New Delhi: Noted economist and former NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya has been appointed the chancellor of Nalanda University in Bihar.
Panagariya, who has previously served as a member of the governing board of the university, was appointed the chancellor Friday.
“Vice-chancellor professor Sunaina Singh congratulates and welcomes Professor Arvind Panagariya as the Chancellor of Nalanda University,” the university said in a tweet Friday. The communique regarding his appointment was received Friday evening through the Ministry of External Affairs, it added.
He is the fourth chancellor of the university after Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, former Singapore foreign minister George Yeo and computer scientist Vijay P. Bhatkar.
Bhatkar was appointed the chancellor in 2017 and served an extended tenure till the latest appointment. The chancellor’s term is for a period of three years or till the time a successor is appointed.
A Padma Bhushan awardee, Panagariya is a professor of economics and the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University.
He is a former chief economist of the Asian Development Bank and was on the faculty of the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland at College Park from 1978 to 2003.
During these years, he also worked with the World Bank, IMF and UNCTAD in various capacities. He holds a PhD degree in economics from Princeton University.
Nalanda vice-chancellor Sunaina Singh, under whose tenure the new campus has been completed, is also nearing end of her term.
Nalanda University, set up by an Act of Parliament in 2007 under the aegis of the Ministry of External Affairs started with two master’s courses — one in ‘Ecology and Environment’ and another in ‘Historical Studies’.
It currently has six schools and the majority of the courses taught at the university are based on culture and philosophy. It offers courses in Buddhist studies, comparative religions and Sanātana Hindu studies.
The university, which functioned out of a makeshift campus from 2014 to 2019, started building its new 400-acre campus in Rajgir, Nalanda in 2017. It unveiled the new campus in March last year and the university’s operations have completely shifted to there. As of last year, the official records of the university said the number of students, Indian and international, has reached 500 currently.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)