NIRF ranking metrics and library's non prudent spend: A study of DU colleges

In the year 2015, the Ministry of Education (formerly, MHRDj approved National Institute of Ranking Framework (NIRFj to rank institutions in India. The NIRF ranks an institution on the basis of five metrics -namely TLR, RPP, GO, OI and PR. This paper attempts to dwell on an unexplored novel area linking library spending with the NIRF ratings. The spending in this paper is analysed from the point of view of non-prudence or without careful prior thought, overlooking the needs of the users or spending more than other colleges. In this work, an attempt has been made to study the linkage between library expenditure per faculty and NIRF metrics score-namely TLR, RPP, along with the linkage between library expenditure per student and NIRF metrics score-namely TLR, GO. The top 12 colleges of University of Delhi are taken from top 20 colleges on an all India basis as per NIRF 2020. The figures have been drawn from MHRD website for four years from NIRF 2017 to NIRF 2020. The results have implications for the colleges, wherein non-prudence in library spending has been witnessed, which need to analyse their spending patterns taking into account low TLR, RPP and GO score. Thus, discussions at college level who have been witnessing signals of non-prudent spending must be done. In addition to this, NIRF must incorporate the prudent spending pattern into the ranking score computation.