JNU Alumni Vision

Alumni Association of JNU

Jawaharlal Nehru University

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The Near Future: JNU’s Vision

JNU is a leading national centre of excellence in higher education which is trying to rank among the top universities of the world. We, at JNU, believe in excellence with social responsibility and commitment, and wish to become a bench mark for Indian universities.

JNU has evolved mainly as a research oriented university with emphasis on post graduate teaching. Out of a total of 5506 on our rolls, 4631 are post graduate students. With hostels and residences of teachers built close together, the university’s instructional and research programmes go beyond the classroom and normal office hours. JNU is now well recognized among world class institutions, the only Indian university to find a place in the global ranking of Institutes of Higher Education. A recent survey by Pergmann Press has placed JNU publications in the Sciences as the 4th most cited papers in the country. The University Grants Commission has also identified JNU amongst the few “University with Potential for Excellence”. JNU has always been the leading Indian university, and perhaps among the best worldwide, in Social Sciences, International Relations, and Languages. The Admission policy and practice of JNU: for equity, access and quality has been rated as the “Best Practices” by National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration which has published it under its series of publication of Best Practices in Higher Education.

Marching ahead on this solid foundation, the University is concentrating upon some major, carefully identified teaching and research programmes which are also of relevance to national progress and development; programmes that will take JNU to new heights of excellence in the years to come. Recognising the emerging trends in social and economic systems (often simply referred to as globalisation and knowledge society) and the strengthening of interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation and dissemination, new Research areas and activities are being launched.

• The emerging deeper and stronger interdisciplinary character of research and teaching in forms the new programmes in sciences, These include :
- Launching of Nano-Science and Technology as a new major research and teaching programme integrating several aspects now being pursued separately by groups in School of Physical Sciences, Centre for Biotechnology, School of Environmental Sciences and School of Life Science. Another such integrating programme is the application of common computational approaches and tools to study a range of diverse systems encountered in real life situations ranging from traffic flows, stock market fluctuations to analysis of gene protein regulatory networks. This programme on Study of Complex Systems will bring in inputs from social sciences as well. A new frame work of biological research with confluence of various disciplines of biology and physical sciences and mathematics, faculty members from the School of Life Sciences (SLS), School of Environmental Sciences (SES), School of Physical Sciences (SPS), and Special Centre for Molecular Medicine (SCMM) have come together to form an interdisciplinary group of researchers/educationists to pursue biological problems from the perspective of basic principles of physical sciences, especially of chemistry

• Emergence of Knowledge Society and widening connectivity between diverse nations and social and economic systems informs the following new initiatives:
- Research and Studies on emerging issues of Higher Education in Knowledge Society will find an important place in JNU; issues such as access and inclusion, diversity and excellence, gender, institutional and organizational transformation, financing and privatization, migration of knowledge workers will be taken up. Simultaneously the issue of changing structures and content of School Education and its linkages with higher education require will receive attention.
- The changing role and nature of international economic institutions in the management of world economy in the dimensions of trade, environment, technology, knowledge and investments within the framework institutional economics, evolutionary economics along with conventional trade and development theories constitutes a key thrust area of research and teaching. The hitherto neglected dimension of social sector is now acquiring an increasing recognition in International Economics (reflected for example in WTO and UN deliberations). New programmes will receive special attention to equip students to undertake holistic research in international economics incorporating this key social sector perspective. With increasing marketization of many services (and goods) traditionally provided by the state, it has become imperative to develop regulatory structures so that social objectives are still met and therefore economic regulation is being taken up as a key area of research and teaching in the context of a more liberalized international economic framework
- Another new initiative to develop a programme on Holistic Epidemiology for Public Health at the university that could feed into the existing curricula in medical colleges and public health institutions in the country apart from contributing to the policy process and the quality of governance.
- The increasing diffusion of Electronic Media resulting in wide spread connectivity has lead to a research programme focussing on the study of issues of the relationship between media on one hand and social behaviour, political functioning, mobilization of public opinion etc. on the other. It would study the media as a source of critical examination of the Government policies and Society in all related aspects.

• Necessity of Indian studies in humanities in a wider diverse national and international perspective has been recognised. This informs the following programmes
- In addition to contemporary Indian History, new initiatives would pay particular attention to situating the Indian experience in a comparative perspective other developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America as also of various advanced countries at a comparable stage of their development and by establishing new posts for non-Indian history (Contemporary, Global histories and East European, Asian, Modern Chinese, Latin American and African histories.
- The study and research programmes in textual tradition will be expanded to develop expertise on Pali and Prakrit textual sources and other classical language & literary traditions such as in Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. The approach would be not to construct merely the historical meta-narrative but to also look at the historical record in terms of regional and local processes. The degree programmes in Hindi and Urdu and diploma in Mass Media will be expanded to cover other major Indian languages. International coverage would be by creation of a Group of Foreign Languages like Greek, Swahili, Hebrew Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Kazak, and Uzbek etc for a programme in culture studies as an interdisciplinary research at M.Phil/Ph.D level. Collaborative studies in Museum Studies and Comparative aesthetics is another new initiative.
- Special mention should be made of an important Programme for the Study of Discrimination and Exclusion.

As invaluable inputs to research and education, the University proposes to set up archaeological and history museum, and other specialised resource units such as for Science & Technology Archival Record System, for Health Systems/Services Resource and Research.

The University is enhancing and modernising e its educational and research facilities. The Science Instrumentation Centre is being strengthened and state-of-art audio visual and other teaching aids are being introduced. Wide spread adoption of e-governance and internet connectivity has become a must for JNU. A seminar hall with main auditorium with a capacity to seat 1200 people, with associated guest house of international standards will enable JNU to host many more seminars, conferences and workshops.

A full-fledged International Relations office is envisaged to take full advantage of Memorandum of Understanding and Academic Collaboration agreements signed with 90 universities.

Our building plans include annexes to most of our major Schools, as well as a hundred rooms residence for visiting faculty.