New Delhi

If all goes well, the Indian government would open the first foreign branch of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in the UAE. This according to Arab News was disclosed by the Indian ambassador to Abu Dhabi.

The IIT, Delhi, is run by the Ministry of Education and is considered one of the best centers of excellence for training, research, and science in India. According to last year’s QS World University Rankings, IIT Delhi is ranked 54th globally in engineering and technology studies.

A working group comprising IIT Delhi faculty members visited the UAE in December to work out a plan for the development of the branch with the Department of Education and Knowledge Abu Dhabi (ADEK).

According to plans, the first group of students will start their courses at the IIT’s Abu Dhabi campus in the fall of 2024.

“The team visit by the IIT Delhi director in November was very useful ... an MoU is being worked on between ADEK and the Ministry of Education of India,” the Indian ambassador to the UAE, Sunjay Sudhir, told Arab News.

“(We are) making efforts to have the first batch by September 2024.”

India’s plans to set up the offshore campus are a part of its comprehensive economic partnership agreement with the UAE which came into force in May.

The IIT Delhi is one of 23 IITs operating in the country offering undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctorate-level programs.

This would be the first offshore IIT campus.

“Many Western countries have their campuses in the UAE. India is late in the fray. This is part of India’s soft power outreach in the region,” Dr. Sujata Ashwarya, professor at the Centre for West Asian Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi, told Arab News.

She added that India’s newly formulated national education policy for school and college education has been met with enthusiasm in the UAE, and the Indian government is considering promoting it throughout the Gulf region, in addition to the US and UK, to attract international students.

“IITs are India’s most prestigious educational institutions and have always held a global ranking,” Aishwarya said.

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Consequently, IITs can be useful and advantageous for the soft power diplomacy that the (Narendra) Modi government is actively promoting in the region.”