MoS MEA: NEP right step towards making India's younger generation world's precious human capital

NEW DELHI: The new National Education Policy is a right step towards gearing up India's younger generation as the world's most precious human capital, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said on Thursday.

In his address at the inauguration ceremony of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Regional Centre, Delhi University, he said the learning experience that India offers to foreign students is unique. "We welcome more and more foreign students to come and study in India. When they come here, we treat them as our family. In the process, they take back a bit of 'India' along with them," he said.

For India, the whole world is one family and the country nurtures all students - Indian or foreign - as its own students, with the spirit of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam', the minister said. "As you all would appreciate, the new National Education Policy 2020 is a right step towards gearing up our younger generation as the most precious human capital of the world. It would transform higher education by making it more holistic and multidisciplinary with a focus on skilling, entrepreneurship and excellence in quality, including in vocational courses," Muraleedharan said.

The New Education Policy 2020 emphasises on developing an Indian approach to the internationalisation of higher education, he said. This joint collaboration between the ICCR and the Delhi University is a welcome step in that direction, he said. As both the ICCR and the university have a common objective of development and dissemination of knowledge, this setting up of the centre will provide further impetus to the ongoing efforts of both the institutions, he said. "I was told that there are more than 2,000 overseas students at this university. I am glad to note that the university's intake through the ICCR scholarship has seen a massive increase of almost 300 per cent in the year 2020-21," he said.

The Regional Centre right in the heart of the University of Delhi would help ensure smoother coordination and requisite liaising between the ICCR, students and the university, he said. The ICCR with a mandate to propagate India's rich cultural and educational heritage, operates various programmes, which also include administering of scholarship programmes of the government, Muraleedharan said. Under the scholarship programme, it annually awards close to 4,000 scholarships under 26 different schemes to foreign students from about 140 countries, he said. The courses offered for studies are for under-graduation, post-graduation and M. Phil/PhD levels.