Mirwais from Bamyan Is Learning to Answer One Question: What Does a City Owe the People Who Live in It?
Mirwais is from Bamyan, Afghanistan. He studies Bachelor of Planning at COEP Technological University in Pune. And today his professor started the lecture with a question that he is still turning over in his mind hours later.
What does a city owe the people who live in it?
Clean water. Roads that connect communities to each other. Enough housing for a growing population. Public spaces that belong to everyone. Transport systems that do not exclude the poor. Sanitation that protects health. Schools and hospitals positioned where the people who need them actually live.
These are not abstract ideals. They are the technical outputs of urban planning : the discipline Mirwais chose when he looked at Bamyan and decided that what it needed was not just buildings, but the systems that make a city liveable for all of its people.
Bamyan and the Question of the City
Bamyan is one of Afghanistan's most historically significant provinces. The Bamyan Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its ancient history, its dramatic landscape, its position on the old Silk Road routes : all of this gives Bamyan a cultural depth that few places in the world can match.
But Bamyan is also a city that has grown under pressure without the planning infrastructure to manage that growth well. Like many Afghan cities, its population expanded rapidly during periods of displacement and conflict, when people from rural areas moved toward the relative safety of urban centres. The city's water systems, road networks, housing stock, and public services struggled to keep pace with a population growing faster than the infrastructure designed to support it.
Mirwais grew up watching this gap. He saw what it looked like when a city grew without being planned : informal settlements without proper sanitation, roads that became impassable in wet seasons, water that was available in some neighbourhoods and unreliable in others. He also saw, from a young age, that these were not problems of poverty alone. They were problems of design. Of planning. Of the decisions made : or not made : about how a city was supposed to work.
He decided he wanted to be one of the people who made those decisions properly.
What Urban Planning Actually Is
Urban planning is the discipline that governs how cities grow, change, and function. It sits at the intersection of architecture, engineering, social science, economics, and law. Planners decide where roads go, where water mains are laid, where housing is permitted, where parks and public spaces are located, how transport networks connect different parts of a city, and how land use is managed over time as a city evolves.
A Bachelor of Planning is a four-year undergraduate degree that covers all of these domains. The curriculum includes urban design theory, infrastructure planning, geographic information systems for mapping and spatial analysis, land use law and regulation, environmental planning, housing policy, transport planning, and community engagement. Students learn both the technical skills : how to read and produce site plans, how to analyse demographic data, how to model infrastructure capacity : and the broader policy and governance frameworks that determine how planning decisions are made and implemented.
At COEP Technological University in Pune, the planning program is taught in a city that offers a live classroom. Pune is one of India's most rapidly growing cities, with ongoing challenges in housing, transport, water management, and urban expansion. The planning problems that Mirwais studies in his lectures are visible from the campus boundary. The gap between theory and application in urban planning at COEP Pune is unusually small.
COEP Technological University and the Planning Program
COEP Technological University is one of India's oldest engineering and technology institutions, established in 1854. It has expanded over its history to include planning, architecture, and other disciplines alongside its core engineering programs. The Bachelor of Planning at COEP is accredited and recognised as a professional planning degree.
The planning faculty at COEP includes practitioners : people who have worked on real urban development projects in Pune and across Maharashtra : alongside academics. The projects assigned to students draw from real planning challenges: land use studies of actual Pune neighbourhoods, transport corridor analyses of real road networks, housing needs assessments based on actual demographic data. Students are not working on invented case studies. They are working on the real city around them.
For Mirwais, who came from Bamyan specifically to learn how to address real urban challenges in a real Afghan city, this proximity to practice matters. He is not studying planning as an abstraction. He is studying it as a set of tools that he will eventually apply to specific problems in a specific place.
How He Found fn.mahacet.org
Mirwais did not find Bachelor of Planning at COEP through an agent or a recommendation from someone who had been through the process. He found it by searching fn.mahacet.org : the Government of Maharashtra's official Foreign Candidate Registration Portal, operated by the State Common Entrance Test Cell, Government of Maharashtra.
The portal is a direct government platform for processing international student admissions across Maharashtra's 6,000+ institutions. It covers courses ranging from engineering and medicine to planning, education, hotel management, pharmacy, and more. Every program listed on the portal is verified by the state government.
Mirwais used the search filters on the portal. He selected Bachelors under the Applying For field. He selected Bachelor of Planning under Course Name. He selected Planning under Specialization. COEP Technological University appeared in the results as an available institution. He read the program details. He added it to his preferences. He submitted his application directly through the portal.
No agent was involved at any stage. No private consultant was paid. No third-party website was used. Just Mirwais, the government portal, and his academic documents.
The Application : What It Required
The Bachelor of Planning program at COEP, like all programs on fn.mahacet.org, follows a clear application process for Foreign National Students.
Mirwais registered on fn.mahacet.org and used the category checker at fn.mahacet.org/category-check to confirm his eligibility as a Foreign National Student. This step is free and takes a few minutes. It confirms which category of international student the applicant falls under before any fees are paid.
For Bachelor of Planning, the academic requirement for international students is a passed 12th grade examination with Mathematics as a compulsory subject, along with at least two additional subjects from a relevant list including Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Electronics, Information Technology, Biology, Informatics Practices, Biotechnology, Agriculture, Engineering Graphics, Business Studies, or Entrepreneurship. A minimum of 45 percent aggregate marks in these subjects is required.
Mirwais had Mathematics as a compulsory subject in his 12th grade. His additional subjects met the requirement. His aggregate marks exceeded 45 percent. He had what the portal required.
He uploaded his documents: passport, 12th grade academic certificates, and a passport-size photograph. He paid the eligibility fee of USD 50 through the CCAvenue payment gateway on the portal : foreign currency is accepted. After his documents were verified and his eligibility was confirmed, he paid the processing fee of USD 1,150. Both amounts are fixed, government-regulated, listed clearly on fn.mahacet.org before any payment, and non-refundable.
No entrance exam was required. International students applying through fn.mahacet.org for Bachelor of Planning are exempt from MHT-CET and any other Maharashtra state examination. This is confirmed in the MHT-CET 2026 Information Brochure, which states explicitly that Foreign National Students, NRI, OCI, PIO, and CIWGC candidates are exempted from appearing for MHT-CET.
His offer letter arrived through the portal. On arrival in India, he completed FRRO registration within 14 days as required. Physical verification of his original documents took place at COEP. The process from first search to walking onto campus was guided, structured, and direct.
What the Professor's Question Actually Means
The question Mirwais' professor asked today : what does a city owe the people who live in it : is not a philosophical opener. It is the central question of urban planning as a discipline and a profession.
Different planning traditions answer it differently. Some prioritise economic efficiency: the city owes its residents the infrastructure that enables economic activity and growth. Others prioritise equity: the city owes its most vulnerable residents the same access to services as its most privileged. Others prioritise sustainability: the city owes future residents a built environment that does not consume more than it can sustain. Most contemporary planning tries to hold all three in tension simultaneously, which is where most of the difficulty lives.
For Mirwais, the question has a specific Afghan inflection. Afghanistan is a country where cities have grown dramatically without the planning capacity to manage that growth, where basic infrastructure is unevenly distributed, where informal settlements exist alongside formal planned neighbourhoods, and where the rebuilding of urban systems is one of the central challenges of the country's future.
What does a city owe the people who live in it? For Mirwais, the answer starts with the basics: water that is clean and reliably delivered. Roads that connect communities to schools, hospitals, and markets. Public spaces that are genuinely public. Housing that is safe. Planning that treats every resident of the city as someone the city is actually for.
He is at COEP Pune learning the technical skills to deliver those basics. fn.mahacet.org made the course accessible. The question his professor asked this morning made clear why the course matters.
His Message to Afghan Students Considering Planning
Mirwais' message to Afghan students interested in urban planning is practical and direct.
Planning is not a well-known course in Afghanistan. Most students who are interested in contributing to urban development think about civil engineering or architecture. Planning sits alongside both but is different from both. It operates at the scale of the city rather than the scale of the building or the structure. If you are interested in how cities work as systems : not just how individual buildings are designed or individual roads are built, but how all of it fits together and serves the people living in it : then planning is the discipline.
To find the Bachelor of Planning program on fn.mahacet.org, open the portal and select Bachelors under Applying For, then Bachelor of Planning under Course Name. The portal will show you which institutions in Maharashtra offer this program, including COEP Technological University in Pune. Apply directly. No agent is needed. The fees are fixed and listed before you pay. The academic requirement is 12th grade with Mathematics as a compulsory subject and a minimum of 45 percent aggregate.
The professor's question is a good one to sit with while you decide. What does a city owe the people who live in it? If that question interests you, fn.mahacet.org is the starting point.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Bachelor of Planning at COEP Pune require an entrance exam for international students?
No. International students applying through fn.mahacet.org for Bachelor of Planning are not required to sit MHT-CET or any other entrance exam. Admission is based on 12th grade marks with Mathematics as a compulsory subject and a minimum of 45 percent aggregate. The portal fees are USD 50 eligibility and USD 1,150 processing, both fixed and listed before payment.
What are the 12th grade subject requirements for Bachelor of Planning through fn.mahacet.org?
For Bachelor of Planning, the 12th grade requirement is Mathematics as a compulsory subject, plus at least two subjects from: Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Electronics, Information Technology, Biology, Informatics Practices, Biotechnology, Agriculture, Engineering Graphics, Business Studies, or Entrepreneurship. A minimum aggregate of 45 percent in these subjects is required. These requirements are listed on fn.mahacet.org under the Bachelor of Planning course details.
Ready to apply?
Maharashtra is India's most connected state for international students. 6,000+ institutions. Every confirmed program. One government-backed portal. No agents. No middlemen.
Apply now at fn.mahacet.org/ : the official Government of Maharashtra portal.
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