New Delhi — India will shoulder the initial cost of at minimum 80 million rupees, or about $2-million, to build South Asia’s first regional university, said the newly appointed chief executive of the institution, which is likely to open in 2010.
“Two years is the bare minimum we need, so we are certainly being called upon to work at high speed,” said G.S. Chadha, of the South Asian University.
Mr. Chadha, a former vice chancellor of New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, is a well-known economics scholar in Asia and is also a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.
In April 2007 leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s member countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka — agreed to set up the South Asian University in India.
Mr. Chadha, who received notice on Wednesday that his hiring had been officially approved by the participating countries, has a two-year appointment. He will oversee almost all aspects of the university’s development, including construction, the curriculum, and faculty hiring, and he will be assisted by experts from all member countries.
Mr. Chadha said the association expected a lot of money to come from sources outside the member countries.
“We will be approaching various development agencies,” he said, declining to say how much it will cost to build the institution.
The Indian government has yet to acquire land for the university, but it has identified 100 acres in south Delhi, close to some of the capital’s universities, that could serve.
“Everybody in the Indian government is behind it,” Mr. Chadha said of the project. “Usually there is some bureaucratic problem, or ifs and buts crop up, but this one has run smoothly.” —Shailaja Neelakantan