French ambassador Alexandre Ziegler, who visited India recently, said he wanted to increase the number of Indians going to France for higher studies from 4,000 to 10,000 a year. Evidently, he wants to make up for the years of neglect.

Ziegler would like India to compete here with China, which sends 40,000 students every year to France. In fact, France has worked hard to achieve this target with China. Zeigler is determined to correct this imbalance as this would not only go a long way in strengthening academic relations but it would also play a major role in building trust between the two nations.

And Tamil Nadu is set to be a big beneficiary of this new trend. Some 80 French companies are headquartered in the State and there will soon be direct flights operating from Chennai to Paris. So French interests are clearly and increasingly linked to Tamil Nadu and the French government seems to have taken note of this.

France, of course, has competition from traditional Anglo-Saxon destinations such as the US. According to the recent 2016 Open Doors report, there has been a record growth in the number of Indian students in the US.

It has increased five times in the past 18 years — from 33,818 in 1997-98 to 165,918 in 2015-16. They make up 15.9 per cent of all international students in the US, says the report, and are right behind China.

However, these figures may well fall given the restrictive visa policies of the current government. The US, as we all know, has been the tradition hunting ground for traditional Indian job-seekers.

Interestingly, the number of Indian students going to the UK has fallen from 18,320 Indian students going there in 2014-15, to 16,745, in 2015-16, according to a recent UK Higher Education Statistics Agency.

This downfall in numbers has no doubt to do with the fact that foreign students have to return to their home country after completing their studies in the UK before applying for a work visa in the UK, which makes migration for job purposes more difficult for Indian students.

This can, of course, work to France’s advantage even as French institutions gear up to fight the traditional language barrier that students from non-Francophone countries face in France, and arrange for classes to be conducted in English to attract international students.

The fact that many French companies have subsidiaries in India allows them to recruit Indian students who have studied in France or those who have a basic knowledge of French.

But then, France has competition from its traditional rival Germany which, in 2015-16, had 13,500 Indian students studying there. This is over three times the number of Indian students in France.

No doubt, Germany has been working hard to attract Indian students over the years, and the figures show that it has achieved some degree of success. France has plenty of catching up to do.

The writer teaches at Loyola College, Chennai

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