IUCAA: A New Experiment for Indian Universities

Abstract

After India became independent in 1947, there was a great thrust for science and technology and a large number of R&D laboratories and research institutes came up. However, this movement was mostly outside the traditional university sector, which as a result suffered in its own development. To redress the balance, the University Grants Commission began creating, in the 1980s, centres of excellence in specific areas which had so far been neglected in the universities. Of these centres, the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) is described in this chapter. Founded in Pune in 1988, the IUCAA has centralized research aids and facilities for use by the visiting university academics. To facilitate these visits IUCAA runs an associateship programme and also conducts schools and workshops round the year. It also assists the university academics in formulating guest observing proposals for major observing facilities. The success achieved by IUCAA in the relatively short lifespan of a decade is highlighted as an example of optimization of limited resources in a developing nation.