Q. When you founded the TDU, what was your main objective and vision for education?
A. In 1990, we felt that it is important to have an organised database of all medicinal plants so we started a new institute called Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Tradition. It took us years to get it running and we finally managed to do so with the help of Danish government funding. The idea was to create a modern computerised database genetic pool in terms of modern chemistry. Then we started a hospital to treat patients with traditional medicines. We realised that there is a big vacuum here between traditional and modern practices.
Modern medicine does not believe in some of these [traditional] practices because we don't have enough data, experiments and proof. We felt that there is a need for transdisciplinary medicine where we take best of both practices and provide services to large populations in rural areas who have access to traditional medicine but don't have access to modern ones. The university came about as our effort to encourage transdisciplinary sciences.
We have leadership lessons in traditional wisdom as well as in modern business administration. Our idea is to merge the best of modern and traditional to create an integrated knowledge base.
Q. You served as chairman of the National Knowledge Commission. What impact did it have?
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100 Best Business Schools In The Country
For Careers360's 2025 B-school ranking, we ranked 100 public and private management institutions and rated over 500, dividing them into zones and city clusters
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Delhi University's Shri Ram College of Commerce started its postgraduate diploma in Global Business Operations (GBO) 25 years ago. Principal Simrit Kaur spoke to Shradha Chettri on their effort to convert the diploma into a degree programme, changes required in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) and more. Edited excerpts
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'Quality management education that is equitable': FMS Dean
The Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) at the University of Delhi (DU) is one of India's premier business schools offering MBA courses at a relatively low cost, compared to most leading business schools in India. Celebrating its 70th year, it is also one of the first university-based business schools. In an interview with Sanjay, head and dean of FMS A Venkat Raman spoke about the functioning of a business school under a central university, challenges, courses and future plans. He also spoke on the Common Admission Test (CAT) and its impact on diversity in student cohorts. Edited excerpts
