hari gautam chairman ugc while delivering the 64th foundation day oration of the ramakrishna mission institute of culture kolkata recently spoke about science and spirituality and the role that higher education in india could play towards the development of the science of spirituality himself an eminent cardio thoracic surgeon he confessed that the scientific knowledge taught in the universities lacks a connection with the spiritual and our golden past and never mentions indias ancient tradition of scientific enquiry education times in conversation with the chairman ugc what exactly is the role of the university grants commission the ugc is a central regulatory and funding body which is responsible for all aspects of higher education in india we provide the requisite funds needed for a smooth functioning of nearly 260 universities in india in your opinion are there enough funds available for disbursement i believe there are more than ample funds but no legitimate takers for the same barring a few regional pockets the problem with most universities is that they are suffering from inertia and are not interested in submitting their fund utilisation reports in time which in turn leads to a further delay in fund disbursement i repeat there are enough funds but not enough legitimate takers is the ugc doing anything regarding the outdated syllabi followed by some universities expert committees formed by us have submitted their recommendations for model syllabi for 32 subjects we are requesting all universities to update their syllabi within a stipulated time it is not mandatory for them to follow our guidelines in toto what is important is that the long overdue syllabi be updated otherwise severe action to the tune of stoppage of funds shall be taken by the ugc what about the discrepancy in the grading system in different universities i completely agree that the grading system is far removed from being at par with one another and this does cause inconvenience we are looking into the matter as soon as possible what about creating an all india ranking for all universities well asked the naac an autonomous body constituted by the ugc is particularly responsible for creating such a ranking but owing to the non availability of adequate data from the universities themselves such an exercise has suffered we are now proposing to foot all expenses incurred by the universities in forwarding such data to us so that we can regularly create such a list for the benefit of all concerned any specific thrust areas yes we have created peaks of excellence in five indian universities which include jadavpur university the central university at hyderabad university of pune university of madras and the university of pune the subjects to be developed here are mobile communication and technology herbal sciences bioinformatics and biotechnology genome genetics and molecular biology and human rights and duties education we have already earmarked