Keeping track of progress on Vedanta University (proposed near Puri, Orissa, India)

Chronicles of Higher Education has two premium articles ( one needs a subscription to read the full article). Following are links to those articles and excerpts from them.

• Article 1: For Planners, the Opportunity of a Lifetime
  By LAWRENCE BIEMILLER
  Baltimore

  In an office a few feet from the chop of the Baltimore harbor, architects are drawing plans for a vast university campus on the east coast of India that would be shaped like twin blossoms, bordered by a lake, and entered through any of 34 gates, each with its own name and symbolism. As beautiful as a mandala and as intricate as a postgraduate mathematics problem, it’s almost certainly the most ambitious campus plan ever conceived.

  On more than 7,500 acres, Vedanta University and its environs would accommodate a liberal-arts program, an engineering school, an agriculture college, a medical campus, Olympics-grade sports facilities, townships for faculty and staff members, parklands, a resort, and even its own airport. At the behest of Anil Agarwal, an industrialist who has pledged $1-billion toward its construction, the campus is being designed to house 100,000 students and to fulfill the donor’s dream of creating an institution that is Indian and world-class at the same time. … MORE

• Article 2: In Rural India, an Ambitious Academic Vision:

  A mining mogul with big ideas is determined to build an elite, American-style university for 100,000 students in Orissa. Farmers, who own the land he wants to develop, plan to resist.

  By SHAILAJA NEELAKANTAN
  Bhubaneshwar, India

  A few miles outside the town of Puri, in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, lies Beladala, a farming village of thatch-roofed homes. One recent afternoon a group of farmers sat on the porch of the village’s small school eating a lunch of rice, lentils, and vegetables on plates made of broad leaves. … MORE

# posted by chitta @ 8:47 AM