Patna, Jan. 25: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar today suggested that human resource development (HRD) department be called the education department.

While releasing the annual status of education report (ASER) 2010, the chief minister chose to address the HRD minister and secretary as education minister and education secretary and went on to explain he was deliberately using the new nomenclature as it was more easy to understand and communicate with the people.

“It would be better if we start calling education department again instead of HRD. I do not know how and when it was renamed HRD. At what point of time did human beings become resource and started ignoring the human aspect angle,” Kumar said.

“I deliberately used the word ‘education minister’ and ‘education secretary’ instead of using HRD as education is the word which could be easily understood and could be communicated to the common man in a better and impressive way, Nitish said.

Since Independence, it was called the education ministry and education department in the state but in September 1985, the ministry was renamed as HRD and since then it has been in vogue to name it as HRD department. A new ministry was created under a suggestive name of ministry of human resources development in 1985.

Presently, the ministry has two departments, the department of school education and literacy and the department of higher education.

In the light of amendment by the Centre, the nomenclature began to be used in the states later.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad served as the minister of education in Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet from 1947 to 1958.