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South Asia's First Regional University
Hires a Leader
By
Shailaja Neelakantan
Issue
cover-dated May 8, 2008
New Delhi — India will shoulder the
initial cost of at least 80 million rupees, or about $2-million,
to build South Asia’s first regional university, said the newly
appointed chief executive of the institution, which is likely
to open in 2010.
“Two years is the bare minimum we
need, so we are certainly being called upon to work at high
speed,” said G.S. Chadha, of the South Asian University.
Mr. Chadha, a former vice chancellor of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal
Nehru University, is a well-known economics scholar in Asia
and is also a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Economic
Advisory Council.
In April 2007 leaders of the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s member countries
— Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal,
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka — agreed to set up the South Asian University
in India.
Mr. Chadha, who received notice on
Wednesday that his hiring had been officially approved by the
participating countries, has a two-year appointment. He will
oversee almost all aspects of the university’s development,
including construction, the curriculum, and faculty hiring,
and he will be assisted by experts from all member countries.
Mr. Chadha said the association expected
a lot of money to come from sources outside the member countries.
“We will be approaching various development agencies,” he said,
declining to say how much it will cost to build the institution.
The Indian government has yet to acquire land for the university,
but it has identified 100 acres in south Delhi, close to some
of the capital’s universities, that could serve as a campus.
“Everybody in the Indian government
is behind it,” Mr. Chadha said of the project. “Usually there
is some bureaucratic problem, or ifs and buts crop up, but this
one has run smoothly.”
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