Samvidhan Park’s ₹10-Crore Price Tag Amid Nagpur University’s Crumbling Infrastructure

thenewsdirt
Oct 6
6 min read

In Nagpur, the heart of Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, a grand new monument has risen on the university campus.

The country’s first “Samvidhan Park,” dedicated to the Indian Constitution, was envisioned as a world-class educational theme park with replicas of Parliament and the Supreme Court.

After eight years of stop-and-start construction, the park was finally inaugurated in June 2025 by the Chief Justice of India and other dignitaries.

Developed at the Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University’s (RTMNU) Ambedkar College of Law premises, this project came with an approximate price tag of ₹10 crore. Funds were to be raised via public donations, with significant contributions from the government and even the University’s budget.

In fact, the Maharashtra social welfare department pitched in ₹2 crore, and RTMNU itself was expected to contribute a similar amount. Local leaders and activists heralded the park as a tribute to Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s legacy and a new tourist attraction for Nagpur.

Yet as the celebratory ribbon was cut, an uncomfortable reality loomed large. The very university hosting this monument is grappling with dilapidated infrastructure and neglected academic resources.

Many students and faculty quietly question whether those crores might have been better spent upgrading the campus itself, from its libraries short on books to its hostel rooms with leaky roofs. The contrast between a shiny new park and the shambles in the lecture halls is hard to ignore.

Campus Facilities Starved of Funds

Stepping away from the fanfare of Samvidhan Park, one finds Nagpur University’s basic facilities in a state of disrepair.

A glaring example is the central library, often described as an “ancient” facility lacking essential books for modern courses. There has been scant investment in updating library resources, so much so that a government audit in 2018 revealed the University Library hadn’t undergone a comprehensive inspection of its book stock since 1994.

Over 17,000 volumes sit on its ageing shelves, including rare books, but students say many crucial titles for current syllabi are missing or outdated. 4

A shortage of library staff over the decades meant that even basic cataloguing and physical verification of books “is not possible,” as the librarian informed auditors. This lack of upkeep leaves students struggling to find relevant study materials on campus, undermining their academic experience.

It is not just the library; student amenities have been woefully neglected across RTMNU. Earlier this year, dozens of students from the boys’ hostel staged a midnight protest outside the Vice-Chancellor’s residence, desperate to draw attention to the “hellish” living conditions in the university hostels. Their complaints painted a shocking picture.

Water supply was so scarce that basic hygiene became a daily struggle, and whatever water was available came through a lone purifier choked with algae. In one hostel building accommodating hundreds of students, there was only a single working washroom, and even that had no door or proper sanitation bins.

Electrical outages were frequent, plunging study rooms into darkness, and the mess served unhygienic food that routinely made students ill. “We have been exposed to very bad living conditions here,” one frustrated student explained, recounting how neglected cleaning meant corridors stayed filthy for months.

Students say their complaints over the years fell on deaf ears, with the administration seemingly indifferent. The result is an environment that many feel is outright hostile to learning. Nagpur Today, a local news outlet, observed that these deplorable conditions have tarnished the university’s image, raising serious questions about RTMNU’s commitment to providing a safe, conducive campus for its scholars.

Financial constraints are often cited by university officials when such issues are raised. Indeed, RTMNU’s administration frequently highlights budget shortfalls for maintenance. This makes the spending on Samvidhan Park all the more controversial for some.

Crores of rupees were poured into statues and amphitheatres at the park, even as students in the hostels lacked clean drinking water and functional toilets.

“It’s ironic that we have money for a new park but not for basic facilities,” a postgraduate student commented bitterly, standing outside the rundown reading hall. Such sentiments reflect a growing frustration among the campus community in Vidarbha’s premier university.

Outdated Courses and an Academic Decline

Another area where Nagpur University has been lagging is its academic programme offerings.

While ₹10 crore was sunk into the Constitution Park project, the academic infrastructure, from curricula to faculty, has seen little improvement in years.

The consequences have been dire: students have been voting with their feet and leaving in large numbers. At a recent University Senate meeting, members revealed an alarming statistic: roughly 2,500 students transfer out of Nagpur University every year to pursue studies elsewhere.

The primary reason is that many courses at RTMNU are hopelessly outdated and irrelevant to industry needs. As one Senate member bluntly put it, the traditional courses on offer “don’t match industry norms” anymore.

In an era of rapidly evolving job skills, Nagpur’s graduates were finding themselves at a disadvantage, so they flocked to more modern programmes at open universities and private institutes.

University officials have acknowledged this brain drain. The director of examinations noted that NU is “not providing what students need,” forcing them to seek education elsewhere.

Years of academic stagnation have come to a head. The Senate members in that January 2025 meeting urged urgent action, passing a resolution that the university must update its courses, infrastructure and teaching methods without delay.

In fact, the administration agreed to set up an expert committee to recommend course upgrades and new facilities, a move indicating how serious the situation has become. The decline has been long in the making.

Back in 2017, Nagpur University scrapped 60 courses outright, including many in foreign languages and niche subjects, because almost no students were enrolling in them.

The few who were interested could not be taught properly, as budget cuts meant the university had no faculty to teach several programmes.

According to the then Pro-Vice Chancellor, five years prior to those courses had full-time instructors, but by 2017 the posts were vacant and even part-time lecturers were hard to find due to funding constraints. This culling of courses was a red flag that the curriculum needed rejuvenation and investment.

However, critics say the response has been slow. Many core degree programmes still rely on syllabus content from decades past, and laboratories and classrooms have seen few upgrades.

For ambitious students in Nagpur and the wider Vidarbha region, these shortcomings are pushing them to look elsewhere for higher education, an unfortunate trend for a university that once drew scholars from across central India.

Priorities Under Scrutiny

The juxtaposition of a multimillion-rupee Samvidhan Park and a struggling university infrastructure has sparked a debate about priorities in Nagpur’s academic circles.

On one hand, the new park is a symbol of pride, celebrating constitutional values in the city where Dr Ambedkar’s legacy looms large.

It offers a modern audio-visual learning experience on India’s democratic foundations, something school groups and tourists in Vidarbha can appreciate.

On the other hand, the day-to-day realities for Nagpur University’s own students are difficult to ignore. Classrooms lack smart technology, libraries lack books, and hostel dormitories lack the most basic amenities.

For many observers, the situation highlights a familiar pattern in public education funding. Glitzy new projects often receive quick cash and political attention, while fundamental needs are left unmet. Faculty members have cautioned that without fixing basic infrastructure and updating academics, a fancy park alone will do little to improve the university’s declining reputation.

Some student leaders have even questioned whether the park was built more for public relations than for education.

University administrators, for their part, defend the Samvidhan Park as an investment in public awareness and argue that separate funds were earmarked for it.

They insist that efforts are underway to address internal problems too, citing the planned curriculum revamp and recent hostel maintenance drives. Indeed, belated measures are now being taken: after the hostel protests, authorities finally pledged to install additional bathrooms and clean water tanks.

Likewise, the new expert committee on academics is expected to recommend modern courses that attract Vidarbha’s youth back to Nagpur University. Still, as these fixes are slow to materialise, the questions of accountability persist.

Why were crores spent on a park when library shelves stayed empty? Why erect statues when students lacked safe drinking water?

These are the uncomfortable questions now being asked by the university community and local press. The hope is that shining a light on this contrast, between the celebrated park and the crumbling campus, will compel those in charge to realign their priorities.

Nagpur’s students are not against honouring the Constitution or Dr Ambedkar’s memory. They simply want the same level of commitment directed toward their classrooms, libraries, and living conditions.

In the end, a university’s true legacy is built not by monuments, but by the quality of education and life it provides to its students. And that is where many feel Nagpur University must urgently focus, now that the fanfare of Samvidhan Park’s opening has faded.