Franco-Indian roadmap: 30,000 Indian students in France in 2030

The Franco-Indian partnership, concluded between the two countries in 1998, raised the Franco-Indian relation to the rank of “strategic partnership”. This “decisive commitment” confirmed the “deep mutual trust” from a “sound and frequent partnership” as the French government underlines. To mark the 25th anniversary of this agreement, the two countries adopted this year a “roadmap” to set the course of a bilateral relation until 2047, year of the 100th anniversary of the independence of India.

This roadmap details in all fields the new efforts of cooperation illustrated by a “union of forces” to use “sciences, technologic innovation and university cooperation as vectors for progress and independence for our two countries”.

New quantified targets

France and India are thus “determined to develop their university bonds and encourage exchanges between students”. In this regard, the mobility of students was the topic of two important paragraphs of the roadmap, and several means were debated to reach new targets:

• encourage the implementation of “joint training courses based on the template of the Franco-Indian Campus in the Indo-Pacific region, in life sciences for healthcare, mobility of researchers, including in the field of priority sciences and technologies”;
• create a community of Indian alumni: France will issue “Schengen visas with a validity period of five years to Indians who have studied in France during at least one semester, to the condition that they passed a Master level degree”;
• welcome more Indian students. the roadmap reaffirmed the ambition of France to welcome 20,000 Indian students by 2025 and reach 30,000 by 2030. To facilitate the achievement of these objectives, France will “increase the promotion of studies in France and develop the staff it employs for this in India”. France will also create “international classes” in French universities and other institutions so Indian students may benefit from a training course in French language.

Initiatives to promote exchanges

Another chapter of the roadmap is dedicated to “human partnerships” is also being developed. The idea here is to promote “exchanges, including in favour of young people” more widely through various actions:

• respect the partnership agreement for migrations and mobility in force since 2021, which already represents an important step to implement the joint commitment and encourage the mobility of students, graduates, university lecturers, researchers and qualified workers. But France and India want to go further by working “together on initiatives that encourage the mutual recognition of graduates and professional qualifications, to foster the mobility of qualified workforce between both countries”;
• implement partnerships between institutions of higher education, research centres and companies of the private sector to reinforce cooperation in vocational and language training. These agreements will “impart a new momentum” in terms of language cooperation and “encourage the development of French language teaching in Indian schools”. More importantly, “these agreements will encourage the exchange and training of language teachers and will facilitate the issuance of visas as part of exchange programmes”. The roadmap specifies that these actions “are emblematic of the importance that both countries give to the teaching of their respective languages and the central role of languages to promote international mobility”.

Scientific and technologic partnerships

And in terms of research, France and India want to deepen their cooperation to “promote research partnerships and technologies, which are essential to the self-sufficiency of our two countries”. This cooperation will take various forms:

• in terms of scientific cooperation, both countries want to create a joint Franco-Indian strategic Committee to publish calls for projects engaging the National Agency for Research (ANR in French) about priority interest subjects while considerably improving their scientific and technologic cooperation tools, and in particular the Franco-Indian Centre for the promotion of advanced research;
• in terms of healthcare cooperation, France and India “agree to intensify their cooperation in the health and medical fields”, including through the Franco-Indian Campus in the Indo-Pacific region in life science for health, launched in 2022 in a “pioneer form” relying on “several French universities of mainland France and La Réunion, in association with Indian institutions”. As part of this, four projects aiming at creating joint Master’s courses in the healthcare sector will be created.

Milestones for future partnerships

“The deepening of our links in education, sciences and technologies, and culture, and the blooming exchanges between our young people, as well as the success of a diaspora in expansion, bring together our people and set the bases of future partnerships”. These are the terms used by the Franco-Indian joint press release sums up this new step of the relations between France and India. Thanks to this “ambitious roadmap”, says the common press release, “the strategic partnership between India and France should diversify in new fields of cooperation, while deepening the existing programmes of common interest”.