India has become an educational hub for students from the SAARC countries, including Afghanistan and Nepal.

The South Asian University in New Delhi is providing scholarship programmes in various disciplines to the South Asian countries. The varsity offers post-graduate and doctoral programmes in various disciplines that include economics, computer science, biotechnology, mathematics, sociology, international relations and law.

Out of 437 students from the SAARC countries, 30 of them belong to Afghanistan and 27 students from Nepal. The South Asian University was founded in 2010 with an aim to promote peace, security and harmony in the SAARC region.
South Asian University president Kavita A Sharma, who was earlier associated with the Delhi University, recalled that there were special provisions for students from Bhutan and Nepal there. “And the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rightly said that greatest aid perhaps we can give to Afghanistan is to educate and so there were large number of students who came to Delhi University also. And I think it would benefit everybody if education spreads in this region in a large way,” she said.
The students from Afghanistan look towards India for better prospects. Omar Sadar, who is pursuing his PhD in International Relations from the South Asian University, said Afghanistan needs to invest in the education sector.
“And as I mentioned before Afghanistan does not have that much of capacity domestically to invest on. India is offering one thousand scholarships per year through different channels for Afghanistan. Besides that, many people come from Afghanistan with their own financial support to study in India,” he added.
The Afghan students pray for early return of peace and normalcy in their country so that education and infrastructure can be built. “Peace is the main concern in Afghanistan. Every single person in Afghanistan they want peace and security in Afghanistan that’s the pivotal matter and once you have that you can overcome other challenges,” said Mahdi Frough, a second-year student of MA (Economic Development Studies) in South Asian University.
“Poverty is another problem. Human development, education sector, health sector and infrastructure is lacking,” he added. India provides 1,000 scholarships to students from Afghanistan every year. “I believe India has its role in building capacity in Afghanistan through educating the young generation by providing so many scholarships annually and through opening its gates and their hubs for the Afghan students,” said Jamal Ahmad Mahmood, a student of Masters in Bio Technology.
India not only provides education to Afghan students but also supports in building up schools, besides assisting in the development of medical education in Afghanistan. The South Asian University offers silver jubilee scholarship to Nepalese students.
“India has done so many things to build bilateral relationships to support the Nepalese people and Nepal as a state. For instance, India has been providing silver jubilee scholarship to Nepalese students through its embassy and that is one of the best practices and best efforts that India has been providing for the Nepalese youngsters and Nepalese graduates as well to enhance their academic qualities and to bring them in the national market,” said Krishna Pandey, a student pursuing PhD in Sociology.
India plays a major role in educating Nepalese students by providing scholarships to them. “The main challenges are political instability. There are a lot of loop holes in the education policies otherwise. The other major challenge is that the youth are moving out for higher education. There are other students who have left Nepal for further studies. The main issue is that the youth is moving out of the country,” said Vegsha Gautam, a first-semester student of Masters in Development Economics.

The central government has requested all the states and Union Territories for testing of the meals provided to school children under Mid Day Meal Scheme from accredited labs. The states and UTs Government may involve Food Inspectors to collect the food samples for testing on quality parameters.

The Governments of NCT Delhi and Punjab have engaged accredited labs for testing of samples in their State.

Mid Day Meal Scheme covers 10.80 crore children in 11.58 lakh schools during 2013-14. The Scheme provides for a mechanism to deal with complaints and grievances of the stakeholders. The Ministry of HRD has been issuing instructions from time to time for effective implementation of the Scheme.

Under Mid Day Meal Scheme, only hot cooked meals are served to the children as per the direction of the  Supreme Court of India.

The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), which is responsible for monitoring standards in teacher education, has recently revised the B.Ed. D.El.Ed. and M.Ed. course and curriculum. In addition, the Government of India through the NCTE and University Grants Commission, is interacting regularly with universities to improve the quality of teacher training programmes. Through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan  programmes, elementary and secondary school teachers are provided regular in-service refresher trainings, on an annual basis.

This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smriti Irani in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha question.

The Narsee Monjee Educational Trust of Mumbai announced its foray into Gujarat by setting up Jamnabai Narsee School at the GIFT City. Notably, GIFT City is a part of ambitious smart cities projects conceptualized by then Chief Minister and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Strategically located at the GIFT City, Jamnabai Narsee School, proposed ICSE and IGCSE, will be fully functional from June 2015 for grades nursery to six, a statement said.

The school will introduce high quality education with an emphasis on physical education, extra- curricular activities and exploratory courses, it added.Sharing the latest development in the field of education Sujay Jairaj – trustee, Narsee Monjee Educational Trust said, “We aim to enhance the horizon of the institution by offering world-class programmes to our students and with this new facility, we aim to take our vision further in accordance with the global needs.”The school will be spread over an area of 1,60,000 square feet and plans to accommodate over 2000 students from K – 12. The school has a 2-acre playground which will help to impart ‘Real Learning’ outdoors.

Trilochan Sastry, Professor in Quantitative Methods and Information Systems, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), has been awarded the ‘Bharat Asmita’, an honor instituted by the Pune-based MIT group of institutions.

Professor Sastry teaches a wide variety of courses in the post graduate programme, doctoral programme and executive education programmes, including operations management, quantitative methods, data structures, algorithms and discrete mathematics, at IIMB.

To his credit Professor Sastry has, a number of management cases on operations management, ethics, change management and electoral reforms.

Announcing the awards for 2014, ‘Bharat Asmita’ Executive Director Rahul Karad said: “This is the eleventh year of the awards, which aim at recognizing the contribution of prominent figures from the field of teaching, people’s representation, public awareness and science and technology.”

Professor Sastry will receive the award, which carries a cash prize of Rs. 1.25 lakh, a memento and an inscribed copperplate citation, on February 3, 2015.

The University Grants Commission has revised fellowship and scholarship amounts for scholars of various schemes under the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

“The Expert Committee for bringing parity among all existing Fellowship and Scholarship Schemes of UGC, in its meeting held on November 17, has recommended revised rates of fellowships/scholarships amount for scholars under various schemes,” it said in a notice on its website.

The revised rates for 15 such schemes are applicable with effect from December 1.

Emeritus Fellowship has been hiked from Rs 20,000 to Rs 31,000 per month. Similarly, BSR-Faculty fellowship has been raised from Rs 30,000 to Rs 46,500 per month. Also, Swami Vivekananda Single Girl Child Scholarship for Research in Social Science has been brought up from Rs 8,000 in first two years and Rs 10,000 for third and fourth year to Rs 12,400 and Rs 15,500 respectively.

Any decision on education policy will be in tune with constitution, Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani assured as Parliament passed a bill to bring four institutes of information technology under the ambit of a single authority.

The Indian Institutes of Information and Technology (IIIT) Bill, 2014, passed by Rajya Sabha 1 December, seeks to provide the four existing IIITs an independent statutory status and proposes to declare them as institutes of national importance to enable them to grant degrees to their students.

The bill, passed by Lok Sabha last week, is the first education bill passed by the Narendra Modi government.

Moving the bill for passage, Irani assured the house that any decision on education policy by government will be in ambit of the constitution.”Some members asked if the education policy decisions by government will be influenced by my own thought. I would like to assure members any decision by government will be within the ambit of constitution,” she said. Irani also called it a “golden moment” saying MPs from “left, right and center” came together for the education bill.

“I am feeling proud… the message is clear, there is no politics in education,” she said. The four institutes are IIIT-Allahabad, IIIT-Gwalior, IIIT Design and Manufacturing, Jabalpur and IIIT Design and Manufacturing, Kancheepuram.