Kaila Cauthorn

March 5, 2013
Research Paper: Chandigarh and Hyderabad

Education in Hyderabad and Chandigarh

The most prominent graduate schools in Hyderabad and Chandigarh have often tended to

focus on either the sciences of medicine or on engineering and technology, but graduate

students’ preferences for universities with more diverse courses and programs have waxed and

waned over the years. The trends that these two cities exhibit through their universities are

directly linked to their economic and social patterns, and indicative of the successes and

struggles that their economies have experienced. While these educational trends remain largely

similar between the two cities, however, differences that are inherent in their individual

geographies have determined how they each have been affected in differing ways.

My visit to the Mohali campus of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research

(IISER) revealed an institution relatively younger and smaller than my previous perception of

graduate schools. The campus covers a mere 125 acres, the student body consists of less than two

hundred students, and the school has only been in operation since 2007. The architecture itself

reflects a pronounced modernism, as well; the buildings’ exteriors are simplified with no applied

decorations, only the cement and brick with which they were built, as per the common trend in

modernist architecture. Despite its modest history, however, IISER Mohali carries potential. Its

student population has increased healthily in only six years from its initial class of twenty-six

students,1 and it has continuously received substantial financial support from the government

1
IISER Mohali. "Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali." Indian Institute of Science Education
and Research Mohali. IISER Mohali, 2013. Web. 04 Mar. 2013.

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Research Paper: Chandigarh and Hyderabad

over the years. This is because the school represents a shift from the traditional focus on medical

and engineering sciences held by older colleges in Chandigarh, like the Punjab Engineering

College and the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, which were both

established more than forty-five years before IISER.2 The goal of IISER is to promote

scholarship in a range of underrepresented and overlooked sciences, from physics to biology to

mathematics. Its influence in this regard spans beyond Chandigarh, through the many students

who come to study from across the nation and across the world. IISER aims to influence the

future generations as well, by reserving a day for young grade school students to explore the

different subjects taught at the institution in the hopes of inspiring them to consider a broad range

of sciences for their studies when they are older.

In contrast to IISER Mohali, most of the graduate institutions in Chandigarh are relatively

old. Chandigarh is actually the home of one of the oldest universities in India: the Panjab

University of Chandigarh, which began operation in its original location in 1882.3 The dominant

mindset that has persisted since before the advent of higher education in India is that careers

involving medical practice or engineering are often the most lucrative and most important.

Chandigarh’s older universities are therefore oriented largely – if not wholly – toward medicine

and engineering. In more recent years, graduate colleges such as IISER, the Indian School of

School of Business in Mohali, and the Government School of Commerce and Business

2
National Network of Education. "List of Universities in Chandigarh." Universities in Chandigarh India. National
Network of Education, 2011. Web. 04 Mar. 2013.
3
National Network of Education. "List of Universities in Chandigarh." Universities in Chandigarh India. National
Network of Education, 2011. Web. 04 Mar. 2013.

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Research Paper: Chandigarh and Hyderabad

Administration have arrived, mirroring the shift occurring in the rest of the nation toward

business educations and careers in global commercial service. Chandigarh is home to only one

million permanent residents,4 leaving the populations of its graduate institutions largely

comprised of students from various distant parts of India and the globe seeking a world class

education in Chandigarh. Its institutions therefore reveal more about the economic and

educational trends of India in general than they do for Chandigarh itself.

In general, prominent cities in India have found it advantageous to diversify the areas of

study offered at their newer and prospective graduate institutions, in order to ensure that realms

of society other than those related to healthcare and technology – such as education and business

management – do not suffer in quality. Chandigarh at present is a well-organized model city that

betrays no such imbalance ostensibly. However, an observation of Hyderabad, another city

which has been experiencing a similar shift in the patterns of its higher education, might be able

to provide insight into the motivation behind this phenomenon.

While all but four of the main colleges in Chandigarh and the area of Mohali near

Chandigarh are specialized in engineering and medicine, Hyderabad hosts a wider variety of

graduate and undergraduate institutions. The city’s three central universities – the University of

Hyderabad, the English and Foreign Languages University, and the Maulana Azad National

Urdu University – are the most prominent examples.5 These universities are all split into multiple
4
"Provisional Population Totals, Census of India 2011; Urban Agglomerations/Cities having population 1 lakh and
above" (pdf). Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, 26 March 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.

5
English and Foreign Languages University. "EFL University." EFL University. EFL University, 2012. Web. 04 Mar.
2013.

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Research Paper: Chandigarh and Hyderabad

separate departments, including humanities, communications, social sciences, as well as various

applied sciences.6 Surprisingly, just as many of Hyderabad’s older universities are comprised of

diverse academic departments as are the universities that were established within the past fifty

years. This does not necessarily contrast with Chandigarh’s pattern, however; Hyderabad has a

larger mass of colleges and universities, making the trend more pronounced. Both Panjab

University Chandigarh and Osmania University, which are the oldest universities in Chandigarh

and Hyderabad respectively, have multiple departments in the arts as well as the sciences.

The majority of Hyderabad’s population had traditionally been employed with the state

and national governments, state banks, and Indian enterprises in electronics, biotechnology, and

pharmaceuticals. This was reflected in the social science subjects that people tended to study in

universities during most of the twentieth century, and in the schools for engineering and medical

sciences that rose to prominence. However, when information technology became one of the

dominant industries around the 1990s, Hyderabad universities began to grow in the direction of

this change. Recently established colleges relevant to business and finance – such as the Institute

of Chartered Financial Analysts of India that was established in the preceding decade – and

business oriented programs in the more multifaceted universities became more prominent.

Universities such as the International Institute of Information Technology were subsequently

founded in order to fill the need for professionals educated in the field.

6
Maulana Azad National Urdu University. "Maulana Azad National Urdu University: Departments." Maulana Azad
National Urdu University. Maulana Azad National Urdu University, 2012. Web. 04 Mar. 2013.

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Research Paper: Chandigarh and Hyderabad

Such growth left some adverse effects on the city, however. The information technology

and service industries demand a proportional increase in areas such as transport, communication,

commerce, and real estate, but the university trends have led to such an lopsided surge in

students’ pursuit of business and technological education as opposed to education that would

support this latter group of trades. While the demands for proportional increases in these

aforementioned fields have come often enough to be filled by people well suited or at least

adequately suited for the job, other occupations that are not directly related to information

technology, such as affordable secondary education and even education at the graduate

professional levels – which is needed to sustainably continue to educate people entering the

business world – have fallen into a relative state of neglect. This creates a cyclical effect: the

decreasing number highly qualified educators means that the few remaining will most often opt

to teach students of the more dominant and lucrative fields and continue to neglect the less

popular areas of study. Consequentially, classes of the population have become more distantly

stratified, between those who have been able to take advantage of the information technology

trend, and those whose industries have become much less lucrative with the changing times.

Additionally, the increasing number of highly educated professionals in general has led some to

leave the area or the country in search of the best job and the best standard of living that their

degrees can obtain. This raises the question of whether or not information technology will be

able to sustain itself in Hyderabad, if so many members of its workforce continue to leave7.

7
Chacko, Elizabeth (2007). “From Brain Drain to Brain Gain: Reverse Migration to Bangalore and Hyderabad, India’s
Globalizing High Tech Cities.” Geojournal, 68 (131-140).

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March 5, 2013
Research Paper: Chandigarh and Hyderabad

Hyderabad’s graduate schools may hold the solution to the adverse effects of the

technology boom. Institutions with higher levels of government involvement could consider

using scholarships to promote overlooked departments in order to increase the potential number

of graduate students working in underrepresented fields. Suffering departments could follow the

examples of institutions such as the Indian School of Business and import educators from other

parts of the world when there are few of quality to be found locally8. Such a plan is not

economically feasible or desirable for the long term, but it can serve as solution until the

education programs in India are strong enough for graduates to become effective professors

themselves. Change, however, is likely to occur gradually; the IT industry that is currently

controlling Hyderabad’s economic fate still has considerable global demand and room for

growth, so it will not likely yield to other areas in the near future.

Although graduate students in the Chandigarh area largely follow the same trends as

graduate students in Hyderabad in terms of which subjects and which types of universities they

show partiality toward, these trends have had a much less pronounced effect on its economy that

that which Hyderabad is experiencing. Chandigarh is a Union Territory that serves as the capital

for both Punjab and Haryana, home to both the Legislative Assembly and the high Court of

Haryana and Punjab, so the majority of the city’s working population work or have worked for

the government. Its population is also much lower, because it is a much smaller and newer

community than Hyderabad; less than one million people live there, in comparison to

8
Indian School of Business. "Faculty: Indian School of Business (ISB)." Indian School of Business (ISB). Indian School
of Business, 2010. Web. 06 Mar. 2013.

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March 5, 2013
Research Paper: Chandigarh and Hyderabad

Hyderabad’s nearly seven million residents.9 Chandigarh is very unlikely to run into problems

exactly like those experienced in Hyderabad, because it is the wealthiest and most organized city

in India. This wealth is reflected in the officials who strictly maintain the order, control the

amount of people allowed to live within the city, and outsource the poverty beyond the city

limits.

Because Chandigarh is so meticulously controlled however, to such an extent that new

buildings cannot easily be built and existing buildings can rarely expand, it will be difficult for it

to achieve a level of growth comparable to that which Hyderabad is currently experiencing with

information technology. Chandigarh has been in the process of constructing an Information

Technology Park since 2007, with the intention of capitalizing on the same financial success that

other cities have enjoyed, but the plan revealed much potential for complications along with the

potential for economic growth.10 The limited physical space and government allowance in

Chandigarh for companies to construct new building has led to construction infringing upon the

boundaries of the Green Belts, which are areas around Chandigarh reserved for sustainable

ecology and agriculture, for the purpose of acquiring land for the IT Park. 11 This in turn has led

to disagreements with the farmers about reasonable compensation for the plots of land that they

9
"Provisional Population Totals, Census of India 2011; Urban Agglomerations/Cities having population 1 lakh and
above" (pdf). Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, 26 March 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
10
PTI. "Chandigarh to Get a Face-Lift." The Times of India. The Times Of India, 21 Aug. 2007. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
11
Chandigarh Administration. "Green Chandigarh." Official Website of Chandigarh Administration. Department of Information
Technology, 2012. Web. 06 Mar. 2013.

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Research Paper: Chandigarh and Hyderabad

are selling.12 The project in general has been hindered by such complications, and by the strict

surveillance of the Supreme Court and other government bodies.13

Chandigarh and Hyderabad represent two very distinct areas of urban India. The many

similarities that they share between their graduate colleges and universities seem to suggest that

their industries and economies should also be very similar to each other. In actuality, critical

factors such as the varying size and financial situations of these two cities prevent such

similarities from occurring. Hyderabad’s universities have a symbiotic relationship with the city;

the most preferred subject determine which industries are likely to succeed once those students

graduate and enter the workforce, but industries tend to remain successful under normal

circumstances because their successes also determine which areas of study graduate students will

be influenced to pursue. By contrast, Chandigarh’s graduate institutions can be most reasonably

said to reflect the trends of India rather than the trends of the city itself, because most of its

students are actually permanent residents of foreign states and countries. As a result of these

critical differences, the culture and trends of Hyderabad’s institutions of higher learning have

great potential to influence the city’s market and economy, but the same cannot necessarily be

said for Chandigarh.

12
TNN. "MHA Team Completes Audit of Mega Projects." The Times of India. The Times Of India, 31 July 2009. Web.
5 Mar. 2013.
13
Sura, Ajay. "IT Park Development: SC Stops Land Acquisition." The Times of India. The Times Of India, 12 Oct.
2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.