India's first university on urbanisation likely in Bangalore
The Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) today announced its plans to establish the country's 'first' university exclusively devoted to urbanisation and settlement issues.
IIHS is the creation of a group of leading entrepreneurs, intellectuals and professionals including Nandan Nilekani, Shirish Patel, Rakesh Mohan, Keshub Mahindra, Deepak Parekh, Deepak Satwalekar, Jamshyd Godrej, Kishore Mariwala, Nasser Munjee, Rahul Mehrotra, Pradeep Saxena and Xerxes Desai.
Promoters indicated at a press meet here that the mother campus of the privately-funded university is likely to be set up in Bangalore, with Karnataka government particularly enthusiastic about the project, though they said they are also considering Mumbai, Hyderabad and NCR (national capital region).
IIHS is being positioned on par with IITs and IIMs.
Development consultant and researcher Aromar Revi, who would be the first executive head of the proposed university and its allied institutions, said the academic programme is expected to commence next year, with the advisory and training programmes getting off to an earlier start.
"The 100-member faculty of globally renowned professionals will be domestically and internationally sourced", Revi said.
Participating in IIHS's current programmes are some of the top ten universities in the world such as MIT's SA+P (School of Architecture + Planning), University College London and one of the world's leading consultants, ARUP along with leading domestic practitioners.
Together, they have been engaged in creating a state-of-the-art inter-disciplinary curriculum that bridges the space between theory and practice in the context of Indian settlements. A four-day IIHS international curriculum development conference closed here today.
Revi said IIHS expects to meet the country's growing needs for managing urbanisation not only through its multi-disciplinary four-year Bachelors in Urban Practice (BUP) degree, a two-year Masters in Urban Practice (MUP) degree and its doctoral and applied research programmes, but also through its multi-lingual distance and e-learning programmes, multi-locational management and technical training for working professionals, and advisory services.
The IIHS said it is deeply committed to a policy of inclusion and providing equality in educational opportunity. A special bridge programme would help draw in and build core skills of socially and economically excluded learners.
"It's essentially a new adventure arising out of collective concern to what's happening to our cities," Rakesh Mohan, former RBI Deputy Governor, said of the university.
While urbanisation was pegged at 23 per cent in India in 1980, projections are that it would have risen to 30-32 per cent by next year and over 50 per cent in the next 30 years, Mohan said.
