The governments of India and the United Kingdom celebrated Pravasi Bharatiya Divas on January 9, 2023, by launching the Young Professionals Scheme, which will allow up to 3,000 of their degree-holding residents aged between 18 and 30 to live and work in each other’s lands for two years.

The newly launched scheme was conceived as part of an India-U.K. Migration & Mobility MoU (memorandum of understanding) signed in May 2021 and was announced in November at the G20 summit in Bali, where U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had conversations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Talking at the High Commission of India in London, after a ceremony where letters were signed and exchanged between the two nations, Vikram Doraiswami, High Commissioner, said the scheme, which will operate for three years initially, would hopefully be up and running in March.

However, he informed there were still some procedures that had to be finished before the March launch.

“But that is conditional on everything been put in place. So we don’t want to make a formal announcement of a date until we are 100% certain.”

Young Indians and Britons can travel to each other’s countries and either work, visit, or study for two years via this scheme. The scheme authorizes exchange visas for up to 3,000 individuals per year.

“It isn’t even essential for you to have a job in hand when you do this, Mr. Doraiswami said. Successful candidates could look for employment, educational or cultural opportunities once they arrive in their host country. Or they could only visit.

He said that would give you an opportunity to study, work, and experience a country.

Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Under Secretary at the U.K. Home Office, represented the U.K. during the signing ceremony.

The signing of the agreement misrepresents more complicated issues around the movement of individuals across borders. Part of the Migration & Mobility agreement of 2021 aims to address the return of illegal migrants to their residence countries.

A free trade agreement between the two nations, which the governments were hoping to complete before Diwali the previous year, was complicated in part due to the U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman saying that Indians were the biggest group of visa overstayers in Britain and the agreement with India had not necessarily performed very well.

The High Commission of India in London replied it had acted on every visa overstaying case referred to by the U.K. authorities and that the government was awaiting demonstrable improvement on some of the U.K.’s promises under the agreement.

The government is also pursuing greater ease in the movement of qualified professionals and students from India to the U.K. as part of the business discussions, the sixth round of which took place in December in New Delhi.

A seventh round of negotiations is scheduled within the next month, according to the High Commissioner, who advised that this timeline could change.

“Progress has been constant,” Mr. Doraiswami said, about the talks, refusing to offer an update on the present sticking points. “Nothing is agreed till it’s all agreed,” he added.