The Hindu : New Delhi News : Special JNU workshop for 32 foreign students

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 27, 2007
ePaper

New Delhi

New Delhi

Special JNU workshop for 32 foreign students

Parul Sharma

The four module programme will give participants a feel of India

NEW DELHI: Jawaharlal Nehru University here is engaged in giving foreign students a first-hand feel of India, making them understand the functioning of varied communities and social systems of the country through a blend of class lectures and field trips.

Under the Global Studies Programme run by Centre for the Study of Social Systems at JNU’s School of Social Sciences, a month-long workshop on “Understanding India” is being held for the first time at JNU for 32 students from Austria and Germany.

“ It is a unique effort as we are focusing on interdisciplinary learning in a compact manner. It is a kind of an outreach activity whereby students get to know more about the country,” said Anand Kumar, a faculty member at the Centre who is associated with the programme.

It is a four-module programme where the students are given special lectures on five days and during the weekend a field trip to different places is organised to enable them to experience their economy, culture and social set-up and facilitate understanding of the country’s past, present and future.

The modules under which the foreign learners are being given lectures by resource persons from JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi University and other institutions are: Culture and Society; Polity and Economy; India — The International System and Globalisation; and India in the 21st Century.

“Initially only 20 students were scheduled to come for this programme. But the increase in the number of students in the very first batch clearly demonstrates that there is a great interest in India. Forty-five special lectures were given to students covering major aspects of the Indian society,” said Prof. Kumar.

The group that arrived in India on September 2 has already visited places like Ajmer, Pushkar, Jaipur, Dharamsala and Varanasi.

The students will be required to undertake two take-home examinations, four field visit reports and one end-term essay.

Prof. Kumar said the Centre was working to form a joint fund where JNU students could also travel to Austria to know more about that country. “We are looking at similar programmes for students of South Asian Universities and other Indian universities,” he added.

JNU also plans to give a small souvenir to the foreign students when they depart from India on September 30 —Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography and his prominent work, “Hind Swaraj.”

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail