 "George Yeo (Source: en.wikipedia.org)")
Going by the calm around the Nalanda University campus in Rajgir, Bihar, it is tough to believe that the institution is, for the moment, in the eye of a storm. Life seems to be going on as usual inside the campus which is built on land that once belonged to the Bihar government. Students are buried deep in their studies and the university administration has explained that since it is examination week, everyone has been told to concentrate on their preparations. An informal “gag order” seems to be in effect.
After six years from the day of its foundation, Nalanda University is still, in many senses, a dream, an ideal yet to be realised. While there is a makeshift campus in operation, it hasn’t reached the potential it had promised. A total of 455 acres were allotted for the campus by the Bihar government in 2011, yet it took almost five years for the university to finalise the tender for the first phase of construction of the campus.
According to the terms of the tender, the contractor would also have to set up facilities for the production of compressed, stabilised earth blocks from the dug-up soil to build foundations and the water bodies. Construction was delayed because requisite permissions took longer than usual. The foundation stone was laid by President Pranab Mukherjee only in October.
According to detractors of the university’s former board of governors, reasons such as a complicated tendering process have delayed construction. And a tussle between the board of governors and officials of the Union external affairs ministry has slowed things down further.
In March, the ministry “vitiated” the earlier tender as the university didn’t obtain “approvals” before finalising the tender. “In the new tender, the university had to fight tooth and nail on various provisions of the tender,” says a government official who knows about the inner workings of the university.
Things took a turn for the worse when Nalanda’s first vice-chancellor Gopa Sabharwal’s tenure extension came under the central government’s scanner. Nalanda is a unique university that is governed by the ministry of external affairs rather than the ministry of human resource development.
According to the university statutes, a vice-chancellor’s term could only be extended once and that extension was not to extend a period of one year. Sabharwal’s extension ended on November 24, but the Nalanda Mentors Group (NMG) — a de-facto governing council that consisted of economist Amartya Sen, Meghnad Desai, Rajya Sabha MP Sugata Bose, among others — wanted Sabharwal’s tenure to continue till a new vice-chancellor was appointed, to avoid a “vacuum of leadership”.
A tug of war over appointment
Sabharwal has been the bone of contention between the government and the NMG since her appointment in 2011. At the time of her appointment, questions were raised over whether, under the University Grants Commissions norms, she qualified to be a vice-chancellor of any university as well as over the salary she drew even before classes at the university began.
An office of the university was set up in New Delhi, which Sabharwal operated out of, and which was seen as bizarre and contrary to the entire idea of reviving the university in Bihar. An erstwhile professor of sociology at the Lady Shri Ram College for Women in Delhi, she drew a salary of over Rs 5 lakh per month, according to reports, which was more than twice of what the Delhi University vice-chancellor earned.
But despite the controversies then and now, Sabharwal enjoyed the full support of the NMG as well as the faculty. While offering to extend her tenure till a new vice-chancellor was appointed, the university sent out a statement expressing its faith in her capabilities.
George Yeo, Singapore’s former foreign minister and Nalanda’s former chancellor who recently resigned, also commends Sabharwal’s work at the university. “Despite difficult circumstances, the university has made remarkable progress through the tireless effort of Sabharwal and her colleagues,” he wrote in his resignation letter.
Yeo declined to comment in response to an emailed questionnaire. Phone calls and text messages to Sabharwal went unanswered.
The real question over autonomy arose when the central government overruled the extension of Sabharwal’s term and consequently dissolved the NMG. The group was also responsible for selecting and appointing the next vice-chancellor, which is now expected to see further delays. The group itself outlasted its tenure by three years, which was due to an understanding with the government.
The NMG was to last for one year, and was given an extension of another two years till November 2013 due to a delay in funds from member countries. An amendment was sought in the Nalanda University Bill, which was delayed indefinitely due to the general elections in 2014.
Till the external affairs ministry stepped in to dissolve this group and constitute a new one, this informal understanding was in play.
Academicians in Bihar blame both sides for this fiasco. “The board was adamant about Sabharwal, while the central government wanted to prove its supremacy by ousting her. None of them understood the meaning of the word ‘autonomy’”, says a senior academician from Patna. “The government mistook ‘autonomy’ for subservience as the university receives most its funds from the Indian government, while the board misunderstood it as independence.”
It’s studies as usual
A student from one of the three functioning disciplines — School of Ecology and Environment Studies, School of Historical Studies, and School of Buddhist Studies, Philosophy and Comparative Religions — says that there has been no discussion about the tug-of-war between the government and the university. Whether because of the ongoing exams or a strong sense of loyalty that comes from being a pioneer batch in the university, this student says that the controversy has left students and faculty completely unaffected.
But the faculty is more anxious by virtue of being more aware of the developments. “People who compare us to private universities or other central universities seem to forget one very basic fact that we are a multinational project and we come under the ministry of external affairs and not the ministry of human resources,” says a faculty member. “This university is a unique experiment and it is natural that it will take some time. Contrarily to popular perception, we are not some ‘extravagant experiment’.”
The university has an image of being “a futile extravagant exercise” for many among the officials of its parent ministry. It is telling how only a few external affairs ministry officials have ever visited the campus in Rajgir. “Even those who make it to Rajgir are in a hurry to return to Delhi as soon as possible,” says an official in Patna.
A sense of pride and an accompanying sense of outrage overpower the mood in Bihar. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has publicly expressed anger over the matter and has said that the unfolding of these events will only lead to “an environment of confusion”.
“If everybody related to the Nalanda University from the beginning leaves, the core value of the ‘idea of Nalanda’ will be affected.” Kumar has been an avid admirer of former chancellor Amartya Sen and outgoing chancellor George Yeo and didn’t hide his displeasure about their departure.
Other officials in the Bihar government too express displeasure over the manner in which things were done. “The government was well within its right to reconstitute the university’s original board of governors. What’s wrong is the way it was done. This has been done in a graceless and illogical manner and seeks to re-establish the absolute government control,” says a senior official in the Bihar government.
To those who have visited the university to deliver lectures, the university is unique, especially in the Indian education scenario. “I have been teaching in Singapore for the fall semester, at Yale- National University of Singapore, a college about as new as Nalanda. This college at NUS is a collaboration intended to offer something new to Southeast Asia, a liberal arts education, and is producing some of the most creative, brilliant students I have seen, who think very much outside the box and are more exciting to teach than most of my students back at Yale University,” says Margaret Olin, senior research scholar at the Yale Divinity School.
Olin visited the campus recently to deliver a lecture titled “The Art of Describing: Redundancy, Transformation, Impersonation” last month. “I felt that same excitement at Nalanda and I have the sense that it, too, is offering something expansive that could widen substantially the educational possibilities and outlook in South Asia,” she explains.
Visiting professors have been aware that the campus is makeshift and accommodation and other facilities will be hard to come by. “You don’t get a ‘work-in-progress’ feel because the work is yet to begin. But I eagerly await for the marvel to unfold itself, sooner rather than later,” says M K Ramesh, professor of law at the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru who delivered a lecture titled “The Legal Universe of Natural Resources Management in India” last month.
This euphoria is shared by students, some of whom left opportunities to study at other universities to participate in the experimental curriculum at Nalanda. According to one student, companies have showed interest in campus placements and students are hopeful to land a job once they graduate.
Currently, 130 students are enrolled at the university and the administration claims to have received over 5,000 applications for its limited seats. People associated with the university, especially those who have seen its genesis, believe that such controversies only slow the progress.
“This should not have happened. We all want this university to succeed. Such political controversies are unhealthy for the growth of institutions that were established with such high hopes,” says a person associated with the university.
Away from the political quagmire the university is caught in, students hope for better medical facilities and a residence facility closer to campus. “We are hoping once the campus is built, it will provide us more stability in terms of amenities,” says one of them. Stability, for now, is a distant dream for Nalanda.
