VCs Message on 100th day in office, 27th November 2008

As the first Vice Chancellor of this great institution my thoughts are always on 

1.How to build, upgrade and elevate the intellectual, cultural and moral capacities of the personnel of this new University 

2.How to ensure emergence of leadership that could undertake and successfully complete the task of enriching the geographical area of this new University

3.How to develop systems and strengthen them for administrative and management frame-work of this new University

Governance of a University involves not just its administrative or managerial capacities but also the social, political, intellectual, cultural and moral capacities of the system in entirety. The successful Vice Chancellor is one, who harnesses all these capacities and directs the focused beam on the resolution of the problems that confront a newly born University. If the Vice Chancellor provides no fresh or creative ideas, or if the Vice Chancellor does not create a culture which generates values of honesty, dedication, compassion and the like, the quality of a University is bound to suffer, no matter how perfect its institutional and financial arrangements. As I mentioned on the day of assuming charge that I like Nehru for many reasons, one reason is for his definition of a University. He said that a University stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for the truth. I liked adventure of ideas stand of Nehru which I am practising.

Nehru was a skilled exponent of soft power. He developed a role for India in the world based entirely on its civilized history. This gave India an enormous standing and prestige across the world as we stood, proud on the world stage. He made India a rare example of the successful management of diversity in the developing world. Pluralist India must, by Indian culture, tolerate plural expressions of its many identities. That is the Indian culture that gave India its soft power and it is this culture we at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University: Kakinada are defending, asserting and promoting. 

The land of Ashoka, Akbar and Mahatma Gandhi earned the authority to speak from an elevated ethical podium. India's civilized ethos has been an immeasurable asset for our country in the world. This is why we must not allow the spectre of intolerance, or opportunism, to undermine it if we wish to assume true leadership in the world. We, at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University: Kakinada are promoting such leadership. 

The whole world today speak of the IITs with the same reverence they used to accord MIT, and the Indians as software developers is taken as synonymous with mathematical and scientific excellence, it is India that is gaining in respect around the world. The old stereotype of Indians as snake charmers and sadhus lying on beds of nails has now been replaced by one of Indians as software gurus and computer geeks. We at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University: Kakinada are defending, asserting and promoting such image. 

In this information age, it is often the side which has the better story that wins. India must remain the land of the better story: a society whose creative energies are daily encouraged to express themselves in a variety of appealing ways. India has an extraordinary ability to tell stories that are more persuasive and more attractive than those of its rivals. We at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University: Kakinada will tell many more success stories, if we have your full support and cooperation.