The Importance of Taking Education Under The Wings Of BIMSTEC
Education and the flow of knowledge have never known boundaries since the beginning. The simple case of Buddha and the spread of his teachings all over Asia is a classic example of how knowledge flows between countries and kingdoms even during times when there were no modern forms of technology to ease this movement.
With times changing, regions starting to have more defined boundaries, and technology moving faster than the speed at which the average human brain can process, the flow of information, knowledge, and skilled laborers from one corner to the other corner of the world has never been easier.
When countries come together, putting aside their differences to strengthen their bilateral and multi-lateral bonds, citizens of that country become global citizens ensuring peace and harmony on this planet. These bonds result in the more effortless movement of people, trade, and the creation of countless opportunities.
The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) was established on June 6, 1977, as a regional organization with the signing of the Bangkok Declaration can be seen as a testament to what nations can achieve together.
BIST-EC (Bangladesh-India-Sri Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation) has grown into BIMSTEC with Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand as its members, and its agenda grew from just economic cooperation to targeting multi-sectoral technical and economic cooperation.
The goals and objectives of BIMSTEC are to create an enabling environment for the rapid economic development of the region, encourage the spirit of equality and partnership, promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest in the economic, social, technical, and scientific fields, aid each other in the form of training and research facilities in the educational, professional, and technological spheres. However, since the dawn of BIMSTEC, education has not been one of the sectors that the organization needs to recognize.
As mentioned before, education is not a sector recognized by BIMSTEC. The need to develop a QUALITY EDUCATIONAL FRAMEWORK under BIMSTEC was an important point of discussion in this year's conference and emphasized the importance of regional cooperation, especially in higher education.
To understand the importance of nation-building through education we must look no further than the small island nation of Singapore. Singapore attained its independence in 1965 with little to no resources on the island and impoverished illiterate people. Singapore invested in their only resource abundantly- their people. Since the time of independence, the government of Singapore invested heavily in people’s education right from a young age and had constant campaigns to improve the productivity of its citizens. Almost 60 years after their independence, Singapore now has one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world.
On a collective front, the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries of which Singapore is also a part, spent decades spurring economic growth and reducing poverty. Their main target was on their people and to improve the quality of their human resources. Inspiration for the BIMSTEC educational framework can be directly drawn from the steps taken by the ASEAN. Student mobility, credit transfers, quality assurance and research clusters were identified as the four main priorities to harmonize the ASEAN higher education system, encompassing 6,500 higher education institutions and 12 million students in 10 nations. The ultimate goal of the scheme is to set up a Common Space of Higher Education in Southeast Asia. Individual governments also pooled in their resources to help the cause, and bring their home educational institutions to global standards. They strived to establish the ASEAN network of universities on the map on par with the western Universities.
These important characteristics of the ASEAN and the ASEAN University Network could be an inspiration for the Educational framework for BIMSTEC. Currently, 4000 Bhutanese students are studying in India, pursuing their undergraduate degrees. Bangladesh and India's educational ties have been strong, given its proximity to West Bengal. Since the 1970s, there have been several exchange programs between West Bengal Universities and Bangladesh enabling the flow of culture, research projects, and seminars. Through the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, India provides Nepalese citizens with 3000 scholarships/ seats to help them pursue higher education in India. The list of such ties with the member nations of BIMSTEC goes on.
On the other side of the coin, several citizens from countries in the Bay of Bengal region often choose the US, UK, or the UAE to pursue their higher education. Around 45000 students from Bangladesh, 10000 students from Myanmar, and 20000 students from Sri Lanka chose countries apart from India to go abroad to study. With the National Educational Policy paving the way for Indian students and institutions to be on par with the world, India can become the next global education hub attracting all these students from these countries to choose India as their education destination. Establishing regional ties with BIMSTEC countries with such educational policies might be the new path that India must take to secure its presence in the Bay of Bengal.
To truly establish a global relationship with other countries in terms of education, India must be ready to address key issues like credit transfer and the ease in which foreign universities are able to access our country.
The newly introduced National Education Policy(NEP) in our country, targets these areas of interest and also allows foreign universities to establish their International Branch Campuses (IBCs) in India. Such universities will be given a unique window regarding regulatory, governance, and content norms on par with other autonomous institutions of India. This is a significant policy announcement, and these IBCs represent the idea of transnational education (TNE). Until now, China, UAE, and Malaysia are the three largest host Markets for IBCs. This could change with some central US and UK universities showing interest in setting up their IBCs in India.
This component of the NEP allows and serves India in its look east policy and serves the students in this region to come to India for their education instead of going to the US or UK.
Further, under the Framework, several measures could be undertaken to make India a more favorable educational destination.
Providing relevant visas for students and professors addresses the critical question of international mobility within this region, and this visa could be given the "BIMSTEC Visa" title with its perks, such as multiple entries for a student and a prolonged stay period for students to seek job opportunities after they graduate. The influx of students from our neighboring countries adds more diversity and brings a cultural boom without which universities start to stagnate at the international arena.
Inspiration for this framework could be taken no further than Australia, where Indian students are provided with a scholarship when they have a CGPA greater than 3.6. Additionally, an extended visa for two years for work is available in Australia, where students can stay back and gain practical experience.
The following vital point in the framework must be that students can quickly transfer credits between universities. Facilitated by the Academic Bank of Credits, another salient feature of the NEP enables this transfer of credits with minimal disruption.
Funding at every step is another critical area of interest and importance in the Quality Framework. Drawing inspiration again from the ASEAN Network of Universities, the quality framework must seek improvement in the quality of education and academic progress in these universities. Like the AUN-QA(ASEAN University Network Quality Assurance), the quality assurance framework of the BIMSTEC education division must actively promote, develop, research and academic standards of universities registered under BIMSTEC.
There are several kinds of funds set up by several groups of nations that aim to develop human resources by utilizing those funds for research and education purposes. The Arab fund for economic and social development set up by the middle eastern countries, the EU funds for researchers and the AUN research funds are all good examples of how the collective effect of governments could help develop the citizens living in a region.
The BIMSTEC alliance could be instrumental in setting up educational funds to help universities in all member nations to scale up and become world-class. Project-specific grants could be provided for scholars under the BIMSTEC Framework to motivate more STEM-related research work in this region. A BIMSTEC Scholarship fund could be set up to make education in the local universities and the IBCs more affordable for the people entering our country to study and for Indian students.
Adding the education sector under the wings of BIMSTEC can truly push India to become the next global education hub, attracting students from all over the world to choose India as their education destination. Just like the other sectors that come under BIMSTEC like transportation and trade, education should also be given equal importance. This segment of the BIMSTEC could play a vital role in transforming people-to-people contact, as well as creating closer and more constructive regional links.
Further, BIMSTEC reduces India's dependence on SAARC, where progress is sometimes stalled due to tensions with Pakistan. Positioning ourselves amid such an enormous project to make India an educational hub might pave the road for India to be a force reckoned with.
The pandemic without a doubt has disrupted traditional teaching-learning methods but also
has proven to us that working together across borders is possible and makes borderless concepts such as the BIMSTEC work. Universities are uniquely positioned to combine traditional expertise with the development of applied digital skills to offer highly impactful learning experiences for students aligned with the future of work.
We have a unique opportunity to emerge as a collective superpower in the Bay of Bengal area and establish an alliance with multiple neighbouring countries at once and what better way can one think of to make this possible than educating our children and grooming them to become future leaders?
