JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY Warriors for a Cause

On a chilly December evening, Ishan Anand, 27, along with 50 other students from Jawaharlal Nehru University ( JNU), Delhi, stood at the bus stop in Munirka to silently mourn the death of Delhi’s 23- year- old gang- rape victim. “She had boarded the bus just a stone’s throw away from our campus. It could easily have been one of us. As a community we felt we had to pay our respects,” says Anand, who is pursuing his MPhil in economics at JNU. For the 8,000 students and 500 faculty members at the university, it is this very spirit of brotherhood and social responsibility that makes the experience of being a JNUite special.

From being lauded by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council ( NAAC) to a new ranking by QS as one of the top 100 universities in the world for its English department, JNU has had many landmark achievements to its name in the last year. “It was a point of pride for every student and faculty here when NAAC awarded us with a score of 3.91, which is the highest that has ever been awarded to a university in the country,” says Sudhir Sopory, vicechancellor of JNU. “We have also increased our student intake. This has been due to the introduction of six new courses and recruitment of 30 new faculty members last year,” he adds.

To meet with the growing student numbers, the university has already opened another 164 positions for professors for the coming academic year. “Aside from enhancing our faculty strength and quality, we also propose to keep our tradition of inviting eminent guest lecturers such as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Hanadoun I. Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union,” says Sopory. Other