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Plans to revive an ancient university are well under way in a dusty corner of eastern India, Foreign Minister George Yeo and others of the Nalanda Mentor Group were told on a visit to the site late last week.
More land will be acquired for the Nalanda International University, and the project envisions tie-ups with Thailand's Chulalongkorn University and Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Headed by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, the mentor group held its fifth meeting last Thursday and Friday at the Buddhist holy city of Bodh Gaya, about 30km from Nalanda.
Around 182ha of land have been acquired by the state and another 219ha will be bought up over the next five months. The land purchases underline the size and scope of a global-sized dream taking shape in Bihar state.
Speaking to the Singapore media, Professor Sen said that the group had decided to add a seventh discipline - information science and technology - to the six originally planned to be taught at Nalanda when the new university opens in a few years.
The steering group's discussions also covered the appointment of a rector to drive the project and likely sources of funding.
The Indian government will now take the proposal to revive Nalanda as a regional project to participants of the East Asia Summit meeting in Thailand this year, to be endorsed. 'India will present this as an opportunity for collaboration with any country in East Asia that may be interested,' Mr Yeo said.
The mentor group includes renowned scholars such as Singapore's Professor Wang Gungwu, Lord Meghnad Desai of the London School of Economics, Professor Jeffrey Garten of Yale and Professor Wang Bangwei of Beijing University.
One worry in the current economic climate is funding. The Indian government and the Bihar state administration have put aside US$50 million (S$76.7 million) as seed money. However, some mentors expressed optimism that the vast and spreading Buddhist diaspora will pitch in with more.
Ravi Velloor
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
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