SHILLONG: Director East and North East India, British Council, Dr Debanjan Chakrabarti said very less number of research scholars from the North Eastern States apply for scholarships in the UK and encouraged scholars to satiate their hunger for knowledge ambitions by studying in the United Kingdom.
He was in Shillong to attend the concluding programme of British Council’s United Kingdom-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) leadership development activity in Shillong.
Speaking to a section of the press, Chakrabarti said, “Educational leadership is the key need for India. However, applications from the North East are relatively low.”
He added that over 100 scholarships to women from India were given to study in the UK. Scholarships are for Post Graduate and research studies in the UK and interested students can choose from over 40 top institutions in the UK. He added that research scholars can log on to British Council India website or study UK.
Chakrabarti said, “The big focus of UKIERI is on science technology, Mathematics and Medicine (innovation in health care).”
He said that the UKIERI is aiming to strengthen gender participation into research collaboration.
He also informed that last year the British Council signed an MoU with North Eastern Council (NEC) in all the seven states of the North East including Sikkim.
Referring to schools, he informed that English Education training for schools has started to roll out to train at least 100 teachers each from the eight states of the North East.
As for teaching Mathematics and Science in schools, Chakrabarti said a consultative meeting of all bureaucrats in the Education Department and Education ministers in Guwahati to train teachers in subjects like science and mathematics which need major attention.
UKIERI has started in April 2006 with the aim of enhancing educational links between India and the UK. UKIERI has operated in three phases in India. Phase 1 and 2 ran from 2006-2016 during which time it facilitated the collaboration if more than 100 industry partners, engaged 45,00 education institutes and facilitated 25,000 academic exchanges between the UK and India.
Phase 1 & 2 (2006-2017) have been successful in enabling academic collaborations across India and the UK
UKIERI collaborated with 100+ industry partners and initiated joint ventures between UK-India companies and developed affordable healthcare products with huge commercial potential
There are total of Number of live Partnerships in North East India- 2 under (SPARC) and 8 under (Research & Innovation) with institutes like Dibrugarh University in Assam, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology (IASST) etc.