Big Net project in varsities runs into trouble

ahmedabad: students in technical institutes around the state may dream of some day standing at the frontier of cutting edge technology. for the time being however they are finding it difficult to lay their hand on something that is taken for granted in states like maharashtra and karnataka- high speed internet connectivity. an ambitious project to connect 15 technical education institutions in the state with high-speed access has fallen to rough weather because of high costs.the it division of gnfc which has been approached in principal for the project has quoted rs 63 lakh for simply providing one 2 mbps lease line alone while the higher and technical education department wants the entire project completed in that much. "we can get a similar lease line from a private isp for anywhere between rs 20 and 25 lakh," a government official said. "there is no need for us to shell out three times the market price and that too when gnfc is a quasi-government organisation." gnfc it division's chief manager a r krishna however feels at even at rs 63 lakh they may make a loss. "besides, you have to pay a price if you want quality," he says. he will soon be meeting officials to renegotiate the price. the project includes setting up the server at the l d college of engineering, ahmedabad from where fibre optic cables would carry bandwidth to its 12 departments. satellite links would then carry it to 15 institutions across the state. what the education department officials did not realise is that apart from the rs 63 lakh fore initial connectivity, connecting the various departments would cost another rs 20 lakh apart from the rs 50,000 each year for maintenance. equipment connecting the 15 institutions would cost rs 5 lakh per institute ballooning costs by another rs 75 lakh effectively bringing the cost of the project to nearly rs 1.25 crore. sources in the education department said that the department of information technology will bear the rs 63 lakh for the first year, but it is not ready to take on the additional cost. also from the second year onwards, the education department will have to bear the entire burden which many feel is steep considering that their budget has been drastically cut since the earthquake in january. "we can not accept the proposal as it stands now," state higher and technical education secretary gauri kumar told tnn. "we will have to ask the gnfc to reconsider the project as the costs have almost doubled from what we had initially discussed." the technical education department has only rs 38 crore for its nearly 30 institutions after the 20 per cent budget cut since the earthquake. the cash crunch has even stalled projects to upgrade and improve existing facilities in many institutions. the government engineering colleges at bhavnagar and modasa are a case in point. they have been given a number of additional courses and increased but not the funds to either enlarge their campuses or buy better equipment fore their laboratories. the gandhinagar engineering college on the other hand is having a new complex built on 2.46 lakh square feet of land. it needs about rs 6 crore to construct four buildings for the primary disciplines of mechanical and electrical engineering but the government has sanctioned only rs 2.14 crore.