[Jai]

Crumbling Nalanda will shine again

Ancient seat of learning was shut over 800 years ago. Rs 1,000-crore plan will give it a fresh lease of life

TOI Epaper, 17 Jun 07

Amitava Sanyal
New Delhi



NALANDA, ONE of the world's oldest universities, is being revived by the Bihar government. The state has acquired the land required for the Rs 1,000-crore project and the university could have functioning schools as early as next year, over 800 years after a marauding invader, Bakhtiar Khilji, destroyed it.

Though it taught science, mathematics and logic, ancient Nalanda's pre-eminence in Buddhist studies has got the governments of Japan, China and Singapore interested in the project. "The university would not belong to Bihar, it would belong to the world," Dr Madan Jha, Bihar's principal secretary (education), told HT.

Among the seven schools planned in the five-year first phase - it will have 4,530 students and 453 faculty members at the end of it - would be those that offer integrated post-graduate and research programmes in informatics, developmental studies and applied sciences.

President APJ Abdul Kalam played guardian angel when, 16 months ago, he listed Nalanda's reconstruction as one of Bihar's 10 priorities. Since then, apart from buying the 500 acres required, the Nitish Kumar government has enacted the legislation necessary for setting up the university .

According to the project report by Educational Consultants India, the international character of the university would part ly flow from the 46 faculty members hired from abroad (there would be 582 faculty members at the end of the 10-year project). The plan for the university buildings, too, would be open to international bidding.

The way ahead is to be decided by a ‘mentor group' chaired by Professor Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate. The first meeting of the group - which would include Harvard historian Sugata Bose, Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeoh and scholars from Japan and China - is scheduled in Singapore in July. It would later meet in Tokyo, Beijing and India before submitting its recommendations by the year-end.