July 17: A small step by Silchar-based Assam University has become a giant leap for education in this geographically, socially and economically disadvantaged district.

South Assam’s only university will open its first satellite campus in Diphu, the headquarters of Karbi Anglong, tomorrow, giving students in these parts the opportunity to continue higher studies from the comfort of their hometowns and villages.

Karbi and other tribal youths have so long had to travel to Guwahati, Shillong, Silchar or other Indian cities for higher studies. A campus at their doorstep not only means comfort but significantly less expenditure.

Assam University has added post-graduate studies in Assamese literature to its curriculum for the Diphu satellite campus. Tapodhir Bhattacharjee, the new vice-chancellor of the university, said he was happy to have fulfilled a demand that was not only raised by students but also the Asam Sahitya Sabha.

The road to fulfilment was, however, anything but smooth. The satellite campus was commissioned in 2001, but a series of hurdles delayed its completion. When the Karbi Anglong Autonomous District Council arranged for a 33-hectare plot of land for the campus, the university management specified more requirements, including a purified drinking water facility of 1.5 lakh-litre capacity, a two-lane approach road to the proposed site from the highway, a police outpost and a properly demarcated boundary.

Bhattacharjee said the teething problems were over and the autonomous council would make available another 379 acres at a site only eight km from Diphu town.

Apart from Assamese literature, the university intends to start employment-oriented courses in anthropology,statistics, and earth science during the 2008-09 academic session.

The vice-chancellor said he was confident that these “challenging courses” would attract students not only from Assam but across the six other states of the Northeast. “Our ultimate goal is to make the Diphu campus a fraternity of different linguistic and racial groups.”

The main Assam University campus is at Dargakona, a picture-perfect spot 18 km from Silchar town. Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao laid the institution’s foundation stone in January 1994.

The Dargakona campus has infrastructure of the highest quality and offers as many as 28 courses.

The classrooms, administrative building, library, computer laboratory, hostels and residential quarters for the faculty were all built with central grants under the 10th Plan.

The new vice-chancellor said he expected all the required infrastructure for the satellite campus to be in place within the next three years.