Balangir on the move: expanding its knowledge infrastructure
The recent news of an XIMB campus in Balangir adds a new dimension to Balangir’s knowledge infrastructure. As per the recent Business Standard report:
The XIMB campus at Bolangir will exclusively focus on the Rural Management Programme and will have an intake of 120 students.
“Our campus at Bolangir will be a fully residential facility with a built-up area of 1.55 lakh sq ft and it will only offer the Post Graduate Diploma course in Rural Management. We will phase out the Rural Management programme at our existing campus in Bhubaneswar after the establishment of the Bolangir campus”, Joseph added.
XIMB’s campus will come up about seven km from Bolangir town and the institute wants to offer a rural ambience to the students pursuing the Post Graduate Diploma in Rural Management.
XIM should aim to have this institute at the level of IRMA, Anand and put Balangir in the map with respect to rural management institutes. It should rank among the top 3-5 in the country.
Several other knowledge initiatives with respect to Balangir are also in the pipeline. This includes:
- A university and
- a WODC sponsored medical college.
There is also possibility that the state government may make some more state engineering colleges and Balangir should and would be a prime candidate for that.
Besides the above plans, some of the existing higher education institutions in Balangir are:
- Rajendra College, Balangir
- Govt. College Balangir
- Govt. Women’s College Balangir
- BB Sanskrit College, Balangir
- Food Craft Institute, Balangir (The Odisha govt. has proposed to upgrade it to an Institute of Hotel Management.)
- Government Ayurveda College, Balangir
- Sushree Institute of Technical Education, College Of Nursing, Bolangir (Offers BSc. Nursing)
- Sushree Institute of Technical Education, School Of Nursing, Bolangir (Offers Diploma Course in General Nursing and Midwifery Training)
- Four ITIs: I.T.I., Bolangir; ITI (Women), Bolangir; KBK ITC, Bolangir; Sushree ITC, Sadaipali, Bolangir
- Sushree Institute of Technical Education (SITE),Bolangir (Offering Diploma in Engineering subjects)
Balangir has good connectivity to Bhubaneswar (two daily trains: an intercity day train and Raipur-Puri Express), Sambalpur (daily trains: Koraput-Rourkela, Ispat, Balangir-BBS, Koraput-HWH, Rayagada-SBP, Raipur-Puri, Dhanbad-Allepey), Titlagarh, Jharsuguda and Rourkela in Odisha, and has two daily trains to Howrah, one daily train to Chennai and Kerala, tri-weekly trains to Bangalore, bi-weekly train to Hyderabad, a weekly train to Mumbai, and tri-weekly (to become 5 times a week) trains to Delhi from Titlagarh which is 63 kms away.
The under construction Khurda-Balangir line receiveed 120 crores in this year’s budget and hopefully it will progress at good speed and get similar and larger budgets in the coming years. If that happens then this line could get completed in another 5 years. Once this line is completed the rail connectivity of Balangir will further improve.
Politically, it has an active MP in Kalikesh Singh Deo and MLA in A. U. SinghDeo who is an important minister in Odisha. Also, its interests are being watched over by Balangir natives abroad such as Dr. Sanjiv Karmee.
So things look positive for Balangir.
The most important things to watch for and/or pursue are: Making sure that the proposed university and the medical college that are in the pipeline are indeed established; Making sure that if there are new state engineering colleges then Balangir gets one; Encouraging and enticing other private entities to establish institutes and colleges in Balangir; and Making sure the Khurda-Balangir line gets completed in 5 years.
1 comment April 14th, 2010