New Delhi: The Cabinet on Monday cleared a bill that will enable Foreign Universities setup campuses in India. Any change in any existing system in India starts drawing unnecessary controversies even before it really takes place. The Foreign Universities Bill has also started on the same footings.

While reporting for the Foreign Universities Bill, most of the media reports have started raising issues of shortage of faculty and poaching of academicians etc.

We all know that more than one lakh Indian students go out every year for higher education from India. Most of these students go out of the country to pursue their higher studies because of lack of facilities for quality education in the country. This also costs a huge foreign exchange outgo to the exchequer.

Till the BSNL-MTNL era, the Indian telecom sector had similar apprehensions and we could have never expected the level of telecom services if the same was not opened to private sector competition. The aviation sector also saw similar changes after it was opened to the private sector ending the Indian Airlines, Air India monopoly.

The Indian educational sector is bound to reap more benefits in the days to come by the step of allowing the foreign universities to setup campuses in the country. Higher demand for quality academicians will only attract more aspirants towards this opportunity and is bound to bring in qualitative changes in the educational system of India.

While, many other civil services offer better perks than academics, the real mentors of the country i.e. the academicians rank poorly on this count as well. Even on the global scenario, the Indian academicians are paid as low as nearly one-third than the advanced countries.

Mr. Kapil Sibal deserves all kudos for pushing through this bill which will bring out all qualitative changes in the educational system of the country.

India will also have the opportunity of attracting students from other countries for pursuing education at lower costs as Indian will always have the advantage of lower infrastructure cost.

India has already proved its competence in the global software industry. The software industry in India could thrive only because of availability of quality manpower and lower infrastructure costs.

The educational sector is also a very similar sector which is based on the same two components i.e. quality manpower and infrastructure and India certainly has an edge over many other countries in availability of both these components.

The India-based online tutoring of students to many countries like USA, UK and Canada etc. clearly shows that India does not have any dearth of quality English-speaking manpower.