From the Archives- My 150th post

(Why have I chosen this article to showcase my previous articles, simply because I have made up my mind to execute it... its a race against time and odds, lets see if I am able to make it or not)

An Indian Fulbright Commission

“The Fulbright Commission aims to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.”
- Senator J William Fulbright

Fulbright Commission is a fabulous experiment… it provides study grants to students for pursuing studies in different social and cultural settings. Thus it is helping US students to study in- say Egypt, India, China or even Ethiopia… and is also helping students of other countries of- say India, Spain, Turkey or even Mozambique... to study in the US.

What the program does in turn is something very revolutionary… it promotes a strong cross-cultural understanding… it helps in promoting the idea of the United States all around the globe… and helps the US in learning from other socio-politico and cultural milieus.

Till date I have met three Fulbright scholars… two were from the US studying in Egypt… and one was a Spanish who is studying in the US. I am yet to meet an Indian Fulbright scholar… but I am told that there are lots of luminaries who have been Fulbright scholars… one name that comes to my mind is that of former CM of Karnataka S M Krishna.

Great initiative, one might say.

What the Fulbright does not do, however, is to give opportunity to Indians to travel to other places than the US… to study. So if an Indian wants to study in Tanzania, Columbia or Vietnam… he will have to look for other avenues than Fulbright. Thus… Fulbright is very US centric initiative. It provides opportunity for the Americans to learn from others experiences… and also propagates the idea of the US to others… and if other countries benefit from the initiative… then it is purely incidental.

One may argue… that why would anyone from India like to go and study in God forsaken places- like Ethiopia, Columbia or Vietnam... and what is its utility. I don’t have answers… as of now… but as I always say… different societies are doing different things, successfully… countering different problems in different way, successfully- and some, if not all… such learnings can be utilized in India with some modifications. If we don’t study such models, such initiatives, such efforts… we are shutting ourselves from a vast amount of vicarious learning and probably are going to re-invent the wheel.

A few decades from now, may be just two… when we will really be big, economically and may be politically… playing important role in International forums… we will need to enact our bigness. And mind you, there will be no escape. We will need to formulate opinions on all the world issues… not from an outsider's perspective but from a perspective of those who are deeply involved and deeply concerned. One channel of developing it would be diplomatic missions… another would be business and trade relations… but we will still need to have people to people contact. And for that we will need our scholars to travel to these countries and their scholars to come to our countries. Thereby, and only thereby, will we be able to seize our moment of greatness.

This brings me to my original hypothesis… on the need to create similar such institution for India… an Indian Fulbright Commission. That will sponsor Indians to study in US, Europe and above all... other God forsaken places… so as to have a direct experiential learning from what different societies are doing or have done in different circumstances… and what can India learn from them.

Similarly, it would invite nationals from different countries to come and study in India and share their experiences with Indian students… (Though this would be the second step that will come after the success of the first step).

There are a few more things that I need to clarify…

People may ask why we should have such a body… why can't people just take study loan and go to study… the reason is that often study loan are too steep and repaying them becomes a big headache… thus the candidate who has to repay it… starts dancing to the tune of market forces in order to get the best monetary returns for his studies. Sometimes you just don’t get study loans for such studies… going for MBA, Engineering sounds saleable to banks… but the moment you say Cultural Anthropology or Vietnamese Language… the bank wouldn’t even have a second look at your proposal.

Why only that, one of my friends who was going to study International Studies in Georgetown University had to run pillar to post for getting these loans. Also, studying abroad is not one of the easiest things to do… it involves a lot of forward and backward linkages… say if you want to study in Vietnam… it may involve learning Vietnamese… therefore it is an entire value chain that needs to be catered… and not just the academic fees…

Others might say that there are government scholarships to do such courses abroad... and why not utilize them. Well the only reason is that there are far fewer than required by our country... and are often having strict academic parameter to judge the candidates... little stress is given to life experiences... that is the suitability of candidate to absorb from cross cultural situations.

People will also ask as to how one will fund such a commission… well funding is the least of the problems… Government, of course, can be one such source… but to keep government and political ideologies out of the play, one should tap corporate resource or venture capital for this initiative… the returns for them wouldn’t of course be tangible but if the initiative is successful… then such a philanthropy will earn them vast amount of goodwill. Anyway this initiative doesn’t need much of a capital to start its operation… an initial corpus of say INR 10 crore or USD 2.5 million might be enough… and surely with a booming economy, Indian corporate or some visionary venture capitalist can spare this much.

The process of this initiative however doesn’t stop here… it goes further… it will sponsor Indians to travel and do projects in different countries and communities without any binding of academic courses. It will help Indian graduate students to spend their gap years in different social milieus etc. etc.

This idea is both possible and plausible… it is a vision for the future… of creating a group of scholars who are able to understand cross cultural nuances and set an agenda for India. And if we start today, we might not have to take a knee jerk decision in future towards it.

The idea is open for anybody to work upon, refine and adopt… or else who knows… you might see me with a few like minded people in front of a venture capitalist's office or outside the board room of a high flying corporate entity… armed with a burning desire to shape India of future…