How the 2022 Union Budget has helped reduce friction for study abroad applicants

What an amazing week it has been for India! The 2022 Union budget is by far the most numerically significant financial document in the country. Digital initiatives have been proposed to be adopted not only in education, but also in agriculture, games, computing, among others. We are talking about India embarking on a digital revolution and competing with other major economies of the world in technology, infrastructure and talent.

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With a lot of speculation about how all of this affects the aspirant to study abroad, i.e. the global citizen of tomorrow, I wanted to share my take on the top three:

Electronic passports: the innovation of the century in immigration

I believe ePassports were introduced in response to India’s ever-growing appetite for immigration. A majority of this appetite is obviously driven by students going abroad for study and given the increase in numbers from last year, it is evident that the government is looking to allocate funds for make the process transparent not only for students, but also for participating embassies and agencies like VFS. .

The chip is expected to store not only the citizen’s personal data but also biometric information like fingerprints which may very well eliminate biometric verification appointments at Visa centers across the country. This easily reduces the turnaround time for visa applications and saves a lot of time and resources for all parties involved.

The “One-class, One-TV” initiative: a gateway to building India’s next study abroad cohort?

Today, nearly 60% of students using Leverage Edu’s services are from Tier 2/3 Indian cities. Many of these students prefer to consume vernacular content. We believe that the expansion of the e-Vidya initiative for students in grades 1-12 from 12 channels to 200 channels to cover vernacular content is a huge step towards improving access to educational resources from quality.

India’s first “digital university” and access to skills required to obtain a foreign degree

In 2016, the Union Ministry of Education established the SWAYAM portal, a MOOC platform operated by IIT Madras that offers pre-recorded lessons. With its recent announcement of the creation of a digital university, it is clear that the government has become aware of the role of “university experience” in higher education. Moreover, the new digital university at its core is expected to offer live online courses taught by professors from some of India’s leading institutes and will not only foster quality education but also foster peer-to-peer collaboration among participating students. It is evident that the role of universities in uplifting the youth of tomorrow has been more than recognized and I look forward to seeing this in action.

When I turned on the channel on 2nd Feb at 11 a.m. to listen to FM read the Union Budget 2022 I certainly didn’t expect it to cover I’m sure most of India no more. This is by and large a progressive financial document and has obviously taken on board a lot of feedback from all sectors over the last few quarters.

The author is founder and CEO of Leverage Edu