Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91
Vol. XXVII No. 15, November 16-30, 2017
As in the case of many other firsts in India, another one Madras city can boast of is the first formally set up agricultural-education facility in Saidapet, surrounded by the Long Tank on the one side and the Adyar River on the other. It would over the years evolve into the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore.
The Sixth Earl of Mayo, Viceroy from 1869 to 1872, pioneered the establishing of a dedicated Department for Agriculture in India. By integrating ‘forestry’ from the Public Works Department, ‘inland customs and salt’ from the Military Department, ‘land revenue and settlements’ from the Foreign Department, and ‘agriculture and horticulture’ from the Home Department, he carved out the new Department of Agriculture, Revenue, and Commerce [DARC] in 1871. Allen Octavian Hume, a name familiar in Madras, was named its first Secretary. On taking charge, Hume (1879) remarked that the oft-recurring famines in the 19th Century were one key driver for the establishment of DARC, which heralded a strong and committed interest in reforming and formalising Indian agriculture, its development and its management, further to contributing to formal agricultural education. Agricultural experimental farms came up, in consequence, in various major Indian cities, such as Allahabad, Kanpur, Nagpur, Bangalore, and Madras.
Although Hume refers to a Farm in Madras as one evolving from the initiative of DARC, in fact, the Madras Farm, better known as the Saidapet Farm, existed from April 1865 on the initiative of the Government of Madras. Between 1865 and 1870 this Farm was managed by a Committee of a few amateur agriculturists appointed by the Governor of Madras. No traceable document lists the names of Committee members or explains the way this Farm functioned in 1865-1870.
William Denison, Governor of Madras (1861-66), sought the attention of his government to continuous cropping, lack of natural manure material and their exploitation as fuel, defective agricultural implements, lack of trees, poor-quality cattle, the lack of arable land, and the absence of agricultural and rural statistics. He imported steam ploughs, steam-driven harrows, cultivators, and seed drills, threshing machinery, and winnowers, chaff cutters and water lifts from England.
A 350-acre block of land in Saidapet was handed over to the Committee and Denison instructed it to:
(i) exhibit the imported tools and machinery, (ii) conduct trials on using artificial manures (synthetic chemical fertilisers), and (iii) display results of trials made on ‘improved’ agriculture to local people. The Committee followed Denison’s instructions for the next seven years, which did not yield any worthwhile results.
William Rowntrie Robertson came to Madras, after training in agriculture at the Royal Agricultural College of Cirencester, U.K., to serve as the Superintendent of the Saidapet Experimental Farm in 1868. Between 1868 and 1871, the Farm also served as a kind of a high school where minimal training to aspiring learners (termed as ‘apprentices’) in agriculture was offered. Each learner – six in 1868 – received a Madras Government stipend of Rs 15/- p.m., which increased to Rs. 25/- p.m. in the fourth year of apprenticeship. Robertson introduced Swedish ploughs, American sorghums, and English bulls in the Saidapet campus. He pioneered developing what later came became known as the ‘Saidapet breed of sheep’.
The question of offering a formal, agricultural education programme was discussed by the Government of Madras in 1872-1873. A proposal was sought from Robertson towards establishing an agricultural college. Robertson submitted a detailed proposal, arguing that a sound theoretical background of agriculture was essential for better equipped farm superintendents, rather than those with a mere observational learning experience. He added that education pertaining to forestry and veterinary science was equally relevant to bestow the country with greater benefits.
His proposal for a college was influenced by the then existing dedicated medical and engineering colleges in Madras. He also suggested introduction of agriculture as a subject in rural high schools, which could facilitate feeding aspiring learners into to the proposed agricultural college.
Asked to re-work his costings, Robertson submitted another detailed report in July 1875. This proposal, accepted with some emendations in March 1876, led to the starting of the Agricultural College in Saidapet in 1876, with Robertson as its first Principal. The subjects to be taught were Veterinary Surgery, Geology, Chemistry, Botany and Agriculture. Charles Benson, who joined as Robertson’s deputy in 1874, also from cirencester, was to take charge of the Farm. Teachers were also appointed to instruct pupils in Drawing and Languages. It was hoped by Robertson that “many respectable youths, both East Indian (Anglo-Indian) and Native, will now come forward and offer themselves as candidates for agricultural honors. Why should not our lads be as proud to belong to our Madras School of Agriculture as the Graduates of the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester are of their Alma Mater?”
With the start of the College, the role of the farm turned two-fold: educational and experimental. The Farm-College complex in 1879 included a granary, storehouses for cattle food, a chaffing and cotton-ginning room, sheep sheds, cattle sheds, a poultry house, and other necessary accommodation. Teaching involved a considerable volume of practical (experimental) work “aiming at improved agricultural practice, which was considered the best method of skilling agricultural scientists not only for recruitment in the Madras Presidency, but also for the whole of India.”
The following were some of the intended learning tasks:
lIntroducing new crops.
lLearning to provide new seeds and fresh seeds for the crops cultivated.
lLearning about new and improved implements useful in rural farming.
lLearning to improve the quality of working cattle, sheep, horse, and other varieties (sic. breeds?) of Indian livestock.
From left to right: William Robertson, Charles Benson, and Walter Keess.
Benson succeeded Robertson as Principal in 1878 and he was followed by Walter Kees from 1881 till the College moved in 1906 from Saidapet to Coimbatore where there is a road named after Robertson. The Government of India, in 1889, got John Augustus Voelcker (1886-1936), an agricultural chemist of the Royal Agricultural Society, to travel throughout India and propose a course of action to improve Indian agriculture. He did so in 1889-1890.
In the context of the Agricultural College in Saidapet, the bulk of Voelcker’s remarks in his report refers to the Farm – the energy engine of the College – in a sunset tone. He uses the term ‘abandonment of the Farm’. He further stated that frequent changes in the Government of Madras’s policy were the primary reason for the awkward status of the Experimental Farm and Agricultural College in Saidapet. He remarks, what was started as a 300-acre farm had shrunk miserably1, and that reduction had strikingly contributed to the poor performance of the Farm and the College. He continues that the reduction in size had led to the situation that no student uses the Farm in any experimental, experiential learning in different agricultural disciplines, contrary to what was occurring in the 1870s during the early days of Robertson and Benson.
Voelcker further indicates that what had started as an Agricultural College had metamorphosed more into a General-Science College, where agriculture was taught as one of the several other subjects. The General-Science College description probably refers to the Teachers’ College, which had moved to the Saidapet Agricultural Farm College precinct in the 1880s.
The Teachers’ College (also known as the Teachers’ Training College, and, today, the Institute of Advanced Study in Education), another oldest academic institution of its kind in India, was shifted to the Saidapet Farm Agricultural College precinct in 1887. Until the Teachers College acquired its own new building in the same precinct in 1889, it was housed in the first floor of the Agricultural College.
The academic changes made at this period could have been the key factors, according to Voelcker, contributing to the decline of agricultural education in Saidapet. Nevertheless, the Saidapet Agricultural College continued for the next 17 years and was shifted to Coimbatore only in 1906.
The College moved into 500 acres in Coimbatore as the Agricultural College and Research Institute, Coimbatore (ACRIC), and began emphasising formal agricultural teaching and learning in addition to promoting active agricultural research. The first batch of students was admitted in 1908 towards a Certificate programme (2 years’ duration) and an advanced Diploma programme (18 months’ duration). The Certificate and Diploma programmes ceased in 1925. The ACRIC was affiliated to the University of Madras in 1920 and the Bachelor of Science (Agriculture) programme started with the first batch of students being turned out in 1923. J.W. Shepperson served as the founding principal of ACRIC from 1906 to 1909.
1 Editor’s Note: Government, believing the farm had not served its purpose, had shrunk it to 20 acres in 1885.
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