The Curious Case of Nalanda 2.0

The idea to revive Nalanda University was first mooted in 2005 by the then President APJ Abdul Kalam. The new campus of the university is built near the ruins of the historic academic place by the same name in Bihar.

Indian government enacted the Nalanda University Act, 2010 to implement the decisions arrived at the Second East Asia Summit held in January, 2007 in the Philippines and subsequently at the Fourth East Asia Summit in Thailand for the establishment of the Nalanda University. It began its first academic session on 1 September 2014 with 15 students in the School of Historical Studies and the School of Ecology and Environmental Studies from a temporary campus in Rajgir. The university started functioning from its 455-acres new campus in January 2020.

Nalanda University, located in Rajgir, near Nalanda, in Bihar in the north-east, is the first international university established by the Indian government with funding from foreign countries and foreign nationals nominated to the university’s governing board.The first chancellor of the university was Amartya Sen, followed by former Singapore Minister for Foreign Affairs George Yeo. Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen was involved with the project since 2007. Sen’s term came to an end in 2016 after a lot of mudslinging with the then-political powers in India. Nothing concrete came up during his tenure, rather, the university’s prospects went down further and no questions were raised.

Yeo, a former Singapore foreign minister who has been involved in the project since 2007, resigned two days after Sen quit the board because, as he said, of Indian government interference in Nalanda University’s autonomy.

In April 2019, In a series of tweets, Bharti Jain, a journalist with the Times of India, made serious allegations of financial misconduct and nepotism against Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and the management of Bihar’s Nalanda University. After a social media uproar regarding a lack of evidence to support her allegations, Jain clarified that her tweets were based on “sources” and not authored independently. 

Her series of allegations were later debunked by many fact-check portals. And Later, She deleted her tweets.

As promising as it looked when envisioned, the University is far away from the required standards of an International University. Lack of Coordination between Centre-States governments, strained relations with the member countries and lack of financial support has hindered its growth.

Recently, Nalanda University saw budget cuts from the MEA. According to the budget estimates of 2024-25, the contributions towards the Nalanda International University stand at Rs 200 crore which is a decrease of Rs 100 crore from the budget estimates of 2023-24. Bihar, despite giving 31/40 & 39/40 MPs in the last 2 LokSabha elections and Double engine govt since last 10 years barring a few months, has been largely neglected by the centre in almost every aspect. It can’t even fix its lone so-called international university.

Sad state!

Credit: @the_lastmonk