Attempts are now being made to market Indian higher education abroad. UGC and FICCI have chalked out a program to promote Indian higher education outside the national boundaries. The first attempts would be made in African countries - Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Apart from UGC and FICCI, EDCIL (an education PSU under the ministry of human resource development) is making rigorous efforts to sell Indian higher education in the same market. 

A delegation consisting of 16 universities would be visiting these African countries. The Vice Chairman of UGC, VNR Pillai, would lead the delegation. Apart from holding fairs and road show, the delegation will focus on establishing a relationship between the governments and higher education commissions of these countries. 

Vice Chancellors and international student advisors of leading universities like Jawaharlal Nehru University, Banaras Hindu University, Jamia Hamdard, Symbiosis and Osmania University would represent their universities in the delegation. 

With public-private partnership, higher education would enter the global market. India is now not only seen as the potential hub for higher education but also a potential market. According to Founder and President of Think India Foundation, Aspiration India, and Centre for Public Policy, Vinay Rai, the demand for international education has been increasing not only in the domestic market but also in the global market. "Well-defined strategies would however be needed to become world leaders in higher education," he says - Vinay Rai

Speaking at a spring seminar at Meadows, Faridabad on "Towards Co-existence and a Peaceful World Order", Vinay Rai emphasized on the role of religious leaders in ensuring that religion lives up to its raison d'etre of "opening peoples' hearts and filling them with love and concern for each other", instead of being used as a convenient tool by political opportunists to create false divisions in minds and hearts. He particularly alluded to the positive human values of brotherhood, community service, compassion, concern, sharing, good action, non-violence, especially as espoused by the Dalai Lama, Sai Baba, and the Pope at Vatican, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Imam Mohammed, and Mother Teresa - Vinay Rai

Lauding the American higher education system for having respected individual talent, Vinay Rai says that 'Americans, unlike Indians, rightly recognize that that the so-called 'low-performing' students are not necessarily less on the talent quotient'. Given the right institutional framework of care and concern, cognizant of individual talent, ace American universities have nurtured the potential of each and every child from all parts of the world. The founding vision of Rai Foundation, he recalls, is just this: to bring out the best in every student, across rural and urban, especially those in whom the present system had shown no faith and had put them in the precarious rung of less than 80 percent-wallahs. Under the program, "Toward Excellence in Higher Education," Rai Foundation's most recent endeavor, eminent professors from top 50 US universities have been invited to India for a week to interact with students, faculty as well as the media and public at large (top 20 have confirmed their visits). The vision of this program is two fold: one, to enable Indian students to get a whiff of the high standards of 'quality-in-teaching' in the US; and second, to provide an opportunity to visiting professors to experience young India upfront. - Vinay Rai

Vinay Rai while speaking of the role of academia in helping law enforcement agencies said there is a major need to devise more effective ways that use the best of technology for detection and investigation but are simultaneously caring and concerned for not only strict adherence to human rights in the legal sense but also emotionally satisfying. He referred to the world wide law agencies like the sophisticated ones like FBI or CIA or the MII of Uk or the Indian CBI or Research Analysis Wing, government of India.

Vinay Rai emphasized that respecting individual values in the entire process was of critical importance even while faithfully enforcing the due process of law. Law enforcement agencies need to retrain their staff in respecting individual rights. - Vinay Rai