In the next coming years, India’s urban population is expected to increase and is said to be more than half of the total population of the country. India, considered as a huge rural society is making a historic transition to urban society. In this process, not only economy but also society, culture, natural and built environments and politics are expected to change.
This population shift will raise the demand for better livelihoods including more urban space, housing, services, improved governance and also new politics. Unfortunately, today the higher education system in India is poor and has no professional programme to interlink the inter-disciplinary skills such as wide spread engineering, architecture, urban design, planning, ecology, economics, politics, law etc. India does not even have a group of people necessary for the satisfactory development, management and governance of India.
To overcome this issue, The Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), an innovative university focused on the challenges and opportunities of its urbanization is coming up. IIHS is considering Hyderabad to locate a campus and to start the academic programmes from 2011.
This institution is expected to be equivalent to the premier institutions like IITs and IIMs. IIHS is planning to offer a four-year, multi-disciplinary degree, Bachelors in Urban Practice (BUP) and a two-year Masters in Urban Practice (MUP) along with applied research and doctoral programmes. It will also offer integrated programmes of high quality education, research and knowledge generation, executive training, and distance learning.
IIHS is said to be a creation of a group of entrepreneurs, professionals and intellectuals such as Nandan Nilekani, Rakesh Mohan, Keshub Mahindra, Deepak Parekh, Jamshyd Godrej, Kishore Mariwala and Aromar Revi.
The institute is also considering Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi as options to locate its campus.