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Mahesh

29/11/23 12:47 PM IST

India’s first international university (SAU)

In News
  • The institution grapples with a crippling shortage of funds amidst geopolitical differences and economic crises faced by member countries.
SAARC University
  • An ambitious idea proposed by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 2005 SAARC Summit in Dhaka, India’s “first international university” came up five years later, in 2010, via an intergovernmental agreement signed during the 14th SAARC summit by member countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
  • The idea was for member countries to pool their resources for creation of a Centre of Excellence in the form of a University that would provide world-class facilities and professional faculty to students and researchers drawn from every country of the SAARC region.
Concerns
  • Nearly 13 years on, with Rs 100 crore of the contribution share of member nations still pending, the university is staring at severely depleted financial reserves — by July 31 this year, its corpus was down to Rs 1.23 crore, from Rs 69 crore in 2010.
  • With over 700 students, 56 teaching staff across seven departments and 42 non-teaching staff, sources said the university has an annual operational cost of over Rs 70 crore.
  • The university has sent SOSes to the Centre, including one in February this year.
  • According to sources, so far this financial year, none of the SAARC nations, except India, have released funds from their committed share towards the university’s operations.
  • As per the agreement, India was to bear the entire expenses of building the permanent campus of the SAU in New Delhi with the member countries, including India, sharing the recurring costs for running the institution — India was to bear 57.49% of the operational cost, Pakistan 12.9%, Bangladesh 8.20%, Sri Lanka and Nepal 4.9% each and Afghanistan, Bhutan and Maldives were each to foot 3.83% of the bill.
  • For the first time since the university was set up, the university delayed faculty salaries for July as it waited for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to release funds from its committed contribution of Rs 43 crore for the 2022-23 financial year.
  • For now, it is making do with the first tranche of Rs 30 crore that was approved by the MEA in July.
Problems
  • The university did not face any financial problems in the first phase of its operations (between 2010-2018).
  • Each country paid its share, except Pakistan, which was supposed to contribute about $7.85 million (Rs 65 crore) in the first phase, of which $0.433 million (Rs 3.6 crore) is still pending.
  • The problem started during phase two (2019-2023), when other countries too became irregular with their contributions.
  • Pakistan, which hasn’t made any contribution towards SAU’s operational costs in nearly five years since 2019, has an outstanding contribution of nearly Rs 43 crore as of July 31.
  • While India, Bhutan and Nepal have been regular with their contributions in phase two, Bhutan hasn’t released its outstanding share of Rs 1.8 crore since 2022 and Nepal is yet to give Rs 2.1 crore, its commitment for 2022-23.
  • SAU received a total of Rs 224 crore from SAARC countries and student fees between January 1, 2019, and July 31, 2023.
  • However, it was forced to dip into its corpus fund as it spent Rs 288 crore on salaries and other expenses in this period.
Issues raised by India
  • The SAU is an intergovernmental organisation and does not fully fall under the purview of Government of India.
  • We (India) have been contributing our share of the operational costs regularly.
  • We are continuing to do everything in our control to support the running of the university but cannot help it further if the countries of the board don’t see any value in the university.
  • Government sources confirmed that SAU’s governing board, which has two representatives from each SAARC nations, hasn’t met since December 2017, thus holding up the election of the university president.
  • SAU hasn’t had a permanent head since president Kavita A Sharma retired in 2019. It doesn’t have a permanent vice-president and registrar either.
  • The SAU has been losing popularity among South Asian students.
  • The number for enrollment in the MA for the university as a whole are not good.
  • Approx. 163 students for 339 offers from the first list. There are also virtually no remaining south asian students to make efforts to i.e on a waiting list.
  • Therefore the University has decided to offer the remaining vacant seats to Indian students.
Source- Indian Express

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