Higher education is crucial to economic growth. When a nation develops, it usually spends its resources first on school education and then on secondary education. After attaining a particular stage of economic development, it spends more resources on higher education. Most developed economies are top destinations for international higher education, including cross-border higher education. The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on most nations and the impact is being felt across sectors including higher education. Further, even during the pandemic, diplomatic engagements are too active and explicit, implying rearrangement in the existing global order. This article attempts to explore how the economic, technological, and diplomatic factors would play out in the medium and long term and what would be their implication on internationalization of higher education, and more specifically on cross-border higher education.

The Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) is the dominant sector in Assam as compared with the other North Eastern States of India. It is because 61.48 percent of MSMEs units concentrated in Assam and the rest 38.52 percent is located in the rest of the North-Eastern States. The objective of the study was to assess the growth and performance of the MSMEs in Assam from the period of 2010-11 to 2017-18. Secondary data were collected from the various government sources for this analysis. The collected data were qualitatively analyzed and presented in tables, charts, and figures using Microsoft excel. From the study, we found that the growth rate of a number of units of MSMEs, employment, and investment increases by 3.39 percent, 6.76 percent, and 8.83 percent respectively. In this study, compound annual growth rate (CGAR) was used to find out the growth rate of a number of units district-wise. It is found that Chirang district has the highest growth rate of 40.85 percent and Cachar has recorded a negative growth rate of -14.18 percent. The coefficient of variation was also calculated to find out the region-wise growth and performance of MSMEs in Assam and we found that North Assam recorded the highest growth while Cachar has recorded the negative growth rate of units.

Bihar is one of the youngest (demographically) yet economically backward states of India. The majority of its population is of working age but they have very limited employment opportunities within the state; this has resulted in large-scale rural-urban and interstate migration in search of employment and other opportunities such as education and a better way of living. The ongoing Covid19 crisis has negatively affected the Bihari migrants as they were forced to return to their homes in their native places. The current socio-economic situation is quite uncertain and they suffer more. The whole economy is running underutilized. Keeping these facts in view an attempt is made in this study to address the concerns of the economy of Bihar and what are the ways forward to overcome the difficulties as the major objectives.