The InDIRA GAnDhI CenTRe fOR SUSTAInAble DevelOpmenT India

Somerville
College
An historic India-Oxford partnership
The Indira Gandhi Centre
for Sustainable Development
At Somerville College, Oxford

The Indira Gandhi Centre for Sustainable Development
will help shape the next century of India’s growth
by educating, connecting and supporting its future
leaders in sustainable development and forging lasting
partnerships between Indian institutions of learning and
the University of Oxford.
The way India develops during the 21st Century will not only have an impact on its 1.25 billion people,
but will also have world-wide significance. Finding a new sustainable model of economic growth for
India’s development will play a critical part in averting a global crisis.
Somerville College, a constituent college of the collegiate University of Oxford, is Indira Gandhi’s alma mater. The Indira Gandhi
Centre will honour her legacy to the world by addressing key issues of sustainable development. There will be three core activities:
advancing research, developing talent and facilitating collaboration, centred on a landmark facility in the University of Oxford’s new
Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.
For more than six centuries, the University of Oxford has treasured its links with India. Building on these strong historic foundations,
Oxford is committed to deepen and extend strategic collaborations in India, particularly in areas such as food security, environmental
sustainability, international governance and global culture. Building on the University’s pioneering research into these areas of
pressing concern, the Indira Gandhi Centre will celebrate one of the most prominent world leaders of the 20th Century by increasing
support for Indian students and advancing interdisciplinary research in sustainable development.
The Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Patten of Barnes, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Andrew Hamilton, and the Principal
of Somerville College, Dr Alice Prochaska, are delighted and honoured that this vital project has received generous support from
the Government of India. The University has a strong history of providing scholarship opportunities for students from India, and it
is a strategic priority for Oxford to increase the number of such scholarships in coming years. The support from the Government of
India towards endowing scholarships for graduate students at the Indira Gandhi Centre represents a milestone in advancing these
opportunities.
Somerville College plans to establish the Indira Gandhi Centre programme, working closely with the rest of the University, in the
period 2012-2017, in time for the centenary celebrations of Mrs Gandhi’s birth on 19 November 1917. Over the next few decades,
the Centre will become one of the most dynamic, interdisciplinary sites at the University of Oxford. It will have a transformational
impact on the lives of future leaders, who will help to direct a new paradigm of sustainable development in India and beyond.
Mrs Gandhi greeting Somerville scholar Sobhita Jain during her visit to Oxford in 1971

Research opportunities where
they are most needed
The world faces an increasing number of threats to natural resources, health and global security.
Climate change, water supplies and the provision of enough food for a rapidly increasing global
population are all major international concerns.
India will play a critical role in averting a global crisis. India’s 1.25 billion people already account for nearly 20% of the world’s
population; and with a rapidly growing middle class, the country’s demand for resources will become ever greater over the next
20 years.
India still has approximately 500 million people without reliable access to electricity, around 250 million lacking access to safe
drinking water and millions of rural poor exposed to rising food prices and changing climate conditions. While it is increasing, India’s
investment in research and development is still relatively small. The Indira Gandhi Centre creates an opportunity to direct greater
research towards more inclusive sustainable growth.
Investing in India’s intellectual capital
While India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world hosting 16 million students,
in 2007-2008 India produced only 13,000 PhDs – fewer than the UK’s much smaller student population.
Competition for places at India’s premium institutions is incredibly intense, averaging an acceptance
rate of around 2%, compared with 23% for applicants to Oxford.
The Indira Gandhi Centre for Sustainable Development will enhance the opportunities available to the brightest and most talented
students from India in the field of sustainable development, enabling them to find practical solutions to some of the main challenges
facing their country. It will invest in intellectual capital and build a platform for strengthening partnerships with Indian scholars and
institutions. This in turn will help to implement change and create a community of alumni to develop lifelong learning opportunities
in India.
Sources: NESTA (Our Frugal Future: Lessons from India’s Innovation System), Stern Review, McKinsey Global Institute, WWF & CII (India)
Aditi Lahiri, Professor of Linguistics, with Indian students, gathered before Indira Gandhi’s portrait at Somerville College

Facilitating cross-disciplinary
solutions to global challenges
The Indira Gandhi Centre for Sustainable Development will focus on a series of ‘Impact Themes’, each
one pivotal for India’s future growth. The first of these will be food security, drawing on Oxford’s and
Somerville College’s expertise and the significance of this topic for India’s future development.
Further themes will be launched as the Indira Gandhi Centre develops; these will build upon expertise across all four of the
University of Oxford’s academic divisions and focus on environmental sustainability, sustainable energy, international governance
and global culture.
The Indira Gandhi Centre
programme will:
• Support talent and leadership development:
the establishment of scholarships available
specifically to Indian students at Oxford, with a
cohort of Indian graduate students participating
directly in research of relevance to India.
• Advance sustainability research: the Centre
will strengthen interdisciplinary and pioneering
research into food security, environmental
sustainability and international governance
by establishing post-doctoral positions and
fellowships.
• Build an inspirational research facility on
Oxford’s new campus: The Indira Gandhi Centre
building will be designed to house an innovative
“incubator” environment, fostering new
thinking and robust solutions to the challenges
facing India and South Asian communities
today. The building will be prominently located
opposite Oxford’s new Blavatnik School of
Government.
Within each Impact Theme, the Indira Gandhi
Centre will develop its activities around three core
activities: research, talent, and collaboration.
Research Talent Collaboration
2 x Research
Fellowships for
each Impact Theme
to progress pivotal
work in the field.
5 x PhD Student Scholarships per year. Research
work will be complemented by wider leadership
development, including social entrepreneurship
and industry internships. Scholars will be
required to return to India to put their expertise
into practice.
The Indira Gandhi Centre will forge lasting
partnerships with key Indian institutions and
become a focal point in Oxford for discussions
relating to India. A series of events, including a
range of conferences and seminars, will facilitate
collaboration and disseminate knowledge.

A new landmark facility for India
at Oxford
The Indira Gandhi Centre for Sustainable Development will sit at the heart of the University
of Oxford in a purpose built, inspirational, landmark building in the new Radcliffe
Observatory Quarter.
The Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, a 10-acre site in central Oxford, is one of the most significant development projects the
University of Oxford has undertaken for more than a century. The Blavatnik School of Government, a major international initiative,
is to be built on the western end of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, immediately opposite the Indira Gandhi Centre.
The Indira Gandhi Centre building will be designed to house an innovative “incubator” environment, fostering new thinking and
robust solutions to the challenges facing India and South Asian communities today. The Indira Gandhi Centre will become one
of the most dynamic, vibrant and interdisciplinary sites in the University of Oxford, attracting a range of students, academics,
practitioners and policy makers to Somerville College and the University, all passionately connected by a common interest in India.
The Centre will develop a focus at the University on studies of Indian culture and of global issues where India is a key player.
Initial design concept for the exhibition area in the Indira Gandhi Centre
Radcliffe Observatory Quarter Masterplan with the new Somerville buildings

Somerville’s enduring links to India
Somerville College’s links with India date back to 1889, with the arrival of Cornelia Sorabji, who was not
merely Somerville’s first Indian student, but the first Indian woman to study at any British University;
Somerville’s founding Principal, Madeleine Shaw Lefevre, was among those active in raising funds to
enable her to come to England.
Since then, Somerville has welcomed many
generations of Indian students, most notably Indira
Gandhi, who entered Somerville in October 1937
to read Modern History. Indira Gandhi’s time at
Somerville is recorded in the College archives, in
her own published letters to her father, and in the
affectionate memories of her College contemporaries,
who grieved when she was obliged by illness to leave
at the end of her first year. Several of them, together
with her former tutors, Dame Lucy Sutherland, and
Professor May McKisack, were present in Somerville
to greet her when, as Prime Minister of India and an
Honorary Fellow of the College, she came to Oxford in
1971 to receive an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law.
With some exceptions – like Soonu Kochar, who
entered the Indian Diplomatic Service and represented
her country as Ambassador to Holland, Argentina and
France – students coming to Somerville from India
in more recent times have tended to be destined for
academic careers, their choices of specialisation
often reflecting the continuity of values and concerns
with which the College has always been associated.
Shobhita Jain and Utsa Patnaik for example, both
postgraduate students at Somerville in the late 1960s,
became respectively Professor of Women’s Studies
and Development and Economic Studies at the Indira
Gandhi National Open University, Maidan Garhi, and
Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic
Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University
in New Delhi.
Cornelia Sorabji, the first Indian student at Somerville College, and the first Indian
woman admitted to a British university
Contact details
For further information, please contact:
Dr Alice Prochaska
Principal
Somerville College
Oxford OX2 6HD
T: +44 (0)1865 270630
F: +44 (0)1865 280623
E: alice.prochaska@some.ox.ac.uk
www.some.ox.ac.uk
Priya Oberoi
Senior Adviser and
Alumna of Somerville College
E: priya@oberoicapitalpartners.com