India To Offer 1,000 PhD Fellowships In IITs For Students From ASEAN Countries To Further PM Modi’s Act East Policy

In a major push to Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi's Act East foreign policy initiative, External Affairs Minister (EAM) Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Monday (16 September) launched a Fellowship Programme offering PhD fellowships to around 1,000 ASEAN students in the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), reports Economic Times.

An announcement regarding the same had been made by PM Modi himself in January 2018 at the 25th anniversary of the ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit, which was held in New Delhi. The initiative has received a budgetary outlay of Rs 300 crore.

The initiative will be coordinated by IIT Delhi which has developed a web portal to facilitate and administer the application and admission process under the programme. The first batch of ASEAN students would be admitted from January 2020.

The fellows who would be admitted into the PhD programmes under the initiative would receive scholarships at par with Indian PhD scholars, in addition to an annual grant for research. Further, the respective IITs will also be making a small provision to cover the living expenses of the ASEAN students.