Yuva Sangam Phase-VI opens youth exchange

The Education Ministry's interstate youth-exchange programme under Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat enters its sixth phase, run through 22 universities as nodal centres.

What happened

• The Ministry of Education opened Yuva Sangam Phase-VI (2026), the latest round of its institution-led youth-exchange programme under the Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat (EBSB) umbrella.
• Registrations for Phase-VI ran from 2 to 25 March 2026; the round covers 22 States/UTs, anchored by 22 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) acting as nodal centres.
• Selected youth travel to a paired host State/UT for a 5–7-day structured exposure tour built around language, culture, tourism, cuisine, traditions, sports and local best practices.
• Nodal HEIs span the IIT, IIM, IISER and NIT networks — among them IIT Tirupati paired with IISER Pune, IIT Delhi, IIT Bhilai, MNIT Jaipur, IIT Ropar, IIM Jammu, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Shillong, IIT Indore, IIM Lucknow, IIM Ahmedabad and NIT Rourkela.
• Both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as off-campus youth, are eligible; HEIs select participants with balanced representation across gender, disciplines and regions.
• The release frames the phase as part of EBSB's continuing effort to deepen people-to-people ties between distant regions, and links it to the Government's wider youth-focused agenda for 2026.

Background & context

Yuva Sangam is not a standalone scheme — it is the youth-exchange arm of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat (EBSB), the national-integration programme launched on 31 October 2015 on Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. EBSB's organising idea is "pairing": each State/UT is matched with a partner State/UT for a sustained, year-round exchange across language learning, culture, traditions, tourism, cuisine, sport and administrative best practices. The aim is to convert the constitutional ideal of unity in diversity into lived, repeated contact between citizens of different regions rather than a one-off event.

Yuva Sangam carries that pairing logic into the higher-education system. It is anchored by the Ministry of Education and implemented through Higher Education Institutions — the IITs, IIMs, IISERs, NITs and central universities — which act as the nodal centres that recruit, select and chaperone the travelling cohorts. The target group is youth aged 18–30 years: enrolled students, plus volunteers of the National Service Scheme (NSS) and the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS), and young professionals outside formal campuses. By routing the exchange through premier institutions, the programme both lends logistical credibility and exposes participants to campuses they might otherwise never visit.

The programme has run since early 2023 and has grown phase on phase. Its design is explicitly tied to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which champions experiential and multidisciplinary learning; Yuva Sangam operationalises that by linking classroom knowledge with direct, real-world exposure to another region's society and economy. Each successive phase has widened the geographic coverage — from a North-East focus at the start toward a near-pan-India footprint — and steadily raised registration volumes, making it one of the larger youth-mobility efforts run out of the education system.

How it works in practice is worth spelling out, because the mechanics are exactly what Prelims tests. EBSB pairs each State/UT with a partner; within Yuva Sangam, a nodal HEI in one State recruits a cohort and sends it to the paired host State, where a counterpart institution hosts the visit. A tour is built around the experiential dimensions the release foregrounds — tourism, traditions and heritage, the host region's development model, people-to-people connect, and exposure to local institutions and technology — so that a single week exposes a participant to the host region's society, economy and everyday culture rather than a narrow tourist itinerary. Selection is handled by the nodal HEIs themselves, with an explicit instruction to keep gender, disciplinary and regional representation balanced, which is what allows off-campus youth and NSS/NYKS volunteers to compete alongside enrolled students.

It helps to place Yuva Sangam in the family of EBSB activities it belongs to. EBSB runs along several tracks — school and college-level cultural twinning, language-learning exchanges, tourism and cuisine festivals between paired States, and administrative best-practice sharing. Yuva Sangam is the higher-education youth-mobility track of that family; it is the most travel-intensive component because it physically relocates cohorts for a week. Compared with a purely cultural festival or a language-card initiative, Yuva Sangam's distinguishing feature is the structured, multi-day immersion delivered through the credibility and logistics of premier institutions, which is why the IITs and IIMs are central to it.

For Prelims

• What it is: Yuva Sangam — a youth-exchange programme of inter-State exposure tours, anchored by the Ministry of Education and implemented through Higher Education Institutions.
• Umbrella programme: Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat (EBSB), launched 31 October 2015 on Rashtriya Ekta Diwas (Sardar Patel's birth anniversary); EBSB pairs States/UTs for sustained engagement.
• Eligibility: ages 18–30 — students (UG and PG), NSS and NYKS volunteers, and young professionals, including off-campus youth.
• Phase-VI (2026): registrations 2–25 March 2026; 22 States/UTs; 22 HEIs as nodal centres; 5–7-day exposure tours to a paired host region.
• Nodal institutions (examples): IIT Tirupati–IISER Pune, IIT Delhi, IIT Bhilai, MNIT Jaipur, IIT Ropar, IIM Jammu, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Shillong, IIT Indore, IIM Lucknow, IIM Ahmedabad, NIT Rourkela.
• Pillars of exchange (from EBSB): language, culture, traditions, tourism, cuisine, sports, and best practices — the dimensions along which paired States engage.
• Policy alignment: NEP 2020 (experiential learning) and, for 2026, the "Yuva Shakti-driven" Union Budget 2026-27 and the Viksit Bharat @2047 vision.

The full phase set (so "which phase did what" survives):

• Phase I (2023): North-East focus — 29 tours across 21 States/UTs, 1,178 delegates.
• Phase II (2023): 23 States/UTs, 20 tours, 900+ youth.
• Phase III (Nov 2023–Jan 2024): ~30,000 registrations, ~1,000 selected, 22 States/UTs.
• Phase IV (Feb–May 2024): ~45,000 registrations in 10 days (a 267% rise over Phase I), 25 States/UTs, 21 tours.
• Phase V (Nov–Dec 2024): 15 tours, 686 youth.
• Phase VI (2026): registrations 2–25 March 2026, 22 States/UTs, 22 HEIs as nodal centres.

Why it matters

The problem Yuva Sangam addresses is a familiar one in a country of India's scale: young people often form impressions of distant regions through media and stereotype rather than direct contact, which can harden into regional and linguistic distance. By moving cohorts physically between paired States and embedding them in another region's campuses, homes, cuisine and civic life for a week, the programme tries to build the kind of first-hand familiarity that abstract "national integration" messaging cannot. The early North-East focus is telling — the programme was used to bridge the perceived gap between the North-East and the rest of the country in both directions.

It also has an education-policy payoff. NEP 2020 asks the system to move beyond rote classroom learning toward experiential, multidisciplinary exposure; a structured inter-State tour is a concrete way to deliver that without rebuilding curricula. Routing the programme through HEIs gives it institutional spine and lets premier institutions extend their reach to off-campus youth and NSS/NYKS volunteers. The sharp jump in registrations — roughly 1,178 delegates in Phase I to about 45,000 registrations within ten days by Phase IV — signals genuine demand among young people for low-cost, curated travel and exchange, which is itself a useful data point on youth aspiration and mobility.

For 2026 specifically, the programme sits inside a broader youth-and-skilling push. The Union Budget 2026-27 has been framed as "Yuva Shakti-driven," with proposals such as five University Townships, a High-Powered "Education to Employment and Enterprise" Standing Committee, AVGC (animation, visual effects, gaming, comics) Content Creator Labs across thousands of schools and colleges via the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies in Mumbai, and new astronomy/astrophysics facilities. Yuva Sangam is one of the people-facing pieces of that agenda, all of it linked to the Viksit Bharat @2047 framing of a young, mobile, nationally-integrated workforce.

For Mains