Self-sustenance is Vital! Government asks IITs, IIMs to Earn Sufficient Revenue

Educational institutes of national prominence such as the IITs, IIMs, National School of Drama and others including public museums have been asked to raise funds and earn revenue in order to move towards self-sustenance.

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The finance ministry has written to all government departments and ministries regarding the same. These bodies have been asked to keep a check on the various autonomous and funded institutes governed by them to assess whether or not adequate charges have been imposed for the services they provide.

Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said that they are focusing on implementing a system where user charges could be reviewed and rationalized. Since such institutes are established using public money, they must discover various revenue streams, recommended the expenditure panel.

Student fee is enough to cover up user charges at funded institutions like IITs and IIMs, while bodies under infrastructure ministries can plug in sources such as rentals from real estate, tickets and tolls to manage the expenditure.

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Since increasing the fees is a sensitive matter and raises a lot of argument, higher charges will be recovered from institutions by utilizing the infrastructure and other such services that can add to the revenue stream.

The directions set by the Finance Ministry are being followed by the ministries across the board. Meetings are being organized to review the user charges in order to increase the revenue earned by the institutes. The HRD ministry is also collecting user charges data in order to come up with means to bring in more revenue through institutions.