The University is among nine UK universities planning campuses in India after announcements made during Keir Starmer’s visit last year. Others include University of Aberdeen, University of Bristol, University of Liverpool, Queen’s University Belfast and Coventry University.
As Inamdar notes, the success of these domestic campuses will hinge on numerous factors. Maintaining UK academic standards while operating at Indian price points will require “cost discipline and programme selectivity”, Aritra Ghosal of OneStep Global, which helps foreign universities enter the Indian market, told the BBC.“Universities will have to carefully pick programmes in high-employability disciplines and collaborate with Indian industry from the outset.”The universities will have to negotiate with regulatory complexities and infrastructure availability.
“Whether that would deliver the quintessential university campus experience remains to be seen,” he says.
Tej Parikh of Financial Times writes about a new book, ‘A Sixth of Humanity’, that maps the development of independent India through the last 75 years.
Authors Arvind Subramanian, a former chief economic adviser to the Indian government, and Devesh Kapur, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, postulate that “India’s story is characterised by precociousness: not just in the sense of a country doing things before its normal time but also in unusual sequencing.”
The authors argue that India takes an “atypical pathway” towards development, by generating “high-skilled” service jobs while “while a majority remain in fragile informal work”.
“Subramanian and Kapur’s insight into the ‘Indias inside India’ is particularly invaluable as it underscores the country’s vast internal diversity and the sharp contrasts between its regional economies,” the report says.
“What emerges is a sober diagnosis of a country that has achieved impressive growth while struggling to translate it into broad-based prosperity,” Parikh writes.
Sudha G. Tilak of the BBC reports on ‘The forgotten Indian woman trailblazer in British medicine’
“In the early 20th Century, when medicine was still overwhelmingly male and European institutions largely closed their doors to women, a young doctor from colonial India’s Bengal broke through one of its most formidable gates,” he writes.
Tilak writes about the book, ‘Daktarin Jamini Sen’, a biography of Jamini Sen—the first woman ever admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, an institution founded in 1599 and long closed to women.
“The biography draws on letters, diaries, a slim journal kept by Sen herself, her article in a journal called Mahila Parishad, and a synopsis written by her elder sister, Kamini. The book restores to history a woman of fierce intellect and radical resolve from pre-independent Bengal.”
Elian Peltier and Zia ur-Rehman of The New York Times report on how “Pakistan’s government has embarked on a major push to reshape its image abroad.”
“Over the past year, representatives of Pakistani security agencies have lobbied journalists to start state-friendly English-language news outlets,” they remark.
And this media has two main targets—India and the Taliban. Reportedly, the makeover followed India’s Operation Sindoor against terror bases in 2025 “when Pakistan became “overwhelmed” with “pro-Indian content on social media”.
“In addition to Pakistan TV’s revamp, two new English-language channels were started shortly after the clash with India. At least two more are in the works.”
The channels are part of Pakistan’s broader diplomatic push. Since the military clash with India, its army chief Syed Asim Munir has built a personal rapport with US President Donald Trump, who calls him his “favourite field marshal,” while also courting Trump’s allies with crypto and engaging his administration through mineral deals, according to the report.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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