A Telangana State of Mind

Today, Monday, June 2, 2014 sees the birth of a new state, and for us, a new state of mind. We are automatically and very naturally in Telangana, the 29th state of the country, and a state that has been eagerly awaited … and very emotionally struggled for.

Here’s wishing all of us the very best in the years to come, the years in which we look forward to seeing the state grow from strength to strength!

At the same time it does us well to remember that the new state is born out of the old- and the erstwhile AP was itself born in 1956 out of the Madras State, which was formed out of an older entity, the Madras Presidency plus the erstwhile Telengana… We should see that this, the formation and reformation of geographies, is an ongoing process, and hope that the present  bifurcation be as peaceful and as amicable as possible. 

Both the new states being formed this month will need much input for their growth and training of manpower. The University is here, willing, and ready to participate in the development process in whatever way possible,  and whatever way necessary. The UoH is uniquely suited for the job: as a Central University we aim to cater to the needs of the entire country without compromise on quality or access, but being situated here, it is fair to say that we understand the region, its needs, its special aspects with more sensitivity.

I believe that all of us share the commitment to see that our University will participate fully in the growth and  development of the new states. And we will do whatever we can to see that the University of Hyderabad continues to provide academic leadership and maintains its position as a standard bearer in the state, the region, and indeed in the nation!

G-HAN, जी हाँ !

The city of Hyderabad is home to many academic institutions- and an amazingly diverse set at that. No fewer than three Central Universities- apart from the UoH, there are MANUU and EFLU (the only other city with more is Delhi that has DU, JNU, JMI and IGNOU), and several state universities- OU, Telugu University, technical universities BITS Pilani, JNTU, IIT and IIIT, several CSIR laboratories, several defence laboratories, NALSAR, the Indian School of Business, the Administrative Staff College of India… The list is long and very very varied.

Navigating through the academic landscape can be hard. Admittedly most of us don’t need to do it often, but if one did want to know where one could study a specific topic or degree, there is no easy way to get the information. Some time ago, when then Human Resources Minister of State, Dr. D Purandeswari visited our campus she asked many heads of institutions to come together to discuss, among other things, how we could network. It was quite an eye-opener, both  as to what expertise there was in the city, and how little mutual information was shared.

And how little resources could be shared. For a brief while, there was some talk of the “meta university” concept, some sort of virtual coming together of academic institutions in cyberspace. But like all virtual enterprises, that too evaporated- one of the biggest difficulties in making things like this a reality seems to be economics- it is just impossible to do this on a nonexistent budget.

Nevertheless, we thought that it would be possible to go part of the way, and this is GHAN, the Greater Hyderabad Academic Network. This is a website where we have brought together information on all the academic institutions that are located in the city of Hyderabad. This is interpreted somewhat generously to include as many as we can, even if distances between the outermost entities are nearly 100 km.

To begin with, G-HAN is a collection of introductory information pertaining to all organizations devoted to various aspects of higher education and research.  Given the fact that these are scattered in the Greater Hyderabad area, forming several clusters, this site is an attempt to give the visitor a quick introduction to,

1. where an institution is located
2. what it is about, and
3. what expertise is represented there…

As of now, there are about 100 institutions listed on this site, but this is just the beginning since we have started with the governmental (both central and state) and semi-governmental sectors. There is a FaceBook page for GHAN as well. We hope to be inclusive and therefore we will be adding privately funded institutes and laboratories. If you have suggestions of what more should be there, please write in to the GHAN Team at ghan @uohyd.ac.in.

One small step, but hopefully a useful one,  जी हाँ !

PS: Read the Indian Express story about GHAN-