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EDUCATION: FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES
In Death Throes
Indo-US ties are flourishing but an institute set up
to promote bilateral cooperation is dying
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"All
I have got so far are verbal assurances of help from the Indian
Government."
Richard Cohen, Executive
Director, IACIS
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It is widely believed
that this is the best phase in Indo-US relations. The two nations agree
on a broad range of international and bilateral issues. Political, economic
and cultural ties between India and the US have expanded greatly in the
past few years.
But it is easy to forget all this at the Hyderabad-based
Indo-American Centre for International Studies (IACIS). Almost four decades
after it was set up to promote bilateral cooperation, the prestigious
think tank faces closure for want of funds. Says Executive Director Richard
J. Cohen: "All that I have got so far are assurances of help from
the Indian Government." With just enough money to run the centre
for only four more months, Cohen is passing the bowl around for contributions
from NRIs in the US in a last ditch attempt to stall a shut down.
The centre may have faded out in 1996 itself
had it not been for a Ford Foundation grant of $5 million (Rs 23 crore).
In fact, the writing was on the wall much earlier. In the 1980s, the US
Information Agency clamped down on the flow of funds to the centre, then
known as the American Studies Research Centre. But few are prepared to
believe that the tap has gone dry. "Any request for funds is always
greeted with an incredulous response. They feel the US government is always
there to provide funds," explains Cohen.
The executive director is now trying to raise
resources by widening the mandate of the centre to include Indian studies,
thus opening up what was perceived as a club of American academics. It
helps that Cohen is an ardent student of Indian languages. "They
did not have a Sanskrit or Hindi dictionary here, not even a Telugu one,
until I bought them," he recalls. Significantly, Cohen has also relaxed
membership rules to welcome those who want to use the library and documentation
facilities even if they are not scholars in American studies. Also, IACIS
rents out its conference halls and hostel facilities to raise money. It
even proposes to run training courses for those preparing for the GMAT,
GRE and TOEFL examinations.
Yet, all this may not be adequate to raise the
Rs 1.5 crore needed annually to run the impressive facilities on the five-acre
campus with a staff of 60.
To be sure, the low profiles of earlier directors
and exclusivity of membership for American studies specialists kept many
away from using the centre's facilities. Not only that, few people knew
that such an institute existed in India and fewer still visited it. Cohen,
whose relationship with India is 33 years old, too had never visited IACIS
till he took over in 1999. "Many of my colleagues of Indian studies
in the US were also unaware of it," he confesses.
The 17-member IACIS governing council has also
been restructured with greater representation for Indian interests. Its
five-member management board includes, among others, former Indian ambassador
to the US Abid Hussain, software sultan and Satyam Computers chief Ramalingam
Raju and Andhra Pradesh's adviser on information technology, T.H. Chowdhary.
It can only be hoped that the influence
that these people wield will help remove the roadblocks put up by the
US bureaucracy as well as coax rich NRIs to revive the centre before it
slips into oblivion.
--Amarnath K. Menon
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