Indian students prepare for their board exams at the entrance to The Asiatic Society Library in Mumbai late March 3, 2009. Students are forced to study in the open due to space constraints and lack of proper study environment in homes of Mumbai the financial capital. India has just a couple of dozen of top-notch 'branded' colleges, seven Indian institutes of technology and six of management which together take only 16,000 undergraduates each year. Competition to get into higher education in the country of more than 1.1 billion people is fierce with stratospheric averages needed to obtain the few places available in India's 'Ivy League' colleges. Under a constitutional measure to bring victims of the worst discrimination into the mainstream, India already sets aside 22.5 percent of university places and jobs for the underprivileged strata of the society and also has a law under which all children between the ages of six and 14 must be given a free education. AFP PHOTO/Sajjad HUSSAIN (Photo credit should read SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images)
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AFP SAJJAD HUSSAIN