Getsetgo,
Change is good but when you are changing the system why stop half way, why not go all the way? There is no educational requirements either in the FAA system or JAA. All it requires is that you can read, write and understand english language (Now its a different story whether you speak Queens english, Yank, Indian, EU, SE Asia or even OZ english).
The problem that I see is with these arbitrary ruling. There are unemployed local co-pilots in the market; DGCA has recently brought in a ruling that no more expat FOs from June onwards; so why lower the educational qualification now? Its not that there is shortage of co-pilots and we cannot find 10+2 (with maths and science) candidates !!!
Another arbitrary rule is not renewing the RTs? What ground do they have for not recognising the foreign RTs? May be they should look in to why people go abroad to do their RTs rather than stopping the conversion. The syllabus is archiac, the questions in the transmission are out of sequence and during viva they ask questions out of their a**es. Yes, I hold Indian RT and after 13 years I still do not see the relevance between RT licence and telling the wa*ker what the diffence was in PAL/NTSC or how exactly TV worked!!!
DGCA is lacking in so many areas that they need a complete makeover. Perhaps they should learn from JAA (reduce some bureaucracy ) and than move on to FAA to eliminate it further.