Campus Chosen For South Asian Uni
Academical Institution Will Build New Regional Bridges
SAARC’S First Collective Project
The idea of a South Asian University, one in which students from across the region could meet, study, and exchange ideas and values was floated by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 13th SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit at Dhaka in 2005.
The idea was not fully taken up by member countries until the 2007 summit in New Delhi, where an initial framework for the institution was agreed upon, with India agreeing to foot at least US$2 billion of the bill and also to provide land to house the central campus.
Mukherjee hailed the beginning of the project as: “among the first manifestations of concrete SAARC achievement on the ground”, reported India Edunews.
The University - Work to Do
Professor G.K Chadha, a former vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, and a member of Manmohan Singh’s Economic Advisory Council has been appointed CEO of the project, and in his two-year tenure will be responsible for getting the university off the ground.
This will be achieved through four stages reports the Times of India; acquiring land (approximately 200 acres in south Delhi) and construction, setting out a legal and governmental framework to run the university, the development of academic courses and their structures, and the institution’s funding pattern and business plan. Currently, it is hoped that students will begin enrolling in 2009 to start studying courses in 2010.
Campuses Spread Across the Region
While the central campus will be located in southern New Delhi, satellites will be set up in other South Asian countries. As of yet, locations and numbers of students in these are not clear, although there have been reports that postgraduate study will take place in Delhi (where the university will compete with the renowned postgrad-only Jawaharlal Nehru University), and undergraduate study will be conducted in other member countries outside India.
Improving South Asian Relations
News of the go-ahead for the university comes during a relatively stable period of relations between the members of SAARC; trains between India and Bangladesh have recently started running, with further links to Nepal and Bhutan in the pipeline, and India-Pakistan relations are also reasonably calm at the moment.
External Affairs Minister for India Pranab Mukherjee hopes that the building of the university will help SAARC:”to realize our shared goals of peace, prosperity and cooperation”, (thaindian) and the project will undoubtedly be a topic of discussion during the upcoming SAARC summit, to be held in July-August in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
