teachers and students, and the inflow of Muslim migrants from India. The first batch of students after Independence graduated in 1951. There were only a handful of graduates from the college until then.
My association with Sakrand began in 1953 when I was admitted to the college. Typically, every year 20-30 matriculates were admitted into the college on a stipend paid by the Government of Sindh, and they were generally exempt from payment of tuition fee.
The college was residential, accommodating students in barrack-like structures, with two to each room. Almost 80 students were enrolled in the college before it shifted to Tandojam.
Life was simple but not without excitement. Simple here means that there were very few of the amenities which one takes for granted today. The daily routine was dominated by attending classes (lectures, laboratories and fields) and a variety of indoor and outdoor sports. One’s social life revolved around the hostel, but was spiced up by visits to the town of Sakrand, for some on a daily basis in the evening. But visits on Saturdays and Sundays for musical entertainment on radio and occasional trips to Nawabshah for movies were things to look forward to.
The academic life was reasonably competitive since merit was valued and rewarded. Our teachers were generally well versed in their subjects and fair in their treatment of students. It was a small community in which caring and sharing were important. However, one’s life was not very private: no one was beyond the reach of a gossip or two.
For some unknown reason it was decided in the early 1950s to move the college and research institute from Sakrand to Tandojam. When the college was shifted in 1955, it underwent several important changes. Its physical size was expanded — more laboratories and experimental space was made available. The number of entrants to the college increased by almost four-fold, and a group of nine instructors from the US came to the college for two years to strengthen its instructional and research capabilities. It took the staff and students nearly a year to settle down in the new place with the completion of construction and placement of necessary equipment and infrastructure.
For the students, the move from Sakrand, for all its nostalgia, was for the better in many ways. We now had running water and assured supply of electricity round the clock, vastly improved playgrounds and an integrated hostel with a common room and library. The hostel was spacious with rooms that accommodated three residents per room and for the seniors a room to each individual. There were more lecture rooms and laboratories that were better equipped than those in Sakrand. Our teachers started recieveing opportunities for academic and career enhancement on a scale not available before.
I am sure all these changes involved (nay consumed) the efforts of numerous individuals over a number of years. But I cannot resist naming two individuals whose role was by far the most outstanding. Dr A.M. Sheikh Wrightly, called the father of Sindh agriculture after Independence, was one of them and the other was A.R. Akhtar, the first principal of the college in Tandojam who literally built the college in its first four years. They are no longer with us, as fate would have it. However, I am not taking away the credit that is due to their colleagues and subordinates in strengthening the new institution.
Until I left Tandojam in the early 1960s, everyone after graduation would receive an official letter of appointment without even applying for a position. It was the norm in those days. The top three graduates were offered appointment as demonstrators in the college, and the rest were given equivalent positions in research department as research assistants or extension services as agricultural officers.
Graduates who had received the stipend for four years were obligated to serve for five years. Others had the option to accept or decline the offer, but few ever declined the offer. The point is that no one had to apply for a job — job came in the mail!
It must be added that the Tandojam institution made two other contributions of great value to the rest of Pakistan. First, starting from about the mid-1950s, the college was host to scores of students from Balochistan for over 25 years. Second, the research institute played a major role in introducing the dwarf varieties of Mexican wheat adapted to the soils of Pakistan.
The scene at the college started to change in the mid 1960s when the number of students increased. Other changes soon followed. And the political climate in the country was perhaps the most important in terms of its pernicious effect on the college. In addition, as the number of applicants to the college rose, the conditions of entrance changed with it — merit started to take a back seat.
Merit also became a victim as the number of students rose and competition for jobs became more intense. The gradual dilution in the quality of education was also facilitated by compromises in the quality of teachers at the time of entry and through out their career. I don’t know if I am totally off the mark if I say that the academic environment took an ominous turn. I am sure others will correct me if I am wrong.
The decades of the 1970s and 1980s were, without doubt, unprecedented in the college’s history. The politicization of campuses in Pakistan was not a new phenomenon, but they became sort of theatres in the late 1960s as the demand for political freedom intensified throughout the country. After the dismemberment of Pakistan, the surface stability in the political and social fabric of Sindh started to evaporate with the rising tide of Sindhi identity — the so-called language riots were its first manifestation in the early 1970s.
The political slide continued into the 1980s and the division sharpened in response to the military takeover in the late 1970s. College and university campuses became the hotbeds of turmoil with vociferous opposition to the national government and the nascent movement of Muhajirs who demanded a separate identity in Sindh.
Two things happened to Tandojam during these years. First, the college was raised to the status of a university in 1977 with a large injection of capital for infrastructure and education. Its size ballooned in terms of the number of students and physical structures.
Second, the new university became a battleground for a variety of political ideologies pitching their flags and crossing their swords (in fact guns). In the mid-1980s, it was well known that a number of groups of students were routinely engaged in acts of highway robbery and violence.
Mercifully peace came, relatively speaking, in the 1990s but the turmoil of the 1980s had taken its toll. The academic environment, weakened as it was in the 1970s, provided little inspiration to students and tutors alike. Students demanded good grades from their teachers — not because they deserved it but because it was their right even if they had received little schooling. Intimidated teachers, without good and strong leadership for years, had limited options if any. The irony is that as the size of the university expanded, in terms of resources and trained teachers, the standard of education started to decline.
A common perception today is that the old college, once so rightly proud of its graduates, as a university has fallen embarrassingly behind its competitors throughout Pakistan. If true, an alumnus has probably the right to ask the question: what went wrong? What exactly are the faculties in multiple disciplines at Tandojam doing today to build human capital for the development of agriculture in Sindh?
I hope someone can address these questions so that the next 50 years of Tandojam will be vastly different. Maybe he or she can give the college (university) alumni, as we celebrate 50 years of it, that there are good reasons for optimism about the future.
WELL, of course, Tandojam is a small town about 21km north-east of Hyderabad on the road to Mirpurpkhas. Fifty years ago this sleepy little town was made the new home of Sindh Agriculture College.
