india

Updated: Sep 17, 2019 01:17 IST

India on Monday launched a fully funded PhD fellowship programme at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) for students from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), with officials describing it as part of the government’s “Act East” policy.

A total of 1,000 fellowships will be given at India’s foremost technical education centres to students from the 10 Asean states, and the outlay for the programme will be ₹300 crore. The launch event was attended by envoys and senior diplomats from the Asean states.

The scholarships were announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the 25th anniversary commemorative Asean-India Summit held in New Delhi in January 2018.

The fellowships will be given out in three lots of 250 this year, 300 in 2020 and 450 in 2021. The programme will be funded by the human resource development ministry and the external affairs ministry will help popularise it in the Asean states. IIT-Delhi will be the coordinator for the programme.

“There is a need for us to welcome foreigners. I personally believe we should have done this programme 20 years ago. But better late than never,” IIT-Delhi director V Ramgopal Rao said.

The members of Asean are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.