Scholarships enhance cooperation, benefit Fijian students

India offers more than a hundred scholarships every year to Fijians with the aim of enhancing cooperation between the two countries on human resources development and capacity building. Indian High Commission’s Attaché (Political, Publicity and Culture) Sanjay Kumar said this was a good opportunity for the Fijian students to take advantage of the scholarships awarded to them.

The Government of India, under the Indian Council for Cultural

Relations (ICCR), offers 35 scholarships.

The international AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and Homoeopathy) programme offers 50 scholarships and the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme (ITEC) 100 scholarships.

Mr Kumar said different scholarship schemes had their own criteria and eligibility.

“The ITEC scholarship is awarded to government workers, but in Fiji this scholarship has also been awarded to the private sector where anyone is eligible to apply below the age of 45 years,” he said.

“ITEC gives short term technical course depending on the content of scholarship,” he said.

“ITEC scholarship is awarded to any period of time it is not on an annual basis and ICCR and international AYUSH programme scholarship are awarded on an annual basis.”

Mr Kumar said under ICCR scholarships, Fijians could apply for undergraduate, post graduate and doctorate courses.

He said the scholarship provided by ICCR had seen many students from Fiji attaining higher levels of qualifications from various reputable universities in India.

“Students have not only graduated with higher qualifications but have returned to Fiji and secured good jobs in their respective field of studies.”

Currently there are 25 Fijians undertaking studies on ICCR for various courses at institutions in different parts of India.

Forty-three Fijians have benefited from ITEC courses since April 2019 until to date.