The new Indian High Commissioner to the UK, His Excellency Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha held a reception on 16th January, which saw participation of more than 70 eminent print, electronic and radio media personnel at India House.
During his address, High Commissioner Y.K. Sinha spoke of the recent developments in India's growth story, how the media can effectively partner in furthering India-UK relations, and also focussed on the issue of visas for students, IT professionals in the UK, scopes for India in the light of Brexit and economic relationship between the UK and India.
HE Sinha told the gathering, “Of course Brexit is a challenge but I see it more as an opportunity. Indian companies and businesses are looking forward to engaging more closely with their British counterparts,” reported the Hindu.
He had highlighted the visit of British Prime Minister Theresa May to India last November as “particularly significant” in having further enhanced the “very substantial economic engagement”.
Sinha reportedly said, “We have a very good economic engagement with the UK, with trade in goods about 14 billion dollars and another 5 billion dollars in services. But besides that, the UK is a very important in terms of investment scope, being the largest G20 investor into India and 800 Indian companies operate here, bringing about a billion plus in taxes to the exchequer and employing over a 100,000 people.”
However, he highlighted the falling number of Indian students in the UK — that had more than halved to 19,000 since 2010.
He said, “In the field of education we have a bit of a problem because the number of Indian students (in the UK) that was 40,000 or so in 2010 has dropped to 19,000. Compared to figures for the US, which had 104,000 Indian students in 2010 and today they have 166,000,” as reported by the PTI.
“Australia had 19,000 in 2010 and has 40,000 today. Obviously, there is something going wrong here because the UK has always been the first preference for Indian students.
“We need to see how we can ensure that the UK attracts good students from India because Indian students are doing extremely well everywhere they go,” Sinha asserted, according to the report.
Even countries like Germany have over 10,000 Indian students and France has 5,000. They are actively going into campuses in India to attract students, he said.
He also flagged the issue of movement of professionals as another area of concern because the UK remains the “first port of call in Europe” for Indians due to a shared history and other commonalities.
“In the field of IT, our professionals are renowned the world over. It is very important that our IT professionals can come and work and go back. They will contribute immensely not only to the local economy but also the global economy, which is what they are doing in Silicon Valley and the rest of the world,” the high commissioner told PTI.
