Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management Palanivel Thiaga Rajan said the Tamil Nadu government’s scheme to provide ₹1,000 per month to girls from government schools pursuing higher education has begun to show impact.

Addressing the India - US Education Dialogue, organised by O.P. Jindal Global University and Seattle University (SU) here on Wednesday, he said data on the number of applications showed an increase in the enrolment of girls for higher education. Recalling his conversation with the Director of the National Science Foundation in the U.S., Sethuraman Panchanathan, he said excellence should not require exclusivity. Acknowledging that there were issues related to quality that had to be addressed, he said the ‘Naan Mudhalvan’ scheme tried to address this.

Eduardo M. Peñalver, president of SU, spoke on the need for increased collaboration between the U.S. and Indian higher education institutions in the fields of climate change and sustainability, and technology. C. Raj Kumar, founding vice-chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University, highlighted how the focus of outreach of higher education institutions in the U.S. centred around China for long, and how it changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vinod Surana, managing partner and CEO of Surana & Surana International Attorneys, A. Francis Julian, senior advocate, Supreme Court, and Anthony E. Varona, Dean, School of Law, SU, Amit Shukla, Dean, College of Science and Engineering, SU, and Madhu T. Rao, Associate Dean, Albers School of Business and Economics, SU, spoke.