Panjab University Chandigarh, which has produced Nobel laureates, President of India and Prime Ministers, has fallen on bad days and needs your moral and financial support.
I have millions on millions of children settled across the globe. In my hey days, hundreds of them distinguished themselves in various fields – politicians, judicial officers, administrators, businessmen, educators, professionals, scientists, artists, writers, poets, dramatists and the likes. But now, having crossed the age of 130 years, I have become frail and helpless, and need your support to sustain myself.
PU Vice Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover announcing rollback of steep fee hike
PHOTOS BY: LIFE IN CHANDIGARH
Panjab University Chandigarh, incepted in pre-partition days in Lahore (now in Pakistan) in 1883, prides itself in being the alma mater to the likes of Nobel laureates Dr Hargobind Khurana and Dr Abdus Salam, president of India Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, prime ministers Dr. Manmohan Singh and Inder Kumar Gujral, astronaut Kalpana Chawla, historian Romila Thapar, first woman IPS officer Kiran Bedi, scientist Prof. Yash Pal, art historian Prof B. N. Goswamy, industrialist Bhai Mohan Singh, and many more. But having slid into a financial mess over the years, it is now having to look up to its ‘children’ for survival.
PU officials offering juice to protesting students on chain hunger strike
The university’s bid to substantially hike fees to various courses in a last ditch effort to bail itself out of the financial squeeze, imposed on it by the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development and the University Grants Commission (UGC), having been stonewalled by the students with the support of senators, now it doesn’t have enough funds to pay its staff their monthly salary. Faced with this scenario, not for the first time, PU is looking to its alumni for help in building a reserve fund to overcome such exigencies in the future.
With millions of alumni within the country and abroad being pained at the “unimaginable” developments in their revered alma mater, raising a reasonable corpus for the reserve fund wouldn’t be too difficult. Just imagine, even if a lakh (0.1 million) from among the sea of alumni pledge a one-time donation of Rs 5,000 each, a fund of Rs 50 crore (500 million) can be raised.
Agitating students celebrating their “victory”
But for this the university authorities and the PU Alumni Association will have to raise the bar of their active engagement with the worldwide alumni. So far the association has restricted itself to engaging itself with its existing members, that too on special occasions. It’s now time to proactively reach out to each and every alumni in every nook and corner of the country and abroad, not only for seeking financial help, but also to elicit their indulgence in suggesting how best to prepare the university to face the challenges of the future.
Agitating students celebrating their “victory”
We are talking of digitalised India, but the university with scores of digital experts at its command, needs to realise the full potential of the digital tools for this outreach. At the same time, the university needs to convince the alumni of its intent to ensure greater transparency in its functioning and accountability towards all stake holders.
We, as alumni, can also take the initiative and offer our help and respective expertise to the university in this networking exercise.
Appealing to the Panjab University authorities to announce a roadmap for alumni donations without further ado….Do a quick diligence, and put out details of University bank accounts, including IFS code, etc for quick and safe transfer of donations to it with details of donors.
I’m pledging my Rs 5,000…how about you !
For any queries, pl contact Dean, Alumni Relations, PU email : darpu@pu.ac.in
