At the 93rd Annual Convocation of the Delhi University, 666 PhD scholars received degrees from Vice Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi on Saturday.
Among them, 65-year-old scholar Davinder Mohini Ahuja, while receiving her degree, said, “Age is an inspiration to achieve with greater productivity.” Gracefully dressed in a saree, Ahuja has taken six years to complete the thesis on “Romances” of Italian poet ludovico Ariosto and English poet Philip Sidney as “Narratives of Transformation”.
“It is rewarding to get the degree and you do it for yourself, nobody else,” Ahuja told The Pioneer. With her husband, Ahuja said “without the support of your family, who needs to be patient while your work, it is a challenge.” Ahuja finished her M Phil when she was 40. “I was waiting for a good supervisor for a PhD.”
After failing to get confirmation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Ministry of Human Resource Development, eminent jurist professor Ved P Nanda from University of Denver Sturm College of law presided over the function.
Nanda said that while India has potential “none of Indian universities in the top 100 universities of the world rankings.” He said that “with good infrastructure and foreign university tie-ups, a university like DU could make it in the top 100 list of the world university rankings.”
Underlining that the “interdisciplinary education” has become rampant internationally, he said it is important for a university prove its importance internationally.
Recalling a meeting with the ibetan spiritual leader Dalai lama, Nanda told students that besides studies and degrees, “it is your duty to find solutions to the problems in the society... it is everyone’s duty to make world better”
Tyagi expressed hope on taking DU to the top of the global rankings and said that in the HRD Ministry’s initiative of Massive Online Open Courses, “DU has been the frontrunner with 42 courses out of 72”. For the first time, the DU had made additions of several new norms like recitation of holy versus from Quran, Gurbani, Ganesh Vandana and Bible at the function. The university also presented 181 medals to the students at the convocation besides the PhD degrees.