The opinions expressed in the following should be viewed as positive, constructive feedback, not criticism. If one visits any archaeology departments of universities or Heritage Studies Universities in India, most of them are not in great shape and they uniformly seem to have paucity of funds. Consequently, the libraries are unable to purchase new books or journals and their computer archival systems usually do not work. The furniture, offices, classrooms are usually in poor condition and so are the toilet facilities. Campuses are typically overgrown with trees, bushes, etc. Students have sub-standard hostels, mess and canteen facilities. When compared with engineering colleges, IIT’s, IISc, NIT’s, IISER’s, it appears that one is transported back to the India of the 1970’s. There are several students who join these archaeology institutes with hopes of doing ground breaking research and quite a few do struggle against all odds & achieve their goals. The students however, seem to accept that they have to put up with below par facilities and keep up their struggle. They realize that they are not appreciated by our society or this nation.

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India today is the 5th largest economy of the world and we are on a rapid surge of development, urbanization and construction. Couple of South-East Asian Nations, who developed at lightning speed realized that they never bothered to look at their past during their upward growth spike. Now, they are making their people aware of archaeology, their past, history, etc. Every major construction project is preceded by excavations with significant participation of local residents. However, once the highly urbanized state has been reached, it becomes too late to conduct archaeological studies, as JCB’s, diggers would have already torn through most of the country.

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Look at the recent IISERs (Indian Institute of Science Engineering & Research), IIITs (Indian Institute of Information Technology), the IITs and private engineering colleges. They compare with the best in both Asia and the world. A nation which values our tradition, culture and ancient past, surely can afford and fund at least one Indian Institute of Indology & Archaeology (I3A) for research and teaching. Ideally, one I3A institute each for North, South, East & West should be set up, since there is regional variation and one needs to factor vernacular languages (Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, etc.), besides Sanskrit studies at these institutes. These institutes should be associated with a new “archaeologic research centre” that should be set up in their vicinity, so that graduating students would get meaningful research and employment opportunities. Individuals, companies with resources & the inclination to set up such research centres are welcome to set up additional private centres. South Deccan Archaeology Research Foundation (SDARF) is possibly one of the few Foundations / NPO’s / NGO’s that has been set up to focus on Indology & Archaeology.

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In general, archaeology & language studies (Telugu, Sanskrit, Tamil, etc.) are frowned upon by our society. Parents discourage their children from entering Indology, archaeology and vernacular studies. Even in this day and age, parents strongly urge their children to join engineering and medical courses. Slowly though, attitudes are changing, since children are more independent these days and are insisting on being permitted to pursue their passion or career choices. Many museums across the country have been beautifully renovated & brought to international standards in the past few years. Likewise, the archaeology departments of universities will also be upgraded once awareness is reached and more students choose to go towards archaeology, Indology, etc. SDARF is trying to create awareness, not criticize.