The University Grants Commission strives to promote teaching and research in emerging areas in Humanities, Social Sciences, Languages, Literature, Pure sciences, Engineering & Technology, Pharmacy, Medical, Agricultural Sciences etc. The emphasis would be supporting such areas that cut across disciplines and subjects such as health, gerontology, environment, biotechnology, nanotechnology, stress management, WTO and its impact on economy, history of science, Asian philosophy and many other areas as would be identified by subject experts. There are disciplines such as defence and strategic studies which include national security affairs, insurance and banking, economics and world trade which in a true sense are multidisciplinary in nature, cutting across disciplines of sciences, humanities and social sciences, and are of importance in a rapidly changing global scenario. These and allied disciplines need to be studied and researched in a more organized manner. Institutionalization of such activities is a need of the present times.

The universities have been the centres of research. Although, the G overnment has a ne twork of science and technology laboratories for research and development, the major base of researchers in science and technolog y remains with t he univ ersities and colleges. Hence, unive rsity and college teachers need to be supported to meet their requir ements for individual research in specialized areas. To promot e excellence in research in higher edu cation by supp orting rese arch pr ogrammes of University and College teachers in various disciplines.