Month: October 2011

ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ

Traveling in Greece (many years ago, before the Eurozone crisis and all that) one of the few words that I was encouraged to recognize was ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ, the word for University (for the somewhat pragmatic and mundane reason so I could identify the signs to find my way back to my host…).

PANEPISTEMIO... It has always struck me that it’s literal meaning, as a place where “All the body of ideas that determine the knowledge that is intellectually certain at any particular time” has a satisfying completeness. And so much more appropriate for what it is we should want to be… “University” is too all encompassing and doesn’t quite focus on the knowledge that we hold so dear as part of what defines us.

This introspection comes at the cusp of the 11th and the 12th five-year plans, when it is time to start reflecting on where we want to be in the years to come. How we visualize our University in the next ten, twenty years… that determines the course of action we must take now. What new branches of knowledge we should propose to explore, what new fields of study we should embark upon, and what new disciplines we must forge…

The University is today composed of 10 Schools of study that contain, severally, some 15 or so Departments. And in addition, there are Centres both inside and outside the School framework. What we study, how we train the new generations, how we organize ourselves are all issues that testify to our sense of common purpose. To convert our institution into one where all disciplines flourish will take some doing, and given our framework, may not even be possible now. But the Pan-Epistemic ideal is one that I believe is worth striving for.

We should try. Do we have too few Schools? How many is too many? What do we need? Where are our (many) gap areas?  Is our structure robust enough to allow us the academic framework we need? What can we do to strengthen this? How many students should we have? Do we teach enough? Too much? All questions that are easy enough to pose, but not quite so easy to figure out sustainable answers to… I know I have posted along somewhat similar lines recently, but given that this is a constant preoccupation, I guess some repetition is inevitable. And of course, its not all repetition.

One general aim we need to keep in mind is that we should increase the number of students on campus. After we have built sufficient hostels of course, but the fact is that we must increase the size of the student body. That can’t be done simply by increasing the numbers in each class- sometimes there are just not that many takers for a given subject- but we also need to worry about what academic disciplines are attractive for those seeking education.

A number of cross-disciplinary chimeras have arisen in recent years, some with the benefit of clergy and some without. In the fitness of time they will- like the languages I wrote about in an earlier post- evolve into other disciplines, some will die, others will be born, but we do not, now, have the luxury of time. Some response to let me know what you feel is needed could help us evolve a plan to present to the UGC when they decide to ask us to make a proposal for the XIIth Five Year Plan. More “Community College” type courses? An emphasis on issues of the environment? Particle physics? Gender Studies? More M. Tech. programmes? Less of them? P G Diplomas? Brain science? Post Genomics? Let me know.

DIY Ph D's

P. Sreekumar of the Department of Dravidian & Computational Linguistics at the Dravidian University in Kuppam, AP, sent out an anguished email on the University Grants Commission (UGC) that has lifted a two-year ban on distance M Phil and Ph D courses.

The move comes after widespread protests by various universities. Many Open Learning Universities like IGNOU were protesting the ban on the ground that their respective laws, passed by Parliament or legislatures, allowed them to offer such courses.


Speaking on the development, IGNOU vice-chancellor Rajasekharan Pillai said, “We will follow the rules but our regulations are already stricter than those of the UGC.”UGC held a meeting on the issue last month, deciding to lift the ban. “An open university may be permitted to conduct MPhil/PhD programmes through distant education mode subject to condition that it does so strictly as per the provisions of the UGC Regulations,” said the minutes of the meeting.

Although, UGC has lifted the ban but it has put another condition for Phd — the principal guide should be from the open university. The UGC had clamped the bar by notifying a rule — the Minimum Standards and Procedure for Awards of MPhil/PhD Degree Regulation — in 2009 saying research courses in the distant mode were of poor quality.

The regulations had put a question mark on the future of nearly 10,000 students pursuing such courses across the country.“There should not be any blanket ban on MPhil or PhD in distance mode. If institutions meet the required quality parameters, they should be allowed to offer such courses,” said academic M. Madhava Menon, who has been asked by the HRD ministry to draft a policy on distance education. He said he would submit his report next month.

Inadequate infrastructure of many open universities is also a concern for carrying out research work. A UGC official said the commission’s regulations were silent on the facilities, and a panel headed by academic S. P. Thyagrajan had been set up to suggest the requirements. “We will meet on September 15 to lay the guidelines,” Thyagrajan said.

Well, its one step from here to so-called Universities like those Internet Academies that offer you a Ph D for $725. As one of these advertises,  In order to get your desired degree, you can start now by getting registered with W**d University. Once you get registered, your email address will become your log-in id for future use and you’ll always provide the same password as you are doing at the time of registration. This information will allow you to return anytime and continue with the process of getting your desired degree from W**d University.

We wish you good luck and thank you for choosing W**d University to start your journey towards success.

I believe the similar facilities are offered in various bucket shops in Ameerpet. You can easily purchase “original” theses in any subject of your choice, and at any level you desire… from the M A/ M Tech upwards, to the D. Phil. And submit them to any UGC University of your choice.

Whither Classics?

An article in a recent Sunday newspaper reminded me once again of a passionate and well reasoned article by Sheldon Pollock, Crisis in the Classics that was published earlier this year in India’s World, a special issue of Social Research: An International Quarterly.

The paper can be downloaded freely from the above link for those of you who many not have read it yet. The main thesis of the paper- at the risk of condensing an argument that is already forcefully minimal – is that there is a dangerous decline in scholarship in the classics in India, dangerous enough that its extinction is more or less assured.

The fate of the soft subjects in a hard world is a matter that we- at the UoH in particular- should be concerned about, in part because we have at least three Departments that are players in the classics game, Urdu, Telugu and Sanskrit. And a whole Centre that concerns itself with Endangered Languages.

The danger is near. As Pollock puts it: There have been no major Sanskrit projects in India since the completion of the critical edition of the Ramayana at Baroda more than 30 years ago. All the great classical series (such as Anandasrama, Trivandrum, Gaekwad, Madras) have been more or less discontinued, and as a result the manuscripts in those collections are no longer being published. Indeed, there have been few new Indian editions of complex Sanskrit texts at all from among the scores of important manuscripts that lie unpublished in archives. In the area of hermeneutics (Mimamsa), for example, I know of no one in India today capable of editing works like those edited just a generation ago by P. N. Pattabhirama Sastry or S. Subrahmanya Sastry…  I have not encountered a single PhD dissertation on Sanskrit in India—and I have seen many— worthy of publication by a Western university press.

The situation is no different in the other classical languages […] Our core group of colleagues was looking for others to join us who possessed a deep historical understanding of a regional language, conceptual skills, and the capacity to communicate their knowledge effectively. We were able to locate only four qualified scholars in India, and identified no one for a host of languages, including Assamese, Marathi, Newari, Oriya, and Panjabi.

Assamese, Marathi, Panjabi, Oriya- these are hardly languages we think of as being on the brink of extinction, but the lack of scholarship in these could eventually drive them to the brink. Indeed, some of our languages have already vanished, or been relegated to kitchen languages as the linguist Loreto Todd calls them- spoken only in private or in fields, not worthy of a literature.

My erstwhile colleague (at JNU) Anvita Abbi’s efforts to preserve the last traces of the Great Andamanese (GA) have been heroic but futile. She explains that about ten languages form the present Great Andamanese language family, and the number of speakers in some of these such as Bo (one of the last speakers of the GA language is shown in the poster on the left) now number five or so. The language groups are complex- Anvita’s work is on the Koine language, a mix of four varieties of the present GA language. One can only wonder how soon there will be none left, no varieties, no speakers, no GA.  The announcement of a talk she will give in London next month is poignant.   Breathing life into a dying language: Documenting Great Andamanese. The Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal are home to three highly endangered languages: Jarawa, Onge and Great Andamanese. Professor Abbi will share her experiences documenting them and compiling a multilingual multiscriptal interactive dictionary revealing the ecological and archeological signatures of the original communities and their ties with the environment. An ethno-semantic and ornithological account of the local birds and their names in the Great Andamanese language features in the dictionary and in the book Birds of the Great Andamanese co-authored by Professor Abbi and Dr Satish Pande. The talk will include examples of original sound and video recordings of the last native speakers of Great Andamanese.

This may well have been the history of the world since the tower of Babel- one language gives way to another, one evolves into another, some die, new ones are born. So why should we care? To misquote Elizabeth Barett Browning, let me not count the ways, but instead appeal to both art and science. Each time a language dies, something of humanity dies with it, some common collective memory vanishes… Abrams and Strogatz modeled the death of languages mathematically in a paper in the scientific journal Nature a few years ago. They end their letter with the analysis that to prevent the rapid disintegration of our world’s linguistic heritage, some simple steps are possible: The example of Quebec French demonstrates that language decline can be slowed by strategies such as policy-making, education and advertising, in essence increasing an endangered language’s status. Not a particularly deep or lateral conclusion, perhaps, but still, something that we can heed at the University, since we do care deeply about this issue in the context of preserving our heritage.

There are many other disciplines that are undersubscribed, but more on those another time.  As also on whether we need a “western” press to validate the scholarly quality of our own work, and why there is not University Press of any standard left in India…

Finally, in case any of you are wondering what that image at the top is, this is the atoll near one of the most remote places on earth (and which cannot actually be seen in the image, its too small a speck), the island of Furudu. Ever since I heard of it on the CBS show 60 Minutes many many years ago, this has always struck me as a metaphor for planned extinction: Exiles are consigned there, and typically, forgotten.

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Que sera

Much of the last week was taken up with conferences and conclaves, meetings in Delhi and Washington. I am only slowly getting familiar with the routines, the ceremoniality of it all, the somewhat studied smiles and pauses. The speeches. But in the midst of it all, there are things that stand out, as did an excerpt of what one of the senior administrators at Stanford said last week, when talking about quality.

In his book, Rabi, scientist and citizen,  John Rigden tells of when Dwight Eisenhower was President of Columbia University, and Isidor Rabi (picture on the right) was awarded the Nobel prize for Physics. As Hans Bethe (another physicist and Nobelist) recounts, Eisenhower met Rabi and said “Professor Rabi, I congratulate you on the Nobel Prize, and besides, I am always very happy to see one of the employees of the University…  So Rabi drew himself up to his full height of five feet five inches and said,” Mr President, the faculty are not the employees of the University. They are the University!“

I don’t know what else I got out of that talk, but this made a great impression on me, as I imagine it did on Bethe, or on Rigden, or for that matter, on Eisenhower. The sense of identification, the sense of authority, or the sense of responsibility. This so defines a teacher, and in the end, this so defines a University.

The next few days in Washington were an eye opener in more ways. Visits to the University of Maryland in addition to The summit with Mr Kapil Sibal and Mrs Hilary Clinton. The U of M is one of the “land grant” universities, having 1250 acres given by the state for the purpose of education (sound familiar??). They started in 1857, so that is quite a headstart on us, but still… they now have about 3000 faculty, 39000 students,  a similarly impressive number of departments and subjects. Given, as I learned, that our (by which I mean the country’s) placement deficit with respect to the US is 100,000 student seats, it make one think again of where we should be positioning ourselves at UoH. On the size front, we are a tenth of the faculty and a tenth of the student body but at the same nominal area. But we serve a population that is at least 10 times as many… Without making unfair comparisons, I still think it should be possible for us to do better on the numbers game.

But more. A serious question as to how we should increase numbers is on the cards. First off, we need better infrastructure, both for teaching and for student hostels. And for faculty housing. But after that. What should we be teaching? What are the areas where we should be investing intellectually? What is important for us, as academics? What is of interest to us as a nation? What subjects, what areas of human enquiry are of relevance?

None of these are unloaded questions, I realize, but we do need to start thinking along some lines. The 12th Plan is upon us, and if we want this to be a plan in any sense of the word, it is important that we start thinking. Among the foci of discussion at the summit were issues of skill development, of community colleges. And yes, the usual dual degrees, twinning programmes, semesters in India and other intersections were talked about but in somewhat tired voices. What was really urgent is the final realization that in India, we will soon have about 200 million young men and women in search of an education, and it will be our lot to educate them as best as possible to take their place, not in India, but in a world that is even more borderless than we see it now.

How will we prepare ourselves for the challenge of providing a skilled workforce to the world? One thing is for sure, we need new strategies for educating more people, in ways that they want, and in ways that are effective, using methods that may not exist… yet.

What will the University of Hyderabad be like in the year 2024, when we are 50? I suppose that is up to us to determine, now.

Inside Higher Ed

Here is a link to an article that appears in Inside Higher Ed, the online Higher Education magazine. I was in Washington for the India-US summit on higher education, and Scott Jaschik, the magazine editor came by to chat. Some words got left out of the last quote, but the article gives you an idea of what I thought the summit was all about. And a bit more than that, of course.

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Open Access Scholarship

Some years ago, Prof. Shalini Urs of the University of Mysore made a concerted effort to aggregate one aspect of Indian scholarship through the Vidyanidhi project. Vidyanidhi (Meaning ‘Treasure of Knowledge’ in Sanskrit) is India’s premier Digital library initiative to facilitate the creation, archiving and accessing of doctoral theses. Vidyanidhi is an information infrastructure, a digital library, a portal of resources, tools and facilities for doctoral research in India. Vidyanidhi is envisioned to evolve as a national repository and a consortium for e-theses through participation and partnership with universities, academic institutions and other stake holders. Vidyanidhi enhances access to Indian theses and enlarges the reach and audience for Indian doctoral research works.

Sadly, this has not worked as well as it should have. Most Universities did not, as a matter of policy, join the effort, citing any number of reasons, some of which were anything but reasonable. There is a plaintive plea on the Vidyanidhi site,

We welcome and encourage universities to participate in this collaborative initiative. Our initiative will be strengthened only by your cooperation and participation. Please do join us.
Why should you join us?

  • Vidyanidhi will archive your theses. Vidyanidhi Server is your Dissertatations Server.
  • Vidyanidhi will help your doctoral students to write better thesis.
  • Vidyanidhi will help you improve the quality of your doctoral programme by developing common frameworks and standards for theses.
  • Vidyanidhi will enhance your institution’s visibility in the academic milieu
  • Vidyanidhi will help to get your theses be part of Global ETD collection.
  • Vidyanidhi will train your doctoral students in E-thesis and E-Publishing, helping them to transit to the emerging new E-Paradigm of academic work and scholarship
  • Vidyanidhi will help your students to reinforce their e-publishing knowledge and skills through our online tutorials and manuals.

However, the UGC has now stepped in, and made it mandatory that University theses be made available online, though not necessarily in one place, thereby (and as usual) frittering away our scholarship in dribs and drabs.

I was reminded of this last week when I had to go over some questions raised in our own community, where a student raised serious objections to the fact that his thesis had, in accordance with UGC requirements, been made accessible to the public at large. One would have thought- given the fury of his RTI queries- that he had been intellectually violated in some way, rather than, as I believe the situation is, that
  1. his scholarship was funded by the public and therefore deserves to be made known to them, and that
  2. he has a moral obligation to make it widely known, and further, that
  3. this openness enhances his visibility, and therefore his relevance.
One of the people who has been clamouring for such openness in scholarship is Subbaiah Arunachalam at the M S Swaminathan Foundation. In a mail sent out today, he alerts us to a decision by Princeton University to put ALL their scholarly publications online and OA. The post by Andrew Appel discusses this in detail, and the gist of it is that
“The members of the Faculty of Princeton University strive to make their publications openly accessible to the public. To that end, each Faculty member hereby grants to The Trustees of Princeton University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. This grant applies to all scholarly articles that any person authors or co-authors while appointed as a member of the Faculty, except for any such articles authored or co-authored before the adoption of this policy or subject to a conflicting agreement formed before the adoption of this policy. Upon the express direction of a Faculty member, the Provost or the Provost’s designate will waive or suspend application of this license for a particular article authored or co-authored by that Faculty member.
“The University hereby authorizes each member of the faculty to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles that are subject to the terms and conditions of the grant set forth above. This authorization is irrevocable, non-assignable, and may be amended by written agreement in the interest of further protecting and promoting the spirit of open access.”
Where do we stand on the issue of Open Access? I believe that it would be useful to evolve a policy on this matter since- as we so often proudly proclaim- our intellectual output grows each year and has increasing impact. It should be possible to safeguard our intellectual properties while sharing the fruits of this largely public funded research.

Outstanding!

The image on the left shows our colleague in the School of Physics, Rukmani Mohanta at the WISE 2011 (Women in Science and Engineering) conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 29 September. That was the day that TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, OWSD the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World and The Elsevier Foundation announced that they are recognizing eleven talented women scientists from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean for their research excellence.
Dr Mohanta is being recognised for her contributions in high energy physics, and is the only awardee from India. Each winner will receive a cash prize of US$5,000.
The press release says: “Once again, the standard of the winners selected for the OWSD Awards for Young Women Scientists from the Developing World has been outstanding. For us, this is not a surprise, as we are well aware of the excellent contributions that women are making to science,” noted Professor Fang Xin, President of OWSD. “The aim of the OWSD Awards, therefore, is to honor the work of these young researchers, bringing it to the attention of the scientific and policy-making communities in their countries, and to highlight their successes so that they may act as role models to other girls and young women who might be considering a career in science.”
Lubna Tahtamoouni, winner from The Hashemite University in Jordan said, “Over the years I came to recognize that it is difficult for women to do science since they have to juggle their career, marriage, motherhood and other social obligations. Winning such an award made me more confident about my decision of pursuing a career in science. Women need recognition, especially young women to give them that ‘head start’ and confidence. This award is celebrating women!”
Denise Evans, biological sciences winner from South Africa added, “It is important to highlight that women, even from developing countries, are doing great things – making breakthroughs, contributing to advances in medicine, science, chemistry and engineering – becoming leaders and experts in their field. It is important to acknowledge young scientists so that they may be motivated from an early age to stay in science and develop a career in science and research.”
Through a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, the OWSD Awards for Young Women Scientists from the Developing World were expanded to cover three disciplines in each region – Biology, Chemistry, and Physics/Maths. The grant was made as part of the Elsevier Foundation New Scholars program, which supports programs for women scholars during the early stages of demanding careers in science and technology. After a rigorous review by the four regional OWSD committees, shortlisted candidates in each discipline were nominated and subsequently ranked by the regional vice presidents and Professor Fang Xin, the current OWSD president.”
Heartiest Congratulations, Dr Mohanta!

Just in case

anyone would like to read my convocation report, here it is:
Your Excellency the Governor of Andhra Pradesh and Chief Rector of the University Shri E. S. Lakshmi Narasimhan, respected Dr. R. Chidambaram, Chancellor of the University, Dr. Anil Kakodkar, the distinguished Chief Guest of the Convocation, members of the Convocation, colleagues, dear students and esteemed guests:
On behalf of the Executive Council of the University of Hyderabad and on my own behalf, it is my privilege and honour to extend you all a cordial welcome to the thirteenth Convocation of the University. Our Chief Guest Dr. Kakodkar, an eminent nuclear scientist, was the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy. He has also been the Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, and is well known for having played a major role in India’s nuclear programme, particularly in the design and construction of the indigenous Dhruva reactor as well as the reactors at Kalpakkam and Rawatbhata. Recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri Awards, Dr. Kakodkar is a champion of India’s self-reliance: his dream is to make India fully self-reliant in energy particularly by the use of indigenous Thorium resources. We are indeed privileged and honoured to welcome you, Sir, as Chief Guest at this Convocation.
We extend a warm welcome to our respected Chancellor Dr. R. Chidambaram. Dr. Chidambaram, an Indian nuclear scientist and metallurgist is the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and formerly was a predecessor of Dr Kakodkar as Director of the BARC. As a member of IAEA‘s ‘Commission of Eminent Persons’, Dr. Chidambaram played an important role in getting the Safeguards Agreement passed by the Board of IAEA that followed the signing of the Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement between India and the United States of America. Dr. Chidambaram completed his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1962 and his research thesis on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance was awarded the Martin Forster Medal for the best Ph. D. thesis submitted to the IISc during 1961-62. He has subsequently been awarded the D. Sc. in metallurgy and in materials science. Dr. Chidambaram is the recipient a number of awards and honors including the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Shri.
We are also privileged to have in our midst His Excellency the Governor of Andhra Pradesh Shri E. S. Lakshmi Narasimhan. Thank you very much, Sir, for sparing some of your valuable time to be with us to give away medals to the recipients.
Before I present my report, I warmly congratulate all the graduates who have received their degrees today. My hearty congratulations are also due to the medal winners. Yours is the Earth!
Ladies and gentlemen, the University is now 37 years old and is regarded as one of the major Universities in the area of higher education achieving honours and attaining standards that set a benchmark for universities in India. The faculty strength is over 400 and that of students is 4,700 plus. We are poised to expand further in the coming few months as we advertise 124 positions and will, hopefully, fill these up soon. As of now the faculty have written over 1,100 books and more than 12,000 papers. We are also pleased to share the news that we have been granted 8 patents. All these have helped us achieve the position of the highest ranking University within the UGC system.
The University is particularly pleased that this year one of our alumni has been awarded the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize in Chemistry in addition to several of our faculty being elected to the INSA, IASc, and other academies. We also have a Young Engineer of the year among our colleagues, and our former Vice-Chancellors have recently been given the Gujar Mal Modi Science & Technology Award, H.K. Firodia Award and the Lokmanya Tilak Award. Our faculty have also been associated with several important national and international bodies, held Professorships of distinction both in India and abroad, and participated in the global educational scene with as much vigour as we have always done. Furthermore, they have been funded quite handsomely receiving grants from national and international funding agencies like UGC, MHRD, DBT, DST, EU, DoE, IUSSTF and so on. The University’s current extramural R&D funding is over Rs. 135 crores.
In its 10 Schools of study, the University offers postgraduate and research programmes in several areas of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Sciences, Arts, Management, Medical Sciences and Engineering. There are also a large number of students under the Distance Education and Virtual Learning Programe through 20 PG Diploma courses. In addition, there are a number of Centres outside the School system, interdisciplinary Centres such as the Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, Centre for Women’s Studies, Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, to name a few. I am happy to inform that it has been decided to convert the Department of Economics into our eleventh School.
The Academic Staff College at the University is one of the finest of such Staff Colleges established by the UGC. It has so far conducted 72 Orientation Courses, 180 Refresher Courses for the benefit of 10,000 teachers from the colleges and universities all over the country. The University is running a high school on the campus for the benefit of employees’ children as well as for those from the neighbourhood.
Over the years, our annual student enrolment has grown steadily, now at a little over 4,700 in regular courses. Entrance examinations for selection of students are conducted in 25 centres all over the country. About a third of our students are women, and nearly two fifths come from marginalized or otherwise deprived communities.
The Library at the University has done very well and has a collection of about 3.6 lakh books and other reference material, and it subscribes to about 600 foreign journals and 18,000 online journals and 12 online databases. It is fully automated with special software for the visually-challenged students. It has recently received the highest usage award from the UGC for utilizing online journals and databases provided under the UGC Info Net Digital Library Consortium.
This is the final year of the 11th Plan, under which the University has been allocated a sum of Rs. 189 crores, a large part of which has been spent for expansion and strengthening of our infrastructure.
In this Convocation a total of 2097 students will receive their degrees and of these 161 are Ph.Ds. This brings the total number of Ph D’s produced at the UoH to nearly 1700, and the number of graduating students since the time of its inception to nearly 20000.
In the early part of this century, the University Grants Commission selected the University as one of five that they declared to be Universities with the Potential for Excellence. Along with this title came entitlement, a certain special grant that each of the Universities could use in order to better realize this potential. It was the wisdom of the leadership at the UoH at that time that the funds obtained under the UPE grant were used to promote interdisciplinary or interfacial studies, thereby ensuring two things. The first was that we realized that the most exciting aspects of any field of enquiry lay at its boundaries, where the questions and methods came dangerously close to the methods and questions of other traditional domains. The second was that we could make new entities to look at these problems. Thus, the interface between biology and physics, between nanoscience and biology, between physics and neuroscience, between neuroscience and philosophy, and between science and public policy: these interdisciplinary- indeed multidisciplinary areas of study have been found most fruitful, and form the focus of some of the new research that we have undertaken in the past decade. And thus we have seen the establishment of a Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, a Centre for Nanotechnology, and a Centre for Women’s Studies among others.
Among aspects of multidisciplinarity, of intellectual integration, one of the most imaginative initiatives that the UoH has pursued is the undergraduate programmes, the integrated Masters programmes in the Sciences, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Students are admitted after twelfth standard in this five year program of studies. The first set of students to graduate are among those here in the hall today, and we are very proud of this innovation that the University has introduced in higher education in India. Like many good beginnings, this effort needs nurturing and polishing, and this is our task in the coming years. The integration that has been successfully done vertically needs to be buttressed horizontally as well- to offer students in the country a liberal arts program that is sensitive to our educational system and our needs.
This sense of consolidation will, I hope, mark the efforts of the UoH in this decade. Having witnessed considerable growth- in faculty strength, in student strength, in the number of programs, the number of departments, centers and schools, and in the number of different degrees we give; it is now time for us to consolidate. We are in desperate need of infrastructure to fully realize our dreams. Adequate hostel rooms, adequate offices and laboratories, teaching spaces etc. These facilities are not just part of a wish list, they are crucial if we are to be in a position to take advantage of the initiatives made in the last decade. The University is – in a way that few institutions are- a wonderfully inclusive campus with diverse inputs from all over India. The potential is all here, and it is the obligation of the University administration to translate the potential into realization. This requires, at the base, a solid infrastructure. Common teaching spaces are our primary requirements as we make our claim for the UGC’s second phase of support under the UPE rubric.
Having just gone through a part of this exercise, it is a matter of pleasure to report that the University community has with one voice requested for common facilities – for the faculty as a whole- to pursue and strengthen our efforts in interdisciplinary areas. Enabling students to easily pursue complementary disciplines, enabling the mingling of ideas in common spaces- these are the themes of the different areas of support that we have requested.
To reiterate some ideas that I articulated a couple of months ago, the University system is continuously evolving, and not always in a way that one could have anticipated. Today, we see the mushrooming of new Institutes and universities with different mandates, different aims, and different sets of goals. I would not like to forget the very special space that the UoH, as a Central University, occupies as a centre for learning and knowledge dissemination; we have an added responsibility, to grow with inclusion in the true sense, and with transparency. Our commitment to this goal remains as real as always. It also becomes increasingly difficult, as the world changes, as the country changes, and indeed as our local environment changes. But a University such as ours was founded on the hope that from such scholarship would emerge the possibility of addressing social and societal problems, and from such scholarship would emerge the material that would lead our country forward in all spheres of achievement. These hopes are still alive.
To realize this aspiration, the UoH needs the ability to grow in new ways, and indeed, needs to be unfettered as we aspire to excel. Too often, we perform to the levels set by others and achieve goals set by governments. As academics, we know that the best standards are internal, set by the disciplines themselves. We need the freedom to pursue such ideals, without fear or favour.
Our progress along these paths would not have been possible without the unstinting and tireless support of the UoH fraternity which includes the students, the staff, the officers and the teachers. Each has played her or his role with enthusiasm and dedication, and each has been crucial in bringing us to this special moment. Thank you all.
Jai Hind!

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