NBA Inspection at Maliba Pharmacy College 

The NBA inspection team comprising of three venerable figures from pharmaceutical academic fraternity visited the college on 13th and 14th July, 2012. They were Dr Malay Chatterjee (Jadhavpur University, Kolkata), Dr D Sasmal (BITS, Mesra, Ranchi) and Dr S Khadabadi (GCP, Aurangabad). Dr Chatterjee was to chair the committee. The committee arrived in the college campus at 10.00 clock in the morning on 13th. After having light snacks, they immediately went ahead with proceedings. After a meeting with the managing trustees a presentation lasting for about 1 Ă‚Ä˝ hours by the principal was held. Most of the aspects relating to the inspection were well covered and well presented. There were a few queries regarding college budget which were easily dealt with. After this the committee headed for the inspection of central facilities shared by the college with other institutes of campus. The canteen, auditorium, museum, biotech lab, hostel, mess, sports center, computer lab and library were evaluated from their utilitarian point of view. They seemed satisfied with these and also made some suggestions like .

• Auditorium needs to be bigger for a central facility.
• Rooms in the hostel need more fans.
• Food in the canteen needs to be cheaper without compromising on hygiene.
• Students need to be inspired to use sports facilities more.
• Students should be given laptops/i-pads for educational purposes.

After finishing the round they took their lunch. Following which a round of academic facilities, including medicinal garden and animal area, of the college was conducted. The visit started from pharmaceutics department, after going through a summary look of other departments it culminated at instrumentation lab. There donÄ…‚t seem to be much disparity between their expectations and observations. In fact labs were appreciated for their spaciousness and cleanliness. The herbal museum came for much admiration and one of the committee members requested for a soft copy of the snaps and specimens in the manner they were displayed. In all there was a mentionable complaint about physical facilities meant for academic activity.

Separate meetings with students, staff and faculty were conducted afterwards. The meeting was incident free excepting a few questions regarding availability of leaves, promotion of faculty and stability of lab staff which were duly explained and seemed to satisfy the committee members.

The first sessThe first session of the next day was devoted to evaluation of files pertaining to various systems applied by the management, the administrators and the faculty of the college. The whole day was very hectic and each faculty responded amicably to their queries and demands of providing photocopies of many documents. Most of the files were found up-to-date and met the committee requirements. A few questions were raised regarding lack of sound industry-institute-interaction and interaction with professional bodies.

The second session was devoted to interactions with alumni and stakeholders namely parents. The committee was surprised to see their overwhelming response and appreciated their concern and affection for the college. Some among the alumni did raise the matter of lack of placement activity. To which committee members surprisingly gave a muted response and put the onus on alumni themselves and called it an undue expectation looking into the attitude in general of Indian pharma industry.

The last session was on summarizing the observation to the college authority. The members seemed positive in their evaluation and expressed them as such. Some of the criticisms seem unwarranted like pushing for sports and providing free laptops. Some were probably due to the difference in mechanics of working of different colleges as the same intent can be executed in different ways. However some suggestions were well taken and it would be prudent to exercise them.

The observation and suggestion along with remedial measures can be summarized as follows.

• There is a lot of camaraderie and team feeling amongst staff members and present practices between authority and employees need to continue.
• A majority of staff is well versed with nuances of their responsibility and capable of tackling with most situations on their own.
• A thorough review of our interaction with industry is needed; an MOU with them and their involvement with the college need to be undertaken seriously.
• Students need to be explained about changing dynamics of demand and supply scenario of the market and accordingly the nature of jobs.
• Preparing projects for financial assistance from various agencies, Govt. or otherwise, is the need of the hour as it may provide an additional source of income to college in the days of shrinking resources.
• The practices The practices important for NBA accreditation need to be incorporated in practice and that too from today itself irrespective of collegeaccreditation status.
• The committees need to be reconstituted with future NBA inspection in mind and a periodic evaluation, quarterly or semester wise, needs to be done regularly.

  We at Maliba thank all the stakeholders for their cooperation and wish them good luck.