Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Noble Laureate Amartya Sen, who heads the interim governing board of Nalanda University, has blamed excessive bureaucratic control and difficulty in getting the money as key reasons for delaying setting up of the multi-nation project.

“One of the reasons why universities face difficulty is over bureaucratic control. We have certain amount of problems even here (at Nalanda),” said Sen, professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University.

“But we believe that we should be moving to a stage… and things will work quickly,” he said at function here.

“The important thing is that we need to get our fund sanctioned which are in the kitty but we can’t get all of them because of some regulation and clarity that is sought. It takes a lot of time,” he said.

Sen, however, did not give any time frame for the university to start functioning.

He stressed that though the central government has been “generous” with the project, “it is one thing to find the money, and another thing to get the money sanctioned”.

Sen said “reducing bureaucratic control” is one of key challenges the prestigious multi-nation project to revive Nalanda University, the world’s ancient centre of learning, is facing.

“We need cooperation in every level,” said Sen.

Nalanda University is being re-established through the East Asia Summit initiative, involving India, China, Singapore, Japan and Thailand.

The university, supported by involvement of India’s external affairs ministry, was expected to start functioning from 2013 academic session, but the project is being delayed due to a host of reasons.

Pegged as a symbol of global cooperation in education, the Nalanda University, proposed to be set up in Bihar near the same site where an ancient university flourished centuries ago, will have schools on Buddhist studies, philosophy and comparative literature, historical studies and ecology and environmental studies.