India - UK round table...

Q& A

‘We aim to link 300 Indian schools with UK schools’

The India-UK round table established in April 2000 is probably one of the more productive track II efforts between the UK and India. Sandra Dawson, deputy vicechancellor of Cambridge University and one of the members of the round table, speaks to Indrani Bagchi:

How has the India-UK round table evolved?
The discussions remain outside the normal bilateral talks. The round table includes people from academics, media, business and various other walks of life. Our discussions focus on education, cultural exchanges, health issues, the context of world politics, climate change, etc. The discussions are always free-flowing though our attempt is to make recommendations for the two governments to pursue, though they are strictly not under any obligation to do so.

What have been your recent recommendations?
The UKIERI (UK-India Education Research Initiative) was born out of our recommendations. It’s now an established initiative and we’re very pleased at the direction it is taking. The main aspects of the initiative involve higher education and research, schools and professional and technical skills. This is what we had recommended — a partnership in skill development, including training teachers and widening the reach of English language learning. By 2011, the initiative aims to link 300 Indian schools (government funded and private) with 300 UK schools.The round table has also been pushing the idea of mutual recognition of qualifications.

In the field of education, we are also emphasising innovation and the role universities can play in fostering innovation. Cambridge University has a strong tradition in this field and there are similar initiatives both in Bangalore and Hyderabad. We have established the Cambridge-India partnership where we are looking to working together on research in biological sciences and nanotechnology, where we’ve tied up with the National Centre for Biological Sciences and IIT Mumbai respectively.

What other sectors do you focus on?
Well, health and climate change are becoming big concerns. No matter how large your GDP is,there’s never any money for the health sector — in any country. We’re trying to increase our attention to public health issues, because here we find a large degree of commonality between the UK and India,even though we have different histories.

Demography too is a growing area of focus. India is a remarkably young country while the UK is an ageing one. We are tackling issues of dealing with longevity, caring for the old and we find that we can have a useful partnership with India in this regard.

Indian students complain that cost of education is higher in the UK as compared to the US.
Yes, we’re trying to turn that around. The first batch of Manmohan Singh scholars will be headed to the UK this year and we’re increasing the number of scholarships to Indian students.