India will open up its higher educational institutions to foreign tie-ups, said Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal at the India-US education summit in Washington which he co-chaired with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Foreign institutions will be subjected to the same laws as apply to private educational institutions in India. Nobody will give anything to India without something in return and so India has to provide opportunities for a give-and-take. Sibal and Clinton decided to map out strategies for academic partnership. A dialogue will be held alternately in India and the US to identify areas of fruitful exchange. Both the private sector and the government will have a role to play in the interrelationship. Joint degrees and diplomas will be conferred. But the profit motive should not mar the collaboration. The Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Institute set up in 2009 has made satisfactory progress. So has the India-US Science Forum.
In this age of globalisation, educational collaboration between India and the US is welcome. But there is no need for foreign inputs when local resources serve the purpose as BJP scholar Murli Manohar Joshi emphasised a few years ago. If US academics come to India, they should familiarise themselves with the Indian terrain and its educational needs. Of course, academic needs at the higher reaches are more or less the same globally and should have no chauvinistic bias. Academic tools in advanced countries can help Indian institutions. What has to be guarded against is the ‘craze for foreign’. The ancient wisdom of India can add considerable value to modern education in the West. The West itself recognises the fact.