In an attempt to take education to the masses, the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YCMOU) will launch a television channel - Yashbharati, in association with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).

Educational programmes will be beamed from the varsity’s Nasikbased campus, using the GSat satellite, to over 170 remote learning centres spread across the state. Announcing this at a press conference on Sunday, YCMOU vice- chancellor Dr Baburao Sabale said that video-conferencing facilities would help students in these centres interact with course facilitators.

The channel will be launched on November 25 - Yashwantrao Chavan’s death anniversary. Sabale added that the YCMOU will be only the second open university after the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) to implement a satellite education programme. Sabale added that if proper funding was made available to the university, around 1,000 more remote-learning centres would be set up by 2006.

“Such distance-learning programmes are more relevant in an age where the costs of conventional education are rising,” he said. Sabale added that the YCMOU had set up a virtual university for semi-arid tropics (VUSAT), in association with the Andhra Pradeshbased Integrated Crop Research Institute for Semiarid Tropics and the Swaminathan Foundation, on June 5. This is expected to take dry-land horticulture technology to the masses.

Sabale said the YCMOU had made a budgetary provision of Rs 30 lakh for its students to participate in the inter-university sports programme conducted by the All-India University Association. YCMOU’s school of health sciences is set to launch a bachelor’s course in nursing and hospital management, in addition to a course for midwives, which would be conducted in association with Dr Abhay and Rani Bang. He also added that a post-graduate diploma in environment and sustainable development would be launched in December.