97-Year-Old Nagpur University Alumnus to Receive Doctor of Literature Degree, ETEducation
Nagpur: Nagpur University alumnus Vinayak Pande is all set to become India’s and perhaps one of the world’s oldest, recipient of a Doctor of Literature (DLitt) degree at the age of 97 years. He will be formally conferred with the prestigious degree at NU’s 113th convocation at 3pm on January 9 at National Fire Service College (NFSC) in Raj Nagar.
However, he will not be able to receive the degree personally, as he stays with his younger son at Indira Nagar in Bengaluru and doctors have advised him rest.
NU cleared Pande’s DLitt in economics for his thesis titled “Global Economic Recession”, submitted in 2014, making him part of a rare global cohort of scholars honoured at such an advanced age.
University officials noted that the Guinness World Records recognises Emeritus Professor Heinz Wenderoth as the world’s oldest recipient of a doctorate — a Doctor of Science conferred in 2008 at the age of 97. “I have always believed research has no retirement age. However, the doctors jokingly told me, “if you want to stay alive, don’t travel”, he told TOI from Bengaluru. A relative will collect the degree on his behalf.
The DLitt journey proved arduous. Evaluation delays, administrative lapses, vacant vice-chancellor posts and years without updates followed his 2014 submission. “I had to write to the governor, who is the chancellor, explaining everything,” Pande said. After the chancellor intervened, the viva was finally conducted in 2024. Even then, formal notification stalled until late 2025. “I kept calling, asking when it would happen,” he said. “In December last year, they finally told me — now it is done.”
Born on March 6, 1929, in Akola, Pande’s academic journey began in Vidarbha. He completed his schooling in Akola and moved to Wardha for college, studying at the then-fledgling GS College of Commerce, which had nearly 700 students and was the region’s only commerce institution at the time. After earning a BCom, he pursued economics and began teaching in 1951 as a lecturer at People’s College in Nanded.
Pande later completed his MA in Economics from Nagpur University, forging an association that would endure for decades. His career took him beyond classrooms into national and international policy spaces.
He served in institutions under the Government of India, including regional colleges affiliated with the National Council of Educational Research, before moving to Bhubaneswar as a professor and later to New Delhi to join the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. “My job was to study the world and tell India where opportunities existed,” he said.
In 1975, he achieved a rare distinction. “I was the only Indian appointed as an adviser to the European Union,” Pande recalled, at a time when Europe was shaping what would later become the European Common Market. The EU deputed him to South America to study and help design common market systems. Parallelly, he assessed the region’s trade potential for India, then largely overlooked by policymakers. “When I returned, I wrote a report saying India had no real trade with South America,” he said.
The govt entrusted him with South American trade research for 17 years. Pande retired from IIFT in 1992 but was repeatedly retained during India’s reform years for policy work. He later lived in Pune for nearly 15 years before moving to Bengaluru after the death of his wife, Sudha Pande, a social worker.
Now living with his younger son, Makrand, a retired banker, Pande remains reflective and amused by time’s ironies. His elder son, Milind, a doctor, lives in the United Kingdom. “I did not chase this degree,” Pande said. “Research is my habit. I did it all my life.”
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