Department for Scientific Education and Excellence of Switzerland

The Department for Scientific Education and Excellence of Switzerland is the purported sponsor of the international scholarship at the center of one of Ayyan Mani’s most consequential inventions: a newspaper report claiming that his ten-year-old son had been selected for a month in Geneva. The novel gives the institution no independently verified role; its significance lies in the authority its name lends to Ayyan’s manufactured story of Aditya Mani’s exceptional talent.

The institution in the newspaper report

A Marathi daily, Yug, reports that Aditya has been selected by the Department for Scientific Education and Excellence of Switzerland for a one-month scholarship in Geneva. According to the article, he took a written test intended for students under sixteen; more than five hundred twelfth-standard students sat the screening, and the sixth-standard boy was the sole selection. The report presents the scholarship as an opportunity to spend a month with leading scientists and gives Aditya an aspirational public voice, saying he wants to understand the universe better. These details make the department appear to be a formal international authority capable of certifying the extraordinary child the article describes.

A claim met with skepticism

The report does not stand as independent confirmation of the department’s existence. When Ayyan shows it to Arvind Acharya, Acharya reads the Marathi story, recognizes Aditya as Ayyan’s son, and asks why English-language newspapers have not reported the selection. He also says he did not know of a Department of Science Education in Switzerland. Ayyan replies that there is one, but the exchange leaves the institution’s status unresolved: its presence in the narrative is mediated by the report and Ayyan’s insistence, not by corroborating information about its operations or officials.

A credential in Ayyan’s fabrication

The scholarship claim gives Ayyan’s account the shape of an official achievement. It supplies a named foreign organization, a competitive examination, a numerical field of contestants, and a prestigious destination—specifics that make the supposed recognition easier to circulate and harder to dismiss at a glance. Ayyan buys all ten available copies of Yug, then brings the report home to show Oja Mani; the limited local print run becomes something he can personally multiply among the people around him.

Acharya’s response extends the report’s reach beyond the household. Though puzzled, he calls the story brilliant and tells Ayyan to bring Aditya to the Institute on Monday. The supposed department thus helps convert a newspaper claim into an apparent credential that attracts attention from a senior scientist, without the novel establishing that the Swiss body itself has assessed or selected the boy.

Narrative significance

The department belongs to the rise of Aditya’s fabricated genius persona, not to a confirmed scholarship history. Later, Ayyan recognizes that the myth has gone too far and ends it because he fears the boy will be harmed by the part he has been made to play. In that reversal, the scholarship’s institutional prestige is exposed as part of the machinery of the hoax: its name can make a story look certified, but cannot make the story true. The contrast also sharpens the distance between the imagined international future advertised in the report and the constrained educational prospects Ayyan later foresees for his son.