A city under construction in the west Indian state of?Gujarat could hold important clues about how the country¡¯s plan to?attract top international universities to?its shores might play out.

Rising from the banks of the Sabarmati River, the tall tower blocks of the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (Gift?City) are set inside a special economic zone, which allows institutions located there to skip the usual red tape required under Indian law.

In February, India¡¯s finance minister, that ¡°world-class foreign universities and institutions¡± would be allowed to set up shop in Gift?City, teaching courses in financial management, fintech, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, largely free from domestic regulations.

Observers agreed that Gift City ¨C the first of its kind in India ¨C would be an important test bed for determining the shape of international involvement in India¡¯s higher education sector.

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Gujarat is favourably positioned as the home state of India¡¯s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and a darling for government projects.

¡°The Gift City announcement is an opportunity to see how India might attract high-quality overseas foreign institutions,¡± said Amrita Sadarangani, executive director of the Gujarat Biotechnology University and a consultant at the University of Edinburgh.

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Ms Sadarangani noted that ¡°the way the opportunity is being positioned, foreign universities don¡¯t really need a?partner¡± to establish themselves in the city ¨C a key difference from the current situation in India.

She said the set-up represented an acknowledgement by the government that it?might need to grease the wheels to entice overseas institutions.

¡°They realised that an enabling regulatory framework is crucial to having foreign institutions in any format here ¨C whether traditional [transnational education], joint campuses or degrees delivered overseas,¡± Ms Sadarangani said.

In another key difference, universities will be able to move into office towers rather than needing to build their own premises from the ground up, said Eldho Mathews, a deputy adviser in the Unit for International Cooperation at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration in New Delhi.

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Currently, land acquisition is ¡°the major headache¡± for private players in Indian higher education, with such institutions often needing a minimum of 100?hectares for a campus ¨C an area that is impossible to carve out in densely populated cities and involves negotiating a bureaucratic labyrinth even in an optimal location.

But now, Mr?Mathews said, international institutions could look instead to the model used by Harvard Business School, which offers a management programme partly in Mumbai along with its main Boston-based campus. Its Indian unit operates out of a high-rise building.

Yet even with fewer restrictions, the new city would not be a free-for-all, Mr Mathews cautioned.

¡°One thing is very clear,¡± he said. ¡°The government seems to be very choosy in STEM subjects and probably wants to invite those institutions who are willing to offer programmes in selective subjects or?areas.¡±

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One ¡°priority¡± for the government would be to select international institutions carefully to ensure that there would ¡°not be any clash¡± with existing players in India¡¯s domestic higher education sector, Mr Mathews said.

While Gift City is ¡°just an experiment¡± so far, there is potential for far-reaching impacts, with more attempts sure to follow if international universities taste success.

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¡°For them, this is a low-risk affair,¡± Mr Mathews said, adding that universities could start by offering ¡°one or two programmes, and based on success of this they can think about expanding¡±.

pola.lem@timeshighereducation.com