Vedanta University Project (VUP) has tied up with DAV Public School in Puri to provide high quality education to 500 children of land losing families and 200 children have already been selected for admission in the school.
Classes are scheduled to commence from July 1 and VUP will be supporting the DAV institution to set up a DAV Oriya medium school shortly in one of the peripheral villages.
VUP has also provided four 40-seater buses to DAV School, Puri for tansportation of children belonging to land losing families who have been selected for admission to the school.
While handing over the keys of the buses to the Principal of the school, Sanjeev Anand Zutshi, director of VUP said, "Provision of transport will encourage children of land losing families to come to the school regularly. This along with other facilities like mid-day snacks, free uniforms and study materials is expected to motivate the children to pursue their school education in right earnest."
"Quality school education will create enabling conditions for the children of the peripheral villages to attain excellence in the academic field for which Vedanta University will create abundant opportunities", Zutshi added.
This is something every company that is taking people’s land should do. This should become part of the R & R. For the children’s sake this will encourage the family to stay near by; and hence will prevent from the dynamics to break down when families disperse. This will also help in making the next generation of the family educated in good schools.
IIT Bhubaneswar will be mentored by IIT Kharagpur for three years. Initial information suggests that the first year of classes will be held in IIT Kharagpur and the students will stay with the IIT Kharagpur students in one of the hostels. Most likely they will stay in the MMM Hall.
The most important of these culture and traditions is the equal relationship between students at IIT Kharagpur. There every student is equal and no student fears another student. There are no big bosses or connected students in the campus who are feared by other students. Juniors call seniors by the same name that others call them; with no addition of a "bhaiyya" or "Sir." There are no physical fights in the campus. There are rivalries though; often centered around sports and cultural competitions; but NO physical fights.
This is in contrast to most other college campuses in India where students defer to their seniors and there are some students in campus to whom every body is afraid of. Thus it is great that the first batch of IIT Bhubaneswar students will spend a year in IIT Kharagpur and bring back with them the fear-free non-violent culture of the IIT Kharagpur campus.
With Professor Damodar Acharya at the helm of IIT Kharagpur, the mentoring of IIT Bhubaneswar is in good hands. Prior to being the director of IIT Kharagpur, Professor Acharya was the AICTE Chairman in Delhi and prior to that the vice-Chancellor of Biju Patnaik University of Technology, then operating from Bhubaneswar. Thus one can infer that he is well known and well connected in both Bhubaneswar and Delhi circles and this is a big advantage. For example, his suggestion that the Orissa government allocate more than the 500 acres, which the central government required, was received warmly and the Orissa government is indeed looking for a land of at least 1000 acres for IIT Bhubaneswar. So far, none of the other new IITs are thinking along those lines. Having extra land is very important as it will allow further growth of the IITs, which are being built for decades if not centuries to come. Decades later, IIT Bhubaneswar will have Prof. Acharya to thank for this foresight.
IIT Kharagpur, only 321 kms and 4.5-5hrs away from Bhubaneswar, and with 30+ trains, has many other ties with Bhubaneswar and Orissa. It has an extension center in Bhubaneswar from where it offers a PG Diploma in Information Technology and a 1.5-year part-time Diploma in intellectual property law. IIT Kharagpur professors have signed an MOU to develop a perspective plan of the Bhubaneswar metroplex and are involved in many other projects in Orissa. More than 50 faculty at IIT Kharagpur, including the Director and at least two Deans, are natives of Orissa. Thus faculty and leadership of IIT Kharagpur are familiar with Bhubaneswar and Orissa and their aspirations and are in a good position to mentor IIT Bhubaneswar. (There are many Orissa origin faculty at the various IITs and IISc who may also help IIT Bhubaneswar.)
Looking forward to the future IIT Bhubaneswar’s progress will be partly shaped by its competition and collaboration with three other marquee universities and institutions that are being established in the Bhubaneswar area.
NISER is a DAE (Department of Atomic Energy) funded institute that is admitting its second batch of students this year in 2008. The Prime Minister Dr. Mammohan Singh, while announcing the setting up of NISER said: "NISER will be at par with the IISER being established in other places but will operate under the umbrella of DAE. … When completed, I am confident that the National Institute of Science Education and Research will become a Mecca for science just as TIFR and IISc are today." Incidentally, NISER has a higher initial budget of 823.19 crores than the 500 crore budget of each of the IISERs, the 760 crore budget of each of the new IITs and the 720 crore budget of each of the WCCUs. With interdisciplinary research becoming key to solve complex grand challenges, like IISc, NISER will soon branch out to interdisciplinary centers and technological departments. With IITs also having scientific disciplines and interdisciplinary centers, down the road, IIT Bhubaneswar and NISER Bhubaneswar are expected to collaborate and compete with each other. This will drive both to excellence.
As of now Bhubaneswar is the only metropolitan area of the country which will have a science institute (NISER), an IIT and a WCCU. The metro areas that will have two of them are: Kolkata (an IISER and a WCCU), Pune (an IISER and a WCCU), Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar (an IIT and a WCCU), Chandigarh (an IISER and an IIT), Delhi-NOIDA (an IIT and a WCCU), Patna (an IIT and a WCCU), Guwahati (an IIT and a WCCU) and Bhopal (an IISER and a WCCU). Along with some of these metro areas Bhubaneswar will also have an AIIMS (like institute) with a budget of 332 crores as well as a IIIT.
The above is a projection to the future. But the ground reality is that it will take time for a new IIT in Bhubaneswar to catch up with the existing IITs in many respects. The existing IITs not only have an existing infrastructure and history, but also an alumni base that contributes to their growth and development. Same with respect to NISER and the well established IISc Bangalore. However, Bhubaneswar has one more trump card: the Vedanta University, that is coming up in Puri, about 40 kms and less than an hour from the outer edges of Bhubaneswar.
Vedanta University is a brainchild of industrialist Anil Agarwal, who has pledged a $1 Billion (i.e., Rs. 4,000 crores) towards it and envisions a budget of $3 Billion (i.e., Rs 12,000 crores) in making that university. The budget of this university is illuminating in its scale in that just the pledged 4,000 crores is close to the sum of the budget of two new IITs (760*2 = 1520 crores), a new IISER (500 crores), two new WCCUs (720*2=1440 crores), a new AIIMS (332 crores), and a new IIM (210.25 crores). However, the aim of the Vedanta University is to be like Stanford University and have a similar impact. In 2007, Stanford had an operating expense of $2.9 billion, an operating revenue of $3.2 billion, endowment of $17.2 billion and total asset of $29.3 billion. Hence, the 4,000 crores pledge by Anil Agarwal is only the cost of the initial phases of the Vedanta University and despite the cost differential between the US and India, to be comparable with Stanford, Vedanta University needs the 12,000 crores and perhaps more. However, the Anil Agarwal foundation has the foresight to acquire 6000+ acres of land (comparable to Stanford University’s 8180 acres) and build a city of 500,000 around the University with research parks similar to Stanford Research Park. The real estate holdings of the planned city will be able to provide Vedanta University with a sizeable endowment to realistically aim to become the Stanford of India. In the following interview of Anil Agarwal by a New York area PBS station, one can hear from the horse’s mouth about his vision for Vedanta University (starting at 3:20).
There is a high possibility that Vedanta University will not only play a significant role in Bhubaneswar and Orissa, but in all of India. Its private financing, sound financial model, lofty goals and an unprecedented donation of $1 billion, makes it likely to actually be able to hire top professors and nobel laureates, have graduate programs that rank high at the international level and produce graduates that will populate the premiere institutions and universities of India. This is relevant to the development of IIT Bhubaneswar in particular and all the IITs in general because there is a severe shortage of good academics to fill all the available positions in the IITs (and the WCCUs). In this the proximity of IIT Bhubaneswar to Vedanta University would put it at an advantage as many graduates of the later may prefer to remain in the area and maintain collaboration with their mentors and many may join IIT Bhubaneswar just to be close to Vedanta University.
Thus, with competition from, collaboration with, and synergies associated with NISER, WCCU and Vedanta University, IIT Bhubaneswar has a chance to excel and become one of the top IITs in the country. And if (a big if, but not impossible) all these institutes achieve their stated goals, then the Bhubaneswar-Puri area will have equivalents of a Stanford (Vedanta University), MIT (IIT Bhubaneswar), Berkeley (WCCU Bhubaneswar) and CalTech (NISER Bhubaneswar).
Provision of admission to the Puri DAV School by Anil Agarwal Foundation’s Vedanta University project for the children of displaced families has drawn an enthusiastic response from the villagers. As per the arrangement, 500 children from the land losing and displaced families will be admitted to the school.
By May 10, as many as 618 applications were received from children of the target families for admission in the DAV School. The children will get free education and the Foundation will provide uniforms, transport facilities, books and also mid-day snacks.
Despite discouragement and threats from vested interests opposed to the university project, the villagers and their children are very enthusiastic about the whole arrangement as they are serious about good education and a better future. After selection and admission, the classes are scheduled to start from July 1, according to a company release.
Following are excerpts from a report in the Statesman.
As a part of its CSR mission to facilitate quality school education for the upcoming generation of the project affected families, Anil Agarwal Foundation has partnered with the DAV School, Puri.
During the entrance tests, children came accompanied by parents and fellow villagers who were very keen for the admission of their wards, claimed a release issued by the foundation while noting that this was despite threats from vested interests who are opposed to the University project.
The CSR activities of Vedanta group of industries run by Mr Anil Agarwal focuses on health, education, livelihood and peripheral development, noted the release.
The educational initiative, in partnership with the DAV School, is expected to allay the fear of the local community that the world class University will be of no benefit to them. The students inducted to the DAV School now, will , in future find their rightful place in the Vedanta University.
Look at Agarwal. According to the list, the founder and chairman of Vedanta Resources owns shares worth £2.93bn. That valuation, says Beresford, was calculated last month. Since then, his stake in Vedanta has risen to £3.6bn. In a few weeks, on paper, he has made more than £500m.
… Agarwal is also committing £500m of his own money to build a new university – not in Britain, but in Orissa, also in India. Called Vedanta University it will cater for 100,000 students – undergraduates and graduates – plus 40,000 faculty and staff members. The intention is it will rival Stanford (it’s modelled on the Californian university) and will go some way towards slowing the brain drain from India to America.
‘What is money for, if not to be made and given back to society?’ says Agarwal.
The Anil Agarwal Foundation, promoted by Agarwal, is setting up a multi-disciplinary world-class Vedanta University near the Konark-Puri marine drive with an investment of Rs.150 billion ($3.75 billion) in phases.
Vedanta Alumina, part of the Vedanta Resources (Sterlite) Group, is building an alumina refinery with an investment of $800 million in the state’s Kalahandi region.
It is also building an aluminium smelter project costing Rs.70 billion in Jharsuguda district.
“Our refinery project in Lanjigarh is one of the best projects in the world. We hope bauxite will be available for it,” Agarwal said.
He was hopeful of getting raw material and adequate water for the Lanjigarh project. “There is enough water in the Hirakud reservoir for industries and we will not touch a drop of water meant for farmers,” he said.
Regarding rehabilitation of the affected people, he said: “We will follow R&R (resettlement and rehabilitation) policy of the Orissa government for all our projects.” He described Orissa’s R&R policy as the best in the country.
Speaking of the progress of Vedanta University, Agarwal said in the first phase, the foundation stone for a medical college and a 600-bed hospital will be laid soon in the university campus.
“We will work towards giving 25 percent seats to the students from Orissa who will be taken on merit basis,” he remarked.
VEDANTA Resources,which has proposed a university at Puri, intends to establish a multi-disciplinary hospital of international standard in the first phase.
Work for the hospital will start during the first quarter of next year. The project is targeted to be complete by 2010.
"Health is a priority area so far as CSR is concerned," Chairman,Vedanta Resources Anil Agarwal said during a tete-e-tete with Editors of the newspapers here today.
Agarwal who met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik earlier in the day reiterated his company’s demand for ensuring 150 million tonne of bauxite for its alumina plant at Lanjigarh. Seventy million tonne out of the total, Agarwal suggested, was to come from Niyamgiri area as assured at the time of MoU and the rest to be made available from Sasubahumali in Koraput.
The other contentious issue for Vedanta is water for its power and smelter plant at Jharsuguda. Given the agitation by farmers over use of water from Hirakud for industrial purpose, Agarwal suggested that his company is prepared to pump in Rs 30 crore as an interim measure to source water from downstream of the reservoir to avoid any conflict with farmer’s interests.
He informed that the smelter plant at Jharsuguda is all set for commercial production and would go in phases. In the first phase, the company will go for 0.5 million tonne of smelter.
Vedanta Resources has already signed 100 MoUs with different companies for ancilliarisation at Jharsguda.
Asked,why Puri was selected as the site for the university,Agarwal said, his consultants had suggested seven proposals in different states but he selected Puri for its water frontage.
Stating that the university project is estimated at Rs 15000 crore, he informed that the Anil Agarwal Foundation will fund Rs 5000 crore to begin with.
Earlier, talking to mediapersons Agarwal parried a question on AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi opposing bauxite mining lease to refinery project.
He also informed that 25 percent of the students for the university will be given preference from the State of Orissa.
Cisco India, the global networking giant, is restructuring its sales organisational structure with dedicated regional focus, in an attempt to expand its reach to customers in tier-2 and tier3 cities in the country.
… Cisco is also bullish on eastern India on the back of several new projects commissioned for east over the next few years, in manufacturing, power, SEZs, airports, and others.
“We are about to execute a large order from Vedanta University for IP telephony and voice. We have also got an order from Tata Steel for high-end conferencing solutions,” informed Malik.
The following report in Sambada mentions that the 500 acres of Jagannath land that Vedanta University has so far acquired is leading to a corpus fund that will result in 1 crore per year for the Jagannath temple. My understanding is that this land was occupied by various people who did not contribute much to the temple. Thus this seems like a win-win situation. Vedanta University is in the process of acquiring an additional 846 acres land from the temple trust.
Following is an excerpt from a report in the Statesman.
The Jagannath Temple Administration is likely to earn at least Rs 1 crore per annum by way of interest against deposits made by Vedanta group of industries towards the temple land that it has acquired for the proposed world class university.
Company sources here said Vedanta has acquired around 500 acres of land in Nalihana, Gaindala panchayats for its proposed university. The administration of Jagannath Temple revealed that the land acquisition for the university has been conducted as per the norms of Land Acquisition Act-1894 and the company has paid more than the current market price. As of now the administration is getting more than Rs 8 lakh per month as interest from Rs 8.33 crore which has been kept as fixed deposit in the bank, claimed the company sources. The interest calculations work out to Rs 1 crore per annum, they added. While the administration has decided to acquire around 1,346 acres of land registered in the name of Jagannath Temple administration in Nalihana and Gaindala villages for the proposed Vedanta University, the acquisition process of 500 acres of land has been completed. The acquisition process for rest 800 acres of land is on.
Reliable sources said there is a proposal to seek Rs 2 lakh per acre for the land that is yet to be acquired.It may be noted here that prior to the land acquisition for the proposed project, the temple administration used to get virtually nothing from the land holding of the Lord.
As per the announcement, steps would be taken to provide a model housing project for each of the displaced families, employment facility for each of displaced family and direct, indirect employment to members of the project affected families.
It was also decided that compensation to the tune of Rs 1 lakh per acre would be given subject to minimum compensation of Rs 2 lakh per acre. This will be in addition to the statutory compensation, solatium and interest under the LA Act.
Occupiers of Lord Jagannath land shall be paid Rs 1 lakh per acre. Landless agricultural labourers will be suitably engaged as unskilled construction workers under the contractors till March 2010. In the event that the project authorities are not able to provide such employment to the willing persons, a subsistence allowance of Rs 1,500 per month to the each family shall be provided from the date of physical possession of land up to March 2010, The list of such beneficiaries shall be identified by a joint survey to be undertaken by the district administration and project proponent.
Those who will lose their coconut trees will also be adequately compensated.
A judicious and rightful decision would be taken on the rate of each tree. Steps would be taken for the release of water. Those students who will show interest to read in DAV School, Puri will be provided with that opportunity. The facilities would be provided from the next academic year. Vedanta authorities are also considering to provide Rs 300 more to those old people who are availing the old age pension. Those who are not getting the old age pension will be given Rs 500 per month.
Higher Education Minister Samir Dey announced in the Assembly on Thursday that the bill on private universities is under process and would soon be tabled in the Assembly by the State Government.
… the Minister said that as the Vedanta University is yet to be established, the State Government has not formulated any guidelines for admission. Dey said that the university would have student strength of 1 lakh with 20,000 faculty members and equal number of non-teaching staff.
The State Government signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Vedanta Foundation on July 19, 2006 for establishment of the university. The process for acquisition of 6252.9 acres of land for the university is on.
He said that out of the total land required for the university, 707.54 acres is government land. The State Government has selected a suitable location for this institution of higher learning, he added.
Supporting the company’s demand for land, the Minister said that going by the hugeness of the project, the land requirement shown by the Government is not on the higher side.
Pledged $1 billion in 2006 from his Anil Agarwal Foundation to set up Vedanta University. Envisions the school as an elite institution modeled on Stanford University and targeting the young Indians who now leave the country in droves to study overseas. Hopes it will boost the lagging economy of Orissa State, in eastern India, where it will be built on a 6,000-acre campus that will ultimately accommodate 100,000 students. Some 1,000 acres have been acquired so far—despite the opposition of locals—and the first batch of students is expected next year.
The proposed Vedanta University is aiming to roll out its first course in 2009, if everything falls into place.
The varsity project, which envisages a whopping 100,000 students and 10,000 faculty members in a multi-disciplinary research-driven campus, has moved slower than expected but things now seem to be moving in the right direction.
Land acquisition has picked up and it has launched its rehabilitation and benefits plan.
“We plan to start the first course in engineering research in 2009. It will be a symbolic beginning and would be followed up by programmes in arts, science and medicine in the first phase,” Vedanta University Project CEO CV Krishnan told this paper on Thursday.
The varsity has started working on how to launch the engineering education. In this connection, a two-day workshop was organised at University of Pennsylvania where top deans and professors from across North America took part. According to Krishnan, the University will admit research students since research only can drive the varsity to ‘a different level altogether.’ The identified research areas will be wireless communication, material science, biotechnology, energy and infrastructure. By 2010, the University aims at admitting students into the entire gamut of disciplines. The varsity has already acquired 1,200 acre. The Phase I of the project could entail an investment of Rs 4,000 crore.
Vice-president of the varsity project Ajit Kumar Samal announced that Vedanta would provide employment to all graduates of the area by the end of 2009 and run public schools to educate the students living in the villages coming under the project area.
Besides, it would operate door-to-door medical service for humans and for the livestocks in the area, he said.
Samal said job cards would be issued to all landless farmers who make out their livelihood by cultivating other’s land. This apart, scholarships would be granted to the meritorious students with special care to the girl students, he added.
A number of schools and colleges would be established for capacity building of the students of the area and all primary schools would have the mid-day meal service, Samal said.
… A special survey of the temple land measuring over a thousand acres under the acquisition process for the project would be conducted within 10 days to ascertain the status, Sarangi instructed the revenue officers present in the meeting.
… The District Rehabilitation and Periphery Development Advisory Committee meeting would be held on March 4 to settle the outlines and modalities for rehabilitation of the villagers likely to be displaced from their villages coming under the project area, the RDC announced.
As per the package, an affected person would get ex gratia of Rs 1 lakh besides the government valuation of his land. That apart, he/she too will be entitled to a minimum compensation of Rs 2 lakh per acre. Besides, occupiers of Jagannath land would be given Rs 1 lakh per acre while compensation for encroachers of government land would be as per the Orissa Government’s new R&R Policy.
