Most of what is written about gifted children comes from the West. The tests, the frameworks, the examples — almost all of it is built for other countries. That is one of the reasons we built GiftedKids.in: India needs an approach made for India. So it matters greatly that one of the most serious efforts in this field is already Indian.
It is called NIAS-EGT — Education for the Gifted and Talented, run by the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) on the Indian Institute of Science campus in Bengaluru. It is India's national programme for identifying and mentoring gifted children, from birth to 18 years, and it is open to children from every socio-economic background.
What makes it an India-for-India approach
NIAS-EGT does not simply import Western IQ tests. It uses its own Behavioral Rating Nomination Scale (BRNS), detailed case profiles and portfolios of each child, and trains teachers to spot potential. It has even worked to create Indian norms for established tools like the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking and Raven's Progressive Matrices — so the yardstick fits Indian children, not children from somewhere else.
Built for India's diversity — including rural India
What stands out most is who the programme reaches for. As a matter of principle, NIAS does not put very young children, or children from marginalised backgrounds, through standard psychometric tests for identification. Instead, it has built an indigenous model for rural children, where teachers and community members — the people who actually know the child — make the first nominations, and children are understood through observation, interviews, and residential workshops rather than a single exam score.
This is exactly the kind of thinking India needs. A gifted child in a small-town government school, speaking a regional language, will rarely shine on a Western test. That does not mean the gift is not there. It means the instrument cannot see it. NIAS-EGT is trying to build instruments that can.
Visit the NIAS-EGT programme →
How this connects to GiftedKids.in
NIAS-EGT is a national research and mentoring programme. GiftedKids.in is a community and advocacy platform for parents, teachers, and gifted adults. The two are not the same — but they share one belief: that gifted Indian children deserve to be seen, on their own terms, in their own country.
If you are a parent or teacher trying to understand a child who thinks differently, it helps to know that serious, India-rooted work already exists — and that you are not navigating this alone. You may also find our own writing useful, like why so many gifted children are misread, in our founding story, or the quiet challenge of learning to set priorities.
Source & further reading: NIAS — Education for the Gifted and Talented (EGT), National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru. Definition of giftedness referenced by NIAS-EGT is adapted from the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC, 2014).