one of the more compelling contemporary politicians in britain foreign secretary boris johnson is increasingly seen as the tories best bet against a resurgent labours jeremy corbyn should there be another midterm general elections educated at eton and oxford boriss late fatherinlaw sir charles wheeler was the bbcs south asia correspondent in delhi in the late 1950s who reported on the 1959 tibetan uprising his motherinlaw dip singh is a sikh from west punjab who migrated to india after partition and his wife marina qc wears her indian identity on her kurta sleeve in this exclusive interview to toi johnson tells naomi canton more indians are visiting the uk than ever before q india clearly wants concessions on visas as part of any future bilateral trade deal with britain what are you doing to progress this incidentally the number of indian students in the uk has dropped from 40000 in 2010 to 19000 in 2016a i must correct you and point out that the number of indian students in the uk continues to rise our most recent figures show a 10 increase in indian students gaining visas and 91 of these applications are successful we want the brightest and best indian students to attend our great universities there is no limit to the number of genuine indian students who can study in britain more and more indian students and young professionals are choosing to go to the uk to further their ambitions showing that britain is open for businesswe provide an excellent visa service in india and i think its important to correct some misunderstandings first more indians are visiting the uk than ever before we know this because we are granting more visas than ever before this year until june we gave nearly 500000 visas to indians an eight per cent rise on the previous year in fact britain issues more visas to indians than any other country in the world apart from chinasecond nearly every indian who applies for a visa gets one 90 of applications are granted in addition we process 99 of applications inside our standard of 15 working days we have 17 visa application centres in india more than anywhere else in the worldthird indians get more uk work visas than all other nationalities combined last year almost 60000 work visas were granted to indian nationals accounting for nearly twothirds of all the uk work visas issued globally the vast majority were tier 2 intracompany transfersq fdi from the uk into india dropped from us78 billion in 20112012 to us14 billion in 20142015 and the uks share in indias global trade went down from 207 in 20132014 to 189 in 20142015 what do you think these figures portenda the uk and india are important investors in one anothers economies instead of taking a snapshot of one year the sustained pattern is what counts over the last 10 years britain has been the biggest investor in india in the g20 during this period