For a level playing field in UK universities

It has always seemed absurd, unfair and racist that foreigners buying a ticket to a tourist attraction like the Taj Mahal in Agra have to pay Rs 1,000 while Indians can get in for Rs 40.

But then neither is it moral or ethical for British universities to charge international students tuition fees that are three times the going rate - £9,000 a year - for locals.

My attention has been drawn by a public spirited friend, Zerbanoo Gifford, to the case of a remarkably gifted Indian high flyer from Mumbai, Tejasva Malhotra, 18, who has just got into Imperial College London - one of the world's most sought after universities - to do a four-year course in Aeronautical Engineering costing £1,20,000.

Imperial had required two A*s and two As in his A-level exams but Tejasva sailed in by getting A*s in Mathematics, Further Mathematics and Physics and an A in Design and Technology.

Tejasva applied to Imperial after studying for two years in the sixth form at Charterhouse, a prestigious public school in Surrey, where his £70,000 fees were paid through a scholarship scheme generously funded by an Indian benefactor, Shirish Saraf, 49. The latter, himself an alumnus of Charterhouse, is now a successful "emerging markets investor, ban-ker and entrepreneur".

During the school holidays, Zerbanoo looked after Tejasva at the Asha Centre, an establishment she has set up in Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire to allow young people to meet and flourish.

The problem for Tejasva is that he is treated by Imperial as a foreign student.

"Imperial's fees for my course are £27,750 for this year," he tells me. "For next year, it is £29,000. Imperial said that a rough estimate for the accommodation and living expenses in London will be around £11,385, per year. We have taken all our savings and they are just enough to provide for my first year."

He was also made to return to India to apply for his student visa costing £322, which he was granted after Imperial confirmed that he had paid his first year's fees in full.

He expresses the hope that "due to some miracle, I get the money to stay there for my entire course. My point is, the UK should make these institutions the same price for us as it is for home students. I think it is unfair for them to charge three times the home tuition fees."

I couldn't agree more. If the British really want a closer engagement with the India of the future - and strengthen what Sir Dominic Asquith calls the "human bridge" - it is in their interest to treat Indian students on a par with local Brits.

Model service

• If there is one thing above all we in India could copy from the British, it is the National Health Service. It shows Britain at its best.

And nowhere have we seen a better example of this than in the care, love, attention and skill that has been shown in saving the five-year-old Indian girl who was brought to Birmingham Children's Hospital "with life threatening injuries" last Saturday, after eight people, including her father, Wipro employee Karthikeyan Ramasubramaniyam Pugalur, and her mother, Lavanyalakshmi Seetharaman, perished in the M1 motorway crash.

Little Shravathi's family members, who have flown from India to be with her, report that she is "out of danger but she is heavily sedated as the wounds are still fresh... she is responding to the medicines".

Twitter terror

• Sir Salman Rushdie's 1.3 million followers on Twitter will miss the great man's thoughts on a wide range of subjects (including recalling that the former Pakis-tani cricketer, Imran Khan, was once called "Im the Dim") now he that he has quit the social media site.

He announced: "I have abandoned Twitter.

"Twitter is a way of reaching a lot of people but it's also so bad-mannered.

"I think the anonymity is what does it. It allows people to be discourteous in a way they'd never be if they were sitting in the same room as you and if you knew their name... I just think somehow we're bringing up a generation of rude people because of the ease of it and lack of accountability and lack of consequences.

"I haven't missed it for a nanosecond. I deleted the app."

But since he likes a scrap, will the break really be permanent?

Tittle tattle

• After an abject defeat in the first Test against England, Geoffrey Boycott said: "This West Indies lot are the worst Test match team I have seen in more than 50 years of watching, playing and commentating on cricket."

Others agreed going into the last day in the second Test, Joe Root's England reigned supreme.

But cricket has a way of teaching superior commentators a good lesson.