 "Education")
With India’s universities struggling to attract international students at scale, the Centre’s policy think tank NITI Aayog has proposed the creation of a $10 billion National Research Sovereign Wealth Impact Fund, Bharat Vidya Kosh.
The fund, a critical aspect of the think tank’s recommendations to help India attract a million inbound students by 2040, is envisioned as a diaspora-led public trust fund, with equal contributions from the central government, to accelerate the internationalisation of Indian universities. With a targeted corpus of $10 billion, half of the fund would be mobilised from the Indian diaspora and philanthropic sources.
The Aayog’s report, titled ‘Internationalisation of Higher Education in India’, argues that the new corpus can help address the fragmented funding and lack of long-term research finance that currently constrain India’s higher education competitiveness, with inbound students at just 0.1 per cent of total enrolment.
“India is the source of one of the world’s largest and most influential diasporas, with over 3.2 crore (32 million) people of Indian origin residing across the globe. This diaspora represents a significant reservoir of untapped philanthropic capital, technical expertise, and global influence that can be harnessed to accelerate India’s transformation into a global hub of knowledge, innovation, and development,” the report pointed out.
To pull in foreign students, Niti has also proposed a new flagship Vishwa Bandhu Scholarship for two-year master’s programmes in Indian public universities, modelled on schemes like Fulbright and Chevening.
“India currently lacks a flagship scholarship programme for international students that projects its soft power and academic leadership globally. Creating a prestigious programme modeled after global benchmarks will position India as a key contributor to global knowledge exchange. This scholarship would enable inward and outward student exchanges at the master’s level with global partner universities to attract high quality talent and strengthen academic diplomacy,” it noted.
NITI also mooted making Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) a global hub for onshore campuses and a model international education zone by expanding academic disciplines beyond finance, widening the pool of eligible universities, and ensuring regulatory and infrastructural readiness. “Gift IFSC provides a unique regulatory and operational environment that can attract globally reputed universities. Its SEZ and Non-Resident status framework offers opportunities to establish high-quality offshore education campuses with the benefits of global connectivity, tax neutrality, and institutional autonomy,” it said.
Releasing the report on Monday, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Suman Bery urged private universities to embed internationalisation in business plans within a facilitative framework. “I think we are not used to thinking of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) as a model. But that is the kind of model we have to aim for,” he stressed.
Niti Aayog member VK Paul identified institutional coordination as a key gap that needs urgent attention, calling for an interministerial convening and stewardship system.
On branding and soft power, the report calls for a revamped “Study in India” programme as a one-stop platform covering the entire student lifecycle and a new Bharat Vidya Manthan annual higher education conference co-hosted with leading global universities.
Although there are existing programmes like VAIshwik BHArtiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV), Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC), and Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) to promote diaspora collaboration, the think tank said there is an additional need for a large-scale, structured, and long-term vehicle to systematically channel diaspora investments into India’s research, higher education, and innovation ecosystems.
Along with the establishment of the fund and fellowship and scholarship programmes, Niti's 22 recommendations span five themes: strategy (national plan, global hubs), regulation (NIRF global metrics, GIFT as education hub, Tagore Framework for regional mobility), finance (Vishwa Bandhu Scholarships/Fellowships), branding (Bharat ki AAN alumni network, Bharat Vidya Manthan conference, country-specific outreach), and curriculum (industry internships, multicultural integration).
According to the report, there were 46,878 international students enrolled in Indian higher education institutions during 2021-22. The Aayog has used two distinct forecasting models — The Global Benchmarking Approach and The Internationalisation Intensity Approach — to project the range for international student enrolment in India in 2047. Based on the global benchmarking model, inbound enrolment is projected to range between 300,000 and 1.1 million, with the intensity model indicating an estimate of 789,000 international students in 2047.
