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Vision & Mission

Vision & Mission

Vision:

A university stands for transformation. JNU exemplifies the positive aspects of human habitation and intervention. Built on the rugged barren terrain of the Aravali hill range, where the 1000 acre campus is housed, the university has turned into a lush green estate of envy, a landscape bursting into the colours of bougainvilleas and amaltas, mangoes and jamun (Indian blackberry), and is the home of peacocks and nilgais. JNU is a birdwatcher’s paradise, parts of it now hosting almost dense forests.

JNU campus is a microcosm of the Indian nation, drawing students from every nook and corner of the country and from every group and stratum of society. To make sure that this is so, annual admission tests are simultaneously held at centres in various parts of the country (and at one centre abroad in Kathmandu, Nepal) and special care is taken to draw students from the underprivileged castes and ethnic groups. International students form nearly 15% per cent of the annual intake and as of now come from approx. 30 - 35 countries across the continents.

Most of the faculty, staff, and students of the university reside on campus. Hostels for students are built close to faculty residences in order to facilitate close interaction and to encourage the feeling of belonging to a large academic family. The hostels and faculty houses are organized in four clusters, named after the four directions. Each of the hostels is named after a river belonging to the region.

Towering over all other buildings in the Academic Complex is the nine- storey University Library, the hub of student life on campus. The JNU Library is among the first batch of universities to be chosen as a beneficiary of the UGC- INFONET- INFLIBNET consortium of Electronic journals because of the excellent infrastructure facilities in place at JNU. The Archives on Contemporary History, located in the Library has in its holdings a very large collection of source material on the Left Movement in India.

The Human Resources Development Centre (formerly Academic Staff College), funded by the UGC and located in JNU, serves other universities in the country by organizing in-service refresher training for college teachers from different parts of India. Among the other facilities available in JNU are two sophisticated instrumentation centres – The Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility (AIRF) and the University Science Instrumentation Centre (USIC) – which are engaged in various in-house R & D activities. The Language Lab Complex, one of the best of its kind in Asia is equipped with video and audio facilities including a studio, and is justly proud of its rich software library.

Student life on JNU Campus has its own colours and contours of uniqueness. The university is perceived as a training ground for intellectual politicians, and for a meaningful life in the Indian bureaucracy, as much as the beginning of a life in research and academics. Serious and sometimes high decibel disputes about the validity of paradigmatic premises or cultural subtexts of a particular scientific or economic thesis often spill over from the class and hostel rooms onto the middle of the campus roads, at times causing traffic bottlenecks. Happily, these have never caused a road accident. JNU is the only university in India where the annual Students Union elections are conducted entirely by students, Fierce poster and cartoon wars, verbal duels and competitive yet peaceful group meetings are a viewers’ delight during the elections, In fact student life is peppered by after dinner speeches and discussions on every pressing contemporary issue. JNU is also a place for late night snacks and an active cultural life, with clubs that encourage a wide range of activities from dramatics to mountaineering.

We can say proudly that Jawaharlal Nehru University is a unique university not just in India but the world with its diversity, its commitment to social justice and intellectual attainment.

 

Mission Statement:

 

The mission of the University is social contribution through education and learning, using advanced research tools and methodologies at the highest levels of excellence matching international standards. Towards this mission, JNU will strive to:

o Synergize the potential of JNU faculties and their innovative ideas and efforts to achieve the highest degree of academic excellence.

o Keep the University at the forefront by initiating innovative, fundamental and inter/multi/trans-disciplinary courses that meet the needs of the society by contributing to new research evidences and also by preparing new generation of scientists to address the challenges faced by the society.

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.