Jawaharlal Nehru University

Jawaharlal Nehru University जवाहरलाल नेहरू विश्वविद्यालय

Seal of the Jawaharlal Nehru University
Established 1969
Type Education and Research
Chancellor Professor Yashpal
Vice-Chancellor Professor B.B.Bhattacharya
Academic staff 550
Students 5000-5500
Location India New Delhi
Campus Urban 1000 acres (4 km²)
Affiliations UGC
Website www.jnu.ac.in

Jawaharlal Nehru University, also known as JNU, is located in New Delhi, the capital of India. Situated in a bush forest on a ridge of the Aravalli hills with about 1000 acres (4 km²) of land in South West Delhi, JNU is mainly a research oriented postgraduate University with about 5,500 students. The faculty strength is around 550. The University is organized in ten Schools (each of which has several Centers) as well as four independent Special Centers.

The university was established in 1969 by an act of parliament. It was named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, and was founded by his daughter, Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi. G. Parthasarathy was appointed as the first-Vice-Chancellor of the university.

The objective of the founders of this university was to make it a premier institution of higher learning for students of the erstwhile "Third World" countries. The university from the very beginning was meant to be a centre for "Third World" studies. Another objective of the university has been to promote research and teaching leading to the increasing engagement of its students and teachers in higher level academic work and national and international policy making.

Contents

Schools

  1. School of Arts and Esthetics: This is one of the newest schools of the university.
  2. School of BioTechnology: This is the youngest School of JNU, formed in 2006 from the earlier Centre for Biotechnology.
  3. School of Computer and Systems Sciences: This school has been attracting the largest number of applications as compared to other schools since its inception in 1974.
  4. School of Environmental Sciences: Research in regards to Remote sensing application in Geosciences,specially Groundwater and Earthquake forewarning,Sun-Earth connection. Other researche includes: Environmental Biosciences,Ecology, Geomics,Glaciology,Chemistry,Cell Biology,Immunology,Pollution studies,Radiation Physics and Environmental Physics.
  5. School of Information Technology: It offers M.Tech in Computational and Systems Biology, Pre-Ph.D. and Direct Ph.D. courses in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.
  6. School of International Studies: This is the oldest school in JNU. It predates the establishment of JNU as the Indian School of International Studies, which was set up in 1956. The centers in this school are the Center for Canadian, US and Latin American Studies, the Center for East Asian Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Center for International Legal Studies, the Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament Studies, the Center for International Trade and Development, the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies, the Center for South, Central, Southeast Asian and Southwest Pacific Studies, the Center for West Asian & African Studies and the Group of Comparative Politics & Political Theory.
  7. School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies: This is the only school that offers undergraduate courses. It has several centers such as the Center of Arabic and African Studies, Center of Chinese and South East Asian Studies, the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Center of German Studies, the Center of Indian Languages, the Center of Japanese Korean and North East Asian Studies, the Center for English Studies, the Center for Linguistics, the Center of Persian and Central Asian Studies, the Center of Russian Studies, the Center of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian & Latin American Studies.
  8. School of Life Sciences: This school is also one of the oldest schools in the university.
  9. School of Physical Sciences: It was formed in 1986. It has faculty in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. At present the degree programs that are offered are the M.Sc. (Physics) and Ph.D. (in Physics, Chemistry or Mathematics). The School has experimental facilities in a number of different areas that include soft-matter physics, low temperature physics, materials science, supramolecular chemistry, as well as extensive computational facilities with a dedicated Nonlinear Dynamics laboratory.
  10. School of Social Sciences: It is the largest School (in terms of the number of faculty members) in JNU with 9 centres. These centres are the centres in this school are the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, which is accredited as Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) by University Grants Comminssion and premier centre in the Field of (GEOGRAPHY),the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, [1], which is a premier institute in the field of economics, the Center for Historical Studies, which regularly brings out a reputed peer-reviewed journal, entitled Studies in History, the Center for Philosophy, the Centre for Political Studies, the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies,[1]

Special Centers

  1. Center for the Study of Law and Governance
  2. Center for Molecular Medicine
  3. Special Center for Sanskrit Studies
  4. Center for International Trade and Development(CITD)

Institutions affiliated to JNU

The following institutions are affiliated to JNU:[2]

  1. Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), Lucknow
  2. Centre for Development Studies (CDS)[3], Trivandrum
  3. Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad
  4. Central Institute of Medicine and Aromatic Plants, Lucknow
  5. College of Military Engineering (CME), Pune
  6. C.V.Raman Research Institute, Bangalore
  7. International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi
  8. Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh
  9. Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering (MCEME), Secunderabad
  10. Military College of Telecommunication Engineering (MCTE), Mhow
  11. Naval College of Engineering (NCE), INS Shivaji, Lonavla
  12. National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi
  13. Nuclear Science Centre, New Delhi (now renamed as the Inter-University Accelerator Centre(IUAC))[4]
  14. The National Defence Academy, Pune
  15. The Army Cadet College, Dehra Dun
  16. National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi

[5]

Collaborators

The university has exchange programmes and academic collaboration through the signing of MoUs with 71 foreign universities around the world.[6]. This list includes

  1. Ankara University, Turkey
  2. Australia National University, Canberra, Australia
  3. George Washington University, USA
  4. Gyeongsang National University, Korea
  5. Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, France [7]
  6. King's College London, United Kingdom [8]
  7. Lancaster University, UK
  8. MVL Moscow State University, Russia
  9. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  10. University of Cologne, Germany
  11. University of Heidelberg, Germany
  12. University of Illinois, USA
  13. University of North Carolina, USA
  14. University of Philippines, Quezon City
  15. University of Sydney, Australia
  16. University of Essex, UK
  17. Yale University, USA
  18. NASA,USA

Infrastructure

The JNU Campus

The university is an example of the new red brick universities to have been built in mid-twentieth century. The campus buildings are architecturally distinct and are dominated by a nine storied library and buildings housing lecture halls around it.

JNU is located in the southern part of New Delhi. Spread over an area of about 1000 acres (4 km²), the campus occupies some of the northernmost reaches of the Aravalli Hills. The campus still maintains large patches of scrub and forestland - this is the JNU ridge, home to over 200 species of birds and other wildlife such as nilgai, jackals, mongoose, peacocks as well as a large number of snakes.

JNU Library

The JNU library is a nine-storey building in the middle of the academic block of the university and is the tallest structure on the campus. It contains large collections of books, printed journals, newspapers and archives of primary sources. On the ground floor are the reading rooms, a section of the stacks, the library's collection of the back numbers of scholarly journals, computer terminals and the newspaper and journal section. The different floors are devoted to different subjects. The library also has the P.C.Joshi Archives.

Modernization

Like any other university in India, JNU too has had its share of administrative hassles . However, the university administration is modernizing itself by moving toward "paperless"[9] transparency and e-governance with the help of Wipro. Likewise, the campus is setting up a wireless network that will connect students and teachers to the library.

Students

Public Meetings

There is a long tradition in JNU of holding serious post-dinner meetings in the hostels to which the students often invite well known public figures, writers and intellectuals. The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) is primarily responsible for building and preserving a healthy political culture and an atmosphere of open debate on the campus. Students are kept informed about the various public meetings, discussions and other issues through pamphlets and notices. Public Action an objective forum invited P.Sainath, Pranab Mukherjhee, Yashwant Sinha, The Dalai Lama, Dr. K.R.Narayanan, Sunita Narain, Vandana Shiva, J.Demrath, Richard Gere et al. for free and frank debates. Eminent personalities including left wing politicians, such as Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury, Congress leaders such as Salman Khurshid, and Arjun Singh, academics such as the historian Gyanender Pandey and journalists such as Arvind Narayan Das have participated in the public debates. Existing faculty members also participate in the debates using them as another platform for teaching outside the regular class hours. Well-known personalities from Delhi and the existing teachers of the university also speak at the election meetings, especially on the night of the Presidential Debate, which is held on the Jhelum Lawn.

The Students' Union

The Jawaharlal Nehru Students' Union (JNUSU) election is a famous democratic convention of the university and is conducted annually entirely by the students in a lively yet peaceful manner, without any intervention by the administration. The Students' Union has traditionally been a prominent leading voice of the left students' movements in India[10]. The JNUSU has a unique constitution, entirely drafted by the students. The elections to the JNUSU are administered by the students as well. During the Emergency, the JNUSU protested against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's visit to the campus and current PM Manmohan was also shown black flags in the campus.

The main political parties that have been active in JNU since its inception are the Students Federation of India (SFI), All India Students Association (AISA), National Students Union of India (NSUI) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). The Union has been predominantly controlled by leftist parties, especially the SFI and the AISA. Presently, the Union is led by the far-left AISA. The SFI-All India Students Federation (AISF) alliance has dominated the Central Panel in JNUSU over the years, although in 2000 it lost the post of the President to the ABVP. It managed to regain that post between 2001 to 2004. In the 2007 JNUSU elections, the SFI-AISF alliance lost all the key posts of the Students Union to its leftwing rival, AISA. A large majority of JNUSU Presidents have come from Students' Federation of India(SFI). On October 24, 2008, the Supreme Court of India issued a notice to the JNU authorities for non-implementation of Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations on Students' Union elections.[11]

Some of the former JNUSU presidents are Prakash Karat, Digvijay Singh, D.P. Tripathi, Sitaram Yechury, Prof. K.M. Chenoy, Amitsen Gupta, Pranay Krishna, Chandrasekhar Prasad, Mona Das, Dhananjay Tripathi and Sandeep Singh .

Currently Sandeep Singh is holding office of JNUSU President, as per mandate given by UGBM.

The class representatives, called Student Faculty Councillors (SFC), are elected for one year to represent their batches in all student related academic matters. The election to the post of the SFC is normally carried out unanimously.

Foreign Students' Association

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is a community of learning that is enriched by the wide variety of experiences and perspectives of its students, faculty and staffs. The prestigious varsity is deeply committed to building a diverse campus community to ensure that student, faculty and staff members can explore their interests, discover new academic and extracurricular pursuits, and just as importantly learn from each other.

JNU attracts students from all over the country and abroad, and from diverse strata of society. JNU has come to be deemed the best University in the nation and is among the best known Universities of the world. JNU has around 400 foreign students from around 50 countries from all over the world, a fair chunk of them coming from South Asia, South-East Asia, Central Asia, Africa and Europe. The Foreign Students’ Association (FSA) is an official Jawaharlal Nehru University body. It was instituted in 1985 with a view to promoting friendly relations and cultural exchange among international students and with the host students of the university.

The FSA has a constitution and elected executive, cultural, advisory and financial committees. In keeping with the ethos of JNU, the FSA functions democratically and regular General Body Meetings are held. All foreign students of JNU are also members of the FSA. The FSA is their space to communicate their ideas, discuss their problems and organize various inter-cultural activities.

FSA also conducts Language and Culture classes free of charge for JNU students, which include Japanese, German, English, Arabic, Hindi and Urdu classes with the help of FSA members and Indian students. A Delhi sight-seeing tour was organized. Different tours, Picnics and Heritage trips are organized. International Film Festival screened films of different counties to show the cultures and life style around the world. “Thursday Forum” is the discussion session held in FSA for foreign students to come and discuss different issues, topics and interact. The Sri Lankan High Commissioner was invited one year to talk on the Sri Lankan Conflict.

Cultural Activities

There are 9 cultural clubs in JNU.

The programs of these clubs are organized by the Convenor and the members of the respective club. They are the Drama Club, Music Club, Film Club, Fine Arts Club, Photography Club, Literary Club, Debating Club, UNESCO Club and Nature & Wildlife Club. Other cultural groups: IPTA (Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association), Bahroop Arts Group, Orissa Sanskrutika Parishad(OSP).

Annual Cultural Programmes

SFH - Students for Harmony started in 1997 in JNU organises cultural events throughout the year. Tastopia, the world food festival, Ahimsa Day blood donation camp on 30 January, Talents - the inter-hostel festival, Madhurima, the folk songs and dance programme, Oceania, an international cultural evening, Imprint - the handicrafts exhibition, dignitaries lecture series are some of the events.

Hostels

The residential character of JNU is unique and a strong component of the intellectual and cultural life of the campus. There are 15 residences (hostels), including one for married students. Of the 14 hostels, 7 are for men and 3 for women, while 4 have mixed wings for women and men. Most of the hostels are located in zones named after geographical directions: Uttarakhand, Poorvanchal, Paschimabad and Dakshinapuram. A few years after the turn of the century, a section of Dakshinapuram was renamed Saraswatipuram. The hostels are named after different rivers of India: Ganga, Yamuna, Jhelum and Sutlej (in punjab), Kaveri, Periyar and Godawari (in Dakshinapuram), Narmada and Sabarmati (in Saraswatipuram), Tapti, Mahi-Mandavi, Lohit and Chandrabhaga (in Paschimabad), and Brahmaputra and Mahanadi (in Poorvanchal). Few days ago, the new hostel for girls has come into existence which is also named on the river named Koyena.

Sports

There are various sports clubs in the university. The practice sessions are organised by the convenor with help of the Sport Office, which provides the necessary kit and other sport equipments. All the clubs organise annual tournaments in the winter semester. There are three main venues where the following games are played:

Reputation

JNU is ranked high among universities in India and also among Asian universities. International league tables produced in 2006 by the London-based The Times Higher Education Supplement(THES) placed JNU among the world's top 200 universities. For life and biological sciences, JNU is ranked among the top 100 universities in the world. JNU's School for Social Sciences is at the 57th position among the world's top 100 institutes for social sciences.

Prominent alumni

Politicians

Party Offices

Union Minister of State and state level Cabinet Minister

Ministers from Countries other than India

Civil Servants

Entrepreneurs

Academics

Cinema and Arts

Journalists

Eminent Faculty

School of International Studies

International Studies

School of Languages

Urdu

Arabic

Centre for English Studies

Professor Santosh Sareen Professor Makarand Paranjape Professor GJV Prasad

School of Social Sciences

Economics

History

Political Science

Visiting Faculty

See also

References

  1. ↑ JNU (1997) Silver Jubilee Commemoration Volume; A Profile of School of Social Sciences, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University
  2. ↑ Institutions affiliated to JNU
  3. ↑ Centre for Development Studies (CDS)
  4. ↑ Inter-University Accelerator Centre (IUAC)
  5. ↑ National Institute of Plant Genome Research
  6. ↑ Global Presence of JNU http://www.jnu.ac.in/main.asp?sendval=GlobalPresence#
  7. ↑ List of Foreign universities which signed MOU for collaboration with JNU http://www.jnu.ac.in/Academics/MoU%20complete%20list.htm
  8. ↑ http://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news_details.php?news_id=966&year=2008
  9. ↑ "JNU all set to go `paperless' ", The Hindu, 28 October 2006 [On-line] http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/25/stories/2006102519390300.htm
  10. ↑ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/delhi/JNU-elections-begin-Nov-8/articleshow/26400573.cms
  11. ↑ Source=ABC Live/ http://abclive.in/abclive_national/jnu-lyngdoh-committee-recommendations-supreme-court.html
  12. ↑ http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=2888
  13. ↑ http://ospjnu.blogspot.com/
  14. ↑ http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=11909

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