Srikant Jena (ex-central minister from Orissa)’s argument opposing Vedanta University; my rebuttal
I would now like to rebut the couple of points mentioned in the above writing.
(i) In regards to the size it is true that no world class university currently has 100,000 students. However, several of them have around 50,000 students. Please see Q6 of https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/1696. Some of them, especially Arizona State University, expects to reach a size of 85,000 by 2030. Moreover, one must note that Vedanta University aims to have 100,000 students at build out, which may be in 20-25 years or beyond.
(ii) On the issue of minerals, one just has to make sure that it is explicitly mentioned that any mineral from that land becomes state property and have a mechanism to monitor it.
(iii) On why in a rural location; the Vedanta University location is about 40 kms from the outer edges (Jatni) of the Bhubaneswar area. With plans to connect it by a 4-lane highway it will only take 25-45 minutes to get there from various points in Bhubaneswar. Also, most the new IITs that are coming up, especially IITs in Hyderabad, Punjab, Patna and Indore, are 25-50 kms from the airports or city center of their respective metropolitan areas.
3 comments January 20th, 2009