SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Meeting the Vice-Chancellor at Tribhuvan University, Friday 2 December 2005

Web page: http://www.tribhuvan-university.edu.np/

Tribhuvan University is the major university in Kathmandu and Nepal, mainly funded by the government. It has a total staff of about 7 000 teachers/researchers and about 6 000 administrative personnel. There are more than 300 colleges affiliated, and it may well be be the biggest university in the world.
The rumour goes that in the 1950’s the king wanted to keep a very strict control over the academy in the country, and therefore he only allowed for one university to be set up, namely Tribhuvan University, established 1959, and he guided its activities closely as Chancellor through screening appointments, etc. Later, in 1986, another state funded university was set up, the Mahendra Sanskrit University in Dang, but apart from this there are no other government funded universities in the entire country. A number of private universities have however been established, among them Kathmandu University.

Staffan Lindberg, the Registrar Dr. Geeta Bhakta Joshi, Lars Eklund, and the Vice-Chancellor Govind Prasad Sharma

We had an appointment at 11.30 with the Vice-Chancellor Dr. Govind Prasad Sharma, Professor of Surgery at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. Dr. Sharma studied 13 years in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s and is married to a Russian. During the years he spent in Russia he visited Sweden several times.
He is the first Vice-Chancellor to come from the research staff of the university. All previous VCs have been high government officers.

61 campuses all over the country

The university has 61 campuses spread all over the country. 22 of them are inside Kathmandu. Last year the total number of students at all levels was 132 000. The University has all the faculties from Medicine to the Social Sciences and Humanities. Most teachers/researchers have received their PhD degrees in India or other countries, a great many of the them in previous Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine. Today the university is very open to foreign collaboration. With the Nordic countries there are established MoUs with the University of Bergen and the Danish University of Agriculture (Forestry), and also a Linneaus-Palme collaboration agreement with Göteborg University, see below.

We also met the Registrar, Prof. Geeta Bhakta Joshi, Professor of Mathematics. He shared the Vice-Chancellor’s interest to increase and intensify co-operation with Swedish universities.

RECAST – Research Centre for Applied Science and Technology, Tribhuvan University

From the Vice-Chancellor’s office we proceeded to RECAST, one of four research centres at Tribhuvan University (read more about the research centres in our report from the CNAS meeting). We had a nice discussion with Dr. Mohan B. Gewali, Professor of Chemistry, and Executive Director of RECAST (photo to the left).
The main objectives of RECAST are to:

• identify, develop, utilise and disseminate indigenous technology
• identify exogenous technologies appropriate to Nepal
• undertake research on basic and applied sciences

The centre has a research staff of 30, provides laboratory facilities supervision for graduate and post-graduate students, and organises national and international seminars.

Research activities:

• Solar driers for Nepalese farmers (within a Sida financed programme, managed by the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok)
• Bio-diesel project on finding a substitute for kerosene by using oil from sajiwan plants (and entrusting the processing with women’s groups in Pokhara, which also get a net share of the profit)
• Medicinal plats of Nepal in the Terai and Mustang regions, including inventories of local healers (in collaboration with the University of Greifswald, Germany)
• Documentation and improvement of traditional technology, like making cooking stoves more energy efficient and less polluting

There has also been collaboration with Tel Aviv University in 1992 regarding agricultural biotechnology. Today RECAST is involved in collaboration with the University College Northampton, Oxford Brooks University, ITR in Switzerland, and Karlsruhe University in Germany.
Possible areas of collaboration with Swedish universities were identified in the field of biotechnology, solid waste management (already ongoing), and pharmacognocy.

Meeting at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, Kathmandu

Institute of Medicine, Tribhuvan University web page: http://www.iom.edu.np/index.html

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) was established in 1972 under Tribhuvan University and had the mandate and the responsibility of training all the catagories of health manpower needed in the country. Its main campus is located at Maharajgunj, close to Tribhuvan University (TU) Teaching Hospital, being used for the teaching/learning activities of different programmes run by IOM, and also being a centre for research work.

Late afternoon, we had a short meeting with Prof. K.P. Singh, Dept. of General Surgery, and Asst. Prof. Subarna Mani Acharya, Dept. of Medicine, Unit of Cardiology. We informed them about the opportunities for academic exchange with colleagues in Sweden.

Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital already has a Linnaeus-Palme Students and Teachers Exchange programme with the Dept. of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, Göteborg University. Coordinator for foreign collaboration on the Nepalese side is Professor T.P. Thapa, Asst. Dean of the Institute of Medicine’s Post Graduate Centre in Maharajgunj.
Neither Prof. Singh nor Dr. Acharya are directly involved in this collaboration. They promised however to spread information about SASNET to their colleagues in the faculty.
Key person on the Swedish side has been Professor Göran Bondjers, President of the Sahlgrenska Academy. In February 2006 he moved over to the Nordic School of Public Health in Gšteborg, where he is now the Vice Chancellor.