The gloom and agony of floods and the disturbing incident in Bhagalpur has been grabbing most of the media attention. Amidst all this, the state has taken a positive step ahead by becoming perhaps the first in the country to go for virtual classroom in its varsities. College and university students of Bihar had an interaction with Chancellor RS Gavai at Rajbhawan through video-conferencing. This has also heralded the concept of virtual classrooms in the state.

At a meeting of the vice chancellors of all the universities in the state at Rajbhawan held here under the chairmanship of Chancellor Gavai, the students of Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University asked several questions to the chancellor and got satisfactory replies to their queries from him. They interacted with the chancellor through video-conferencing facilitated by National Informatics Centres at Bhagalpur and Munger.

It was later decided at the meeting that each university would develop its video-conferencing system within the next two months. Subsequently, all the colleges would have their own video-conferencing system linking them with each other and also with the institutions of other universities. Thus, students would be able to attend the lectures delivered by teachers of any institution through video-conferencing.

It was further decided that the examinations and libraries of all the universities would be fully computerized within the next months with the help of NIC, which would act as the nodal agency. NIC would provide the necessary software and trained manpower to the universities for the automation work. NIC would also help the universities in developing their websites.

This will be definitely be the most momentous occasion for the students and the teaching community in Bihar, in the last few decades our institutions have been floundering due to lack of access to quality research. If the plan to connect the classes and libraries to the virtual networks works out as desired I’m sure this will be a big boon for the talented and meritorious students in Bihar. This move will help in controlling the migration of students from Bihar to other states and help in improving the academic environment of the varsities.