Govt may open back door to foreign univs

The Left parties may have blocked the entry route of foreign education providers (FEPs) but the government is considering opening a back door for them, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 23, 2007, 02:18:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The Left parties may have blocked the entry route of foreign education providers (FEPs) but the government is considering opening a back door for them, in the form of special economic zones.

The government is considering a proposal of the United States Chief Executive Officers Forum to set up an SEZ for higher and vocational education on trial basis. The CEO Forum has recommended that the SEZ be established on trial basis to bring about liberalization of education.

American universities attract a huge number of Indian students every year, the most from any single country. There are currently about 80,000 Indians studying in US universities with about 50,000 more joining their ranks every year.

The CEO Forum pitched the idea to top government functionaries like Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and Commerce Secretary GK Pillai at a meeting in New York on September 24. At the meeting, it was also decided that the US India Education Roundtable would examine the SEZ issue and make appropriate recommendations to the government.

The Commerce Ministry had earlier recommended the setting up of an SEZ for higher education, with the focus on FEPs. It was suggested that these SEZs give education providers huge relaxation.

The roundtable will also prepare proposals for improving linkages between Indian and US varsities. A delegation of heads of US universities had visited India last year and conducted a series of meeting with vice-chancellors here, but none offered to set up campuses in India. The reason: stringent laws.

On its part, the Indian CEO Forum, headed by Ratan Tata, has recommended joint research in the areas of allopathy as well as alternative systems of medicine. The proposal will be considered under the bilateral education initiative, it was decided.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.