‘Foreign universities will be governed by their home country’s rules… India rules won’t apply’

Deakin University’s Vice-Chancellor was here recently and made a presentation to the committee. Australians are keen to set up campuses here. As for Wollongong, their New South Wales (NSW) Minister was here six months ago and had submitted a letter of intent. Not much has happened after that.

Why was there a time lag between framing of International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) rules in October 2022 and notification of applications on February 23, 2023?

IFSCA must have been drafting the applications during this time. That was IFSCA’s job. The committee was also to be formed in the meantime. Both things went parallel: the drafting of applications and the committee. You must also understand the time difference between India and foreign countries like Australia. Getting all three (expert) committee members and the university together is also difficult.

Why are other countries taking time? What are the possible apprehensions?

In India, this (GIFT City) is happening for the first time. It is a big change. Indian education institutes were governed by domestic regulations. We are waiving it off for the first time. No domestic regulations would apply to them (foreign universities). That is a game changer as far as they are concerned.

What are the enabling factors for foreign universities?

The driving factor is that India is a huge market. If you do not enter such a big market, you will be left behind.

Another factor is that they want to move out of China and do not seem to be interested in increasing their presence there. The same happened with QUAD. The United States, Japan and Australia are moving away from China as they do not want too many students form China to come there (respective countries). To compensate for that, they need volume to run their universities and India is the best option.

India has English education. India is already the largest importer of education as a service. We are paying for it in dollars, it is an imported service. All of us who have gone abroad have basically imported education as a service. But not all can go to the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia or Canada.

The other thing is the pandemic. There are many parents who are scared of leaving their children in unknown new territories.

All that is happening is just the tip of the iceberg. The game has just begun. The Indian government has declared education as a financial service, this needs guts. They declared it and regulations were charted. We (GIFT City) are not strictly considered an education service…we are a financial service centre. Getting education into it is difficult. The logic behind this is that education involves finance, ultimately it is an import, there is a dollar transaction.

What are the enabling factors at GIFT City?

The major enabler is the transparency of regulations. They are governed by their home country. So, the home country decides which course to run.

In GIFT City, they are getting a territory in India governed by their regulations. It allows them to send profits back to their country. The fee is not regulated and the market and demand-supply will decide their future.

With new rules and regulations coming, for instance, from UGC, they (foreign countries) get puzzled. Now they do not have to get into it. Some rules come from the state government. But in this case, state government rules also do not apply. That is the main enabler.

Why is it then still taking time to convince them?

People are getting to know about it (GIFT City). Once it (applications) starts, there will be no looking back. They want to see somebody succeed, somebody make some profit. People are waiting but Deakin is quite confident.

Times are also tough internationally. All over the world, people are being laid off. No country is claiming to be not affected by it. In this situation, planning something like this (an international university) is not easy. Whatever is happening is good.

There is a fear that GIFT City will become a social island… How is this being addressed?

This is the tri-city concept given by Modi-ji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi). Every country has these islands or whatever you call them. We need these accelerators if we have to grow. Look at what China did. Look at the growth of Hong Kong and Macao, and see how China has grown. We should have made Goa and Puducherry like this. Andaman could have been the South East Asian base for free trade, much bigger than Singapore.

GIFT City is one such pocket. You cannot grow the entire country equally. There are clusters. The fixed cost of infrastructure gets divided among many enterprises. The Silicon Valley is also a cluster. Automobile hubs also function on similar lines. Making separate factories does not make sense. Every unit has its different fixed cost of infrastructure. Bring them together, it gets divided. In that sense, GIFT City has an infrastructure of financial services.

What is the expected time frame of application and the approval given to a foreign university?

The selection is not random. Giving a time frame in application and in-principle approval at this stage would be difficult as the first one will always take time. It is learning by doing. The next one will be faster.

The moment more applications come, meetings can be called at short notice depending upon the availability of the committee members. Now these are done through videoconferencing. We will schedule a meeting as and when the applications come.

Are we also looking at other educational institutions such as schools?

We are not interested in schools as these (schools) need big campuses. Universities are vertical setups and that is what we are looking at. For instance, programmes in cybersecurity and data analysis would need computer labs not big playgrounds.