 He is one of India's premier security analysts and practitioners having been at the IAEA in Vienna as India's permanent representative there. I did we were having a talk upstairs and I since for a very long time we have wanted to make the point that our two countries are moving forward together that the United States is paying great attention to India. I did want to call to his attention as a further example as a further example of our paying attention to India many of you probably saw the report that India has emerged as the fifth most tracked country by the US intelligence community which uses a secret data mining program to monitor worldwide internet data. India is number five. It's number five. We really do care about what you're doing and you're moving up on that list. You don't want to move up to the top because Iran's got Iran's at the top but nevertheless we might actually after our education discussion we might want to ask him about some of these other issues. He did give a very important talk yesterday at Carnegie owned as India have a nuclear future. Of course we would like to ask him whether America has a nuclear future with India which is I think the issue surrounding the liability issue. We were actually talking about that upstairs but we'll keep this on higher education at least at least at the beginning. So okay let me also where is Mrs. Sreenivasan. Leica. Mrs. Sreenivasan is here. Welcome to you. Welcome back to Washington. Had many wonderful occasions at your home and we all delighted to see you here. Okay let me let me do a little bit of sort of setting up the discussion this afternoon about higher education because it is increasingly one of the key elements of the US-India relationship. Ambassador Neera Pamaral recently said that she saw energy and education as being the two highest priorities for our countries right now. Prime Minister Singh and President Obama launched the Obama Singh 21st century knowledge initiative. We just had last month the Minister for Human Resource Development aka education and other matters. Mr. Raju here in Washington to discuss US-India education collaboration. In preparation for and Molly T's from the State Department knows this very well better than probably virtually anyone else in the room as part of the strategic dialogue on June 24th with Secretary Kerry there will be the higher education dialogue. The third iteration second of the dialogue and then there was the summit so that will be taking place in New Delhi. In February Terrison and shine the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs went to New Delhi to participate in an international seminar on community colleges. Something that Mark Brunner with Senator Warner knows very much about. They've been leaders on that on that subject from Capitol Hill. Minister Raju when he was here he talked about his vision for his ministry's policy for the current five year plan. And just so you will know the range of issues that the minister is focusing on his objectives include improving the quality of education through training teachers and enhancing curriculum that would be obvious. Ensuring that disadvantaged groups and women have access to education including the use of technology in the classroom and increasingly important component of what we're trying to do with education and increasing the number of skills training programs. He aims to open 200 community colleges in the coming year in India through the national vocational education qualifications framework. He intends to impart India's youth with the skills needed in emerging markets and with a globally accepted standard. So there is a framework for the Indian government pursuing these education initiatives. And even though you are higher education if people did not notice the report that according to UNESCO who has just released a report India has made the most progress of any country in the world in elementary education says India has made the largest progress in absolute terms of any country in the world reducing out of school children numbers from 20 million to in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2006. So across the board the whole question of education in India is getting attention. So I am delighted that my friend Sreen has expanded his portfolio as I said to include the education beat. We have included out here on the table is his bio. Let me just very quickly call attention to his service not only before his retirement in 2004 at the IAEA in Vienna but he served 37 years. He doesn't look like he served 37 years. How did you do that? He started at the age of 10. Is that right? 37 years in the Indian Foreign Service. Deputy Chief of Mission here in Washington from 1997 through 2000 with Ambassador Nora Chandra and that's where we were able to very closely collaborate for four years during those during the second term of the Clinton administration. He's been high commissioner to Kenya. Also our past crossed at the United Nations when he was deputy perm rep at the UN. He has been Ambassador to Fiji. He's been assigned to Tokyo Thimpu, Yangon, all of these places. So what do you do when you've had 37 years of experience? You write a book, right? And what do you entitle your memoirs? Well, this is his book. Words, words, words. Adventures in diplomacy. Highly recommend this book. A great account by a great diplomat and a great friend. He is, by the way, he's been on so many speaking engagements. He has told me that he is going to do a new book entitled talk, talk, talk. Did you know you were gonna do that? I got the idea now. Okay. Okay, I think I've got the idea, which is to say thank you, Ambassador Srinivasan, vice chancellor for being here. We like to turn to you now for your remarks about higher education. And then we will open this up for discussion. Srinivasan, thank you very much. I'm here basically because Rick is here. So that's the only reason I'm here because I came here last year also to see him after he assumed this new responsibility. And as he said, we go back a long time to the UN days when both of us were deputy government representatives in New York. And this was long before he became Mr. India. He came to be known as Mr. India. And in his room, there is a cartoon, which many of you may have noticed. This was the time when Inder Gujral was the prime minister. So somebody is saying, are these brothers Inder Gujral and Inder Farth? And this cartoon was shown to Prime Minister Gujral and he wrote on it, who knows? So after that, again, when we were together here, we had very interesting things to do. So it's basically a pilgrimage for me to come and see him every year at least. And this time when I offered to speak at the Vadawani chair, I offered many subjects of nuclear issues, India, China, Japan or whatever. And I said, I mentioned also higher education because since I've been higher education for at least one year maybe, and he's quickly took that as the topic. And the reason I'm sure why it is so, because he knows my views on all other subjects on earth. It is education only that I have not spoken in his presence, so he might have wanted to know what my sixth face is, because I say sixth face because when he was giving me a farewell at the State Department, he said he had noticed five faces of Srinni, he said. I'm not going to recount that, but so this is the sixth face next time when you speak. So that is why I'm here and so I have no great expertise on the subject. I have been in this field only for about a year and a half. And also I'm not in the national arena dealing with education in a state, an important state, small state, but on this field of education, Kerala has been in the forefront in many ways, and of course literacy and various other things. And education as you know is both a central subject as well as a state subject in the Constitution. And that the division is not all that very clear as to what we can do and what they can do. It's a very comprehensive kind of cooperation between the state and the center. So I have been focusing more on what we could do in Kerala itself. And my effort has been to identify the urgent needs of higher education in Kerala specifically and the ways to meet them. When the Chief Minister of Kerala asked me to take up this job, I asked him myself, how come? What have I done to qualify for this? And then he said that I want someone who has seen education around the world. He said the problem is that we do not have a global view. Because I didn't tell him that when I was in Washington, I was not in George Washington or not in Maryland. I was not even looking at education at all. But that was the rational that he offered that we needed somebody who had a global view of education. So I have been trying to justify it in various ways. And so I have just begun my work on internationalization of education, which is one of the points that Mr. Palamraj mentioned here, because that is one of the one of the objectives. And so what we have done is the Kerala government has recently constituted an international relations group, which I chair, which acts as a catalyst and coordinator for all the universities. There is collaboration already existing between these universities and foreign universities. So we have just started to put it all together as to how many exchange programs we have, how many students we have internationally, and what are the deficiencies, what are the openings, and specifically about three or four countries we have identified, United States being the first, then UK, then Singapore, Malaysia, you know, couple of developing countries also. And the Kerala government has recently constituted this group. And these universities already have several tie-ups with foreign universities. And one of them, the Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, is part of my project, BEEP, has a project under the Obama Singh Initiative. This is the only project that we have in Kerala under that. We have students from various countries, including the US, and our own teachers and students do have opportunities to study and research abroad. We would like to see these expanded considerably, even as the bills pertaining to foreign collaboration are pending in the Indian Parliament. That's a big question as to when this particular bill will be passed, because there are so many vested interests, so many prejudices, et cetera. And so it has been there for some time. And often on, it comes up, some discussion, and it again goes back on to the back burner. But even pending that, there are possibilities, there are areas in which universities can collaborate. Specifically with the US, the exchange of Fulbright scholars has tripled. I think Rick himself was a Fulbright scholar in Scotland, he said. And we are in touch with the US consulate in Chennai to explore new avenues in this regard. I come across a number of Fulbright scholars who come to Kerala. The most recent one was Professor Behagat from the National Defense University, whom I'm meeting tomorrow. And then two schemes you have recently drawn up, you have identified for further action together with the US, are India study programs in various universities to enable US students to spend a semester or more in Kerala, and a masters program specifically meant for American students. In these schemes, particular emphasis placed on Kerala, history, culture, fine arts, indigenous medicine, martial arts, et cetera, for which there is a demand. Which will fit into the India studies program of the universities. And this is where we have the biggest impediment, or shall we say, biggest issue, is how to convince American universities that these are areas in which you can provide the kind of training education, which will fit into the pattern of education here. In the sense that the credits transferred, how that curriculum is formed, how much of it will be useful for job seekers in the United States. And that is a hard job. I have been talking to a couple of universities on this, and they are very, very strict about these standards. If I just tell them you can come and do Ayurveda or alternate medicine in Kerala, they're not very convinced. They would like to know what you will teach, curriculum, et cetera. And that is a process that we are going through. We expect to have these courses begin in the next academic year, provided we get enough takers from the United States. With special facilities in the academic campuses, because we know that these facilities are not adequate at the moment. It's one of the problems that we have in most universities. We don't have the kind of hostels, the kind of food that we can provide to, you know, sophisticated pallets. And that is a problem. And we hope that India-U.S. collaboration education gathers momentum. The universities in Kerala will play an active role. So that is my the limited kind of work that we are doing in this area. And moving on to the national scene, we have been following closely the development of education as an important part of our strategic partnership. And that is very significant. As reflected in the Education Summit in 2011, Mr. Palam Raju's recent visit to Washington, and the expected exchanges in the forthcoming dialogue in New Delhi. As two knowledge-based economies, I think that is one thing which common among between us. We have worked together in education even in the old days of the Cold War. More students came to the United States than they went to Soviet Union, for example. So it was not an ideological problem at all. We have always had close and intimate collaboration. And if you look at the academics of Indian origin in the United States, you will find quite a few of them who had their basic education in India. But with the opportunities they had in the United States, they blossomed into great scholars and academics. So the credit that we take for it is, of course they say that these people, if they had remained in India, they would not have been such great scholars. The answer is but also their basic education was important. The fact that they could absorb the opportunities in the USA. So we may have done something right. So I don't subscribe to the view, general view in India that our higher education is in shambles. I do not share that view. And that view has emerged because of the ranking system. We can probably discuss it. We have the time. And everybody, including the Prime Minister, laments every time he makes a speech saying that we are not on the list on any of these lists of 200 or 300 or even 400. How come? What's happening? What's happening? This question is raised all the time. I've gone into this a little bit, but I'm not touching upon it now. But the presence of this vast cadre of brilliant academics of Indian origin in the US is testimony to the synergy of the past. And today, of course, it is estimated that about 100,000 Indian students are in the US, not counting the non-resident Indians. You know, people who have come to the United States for the sake of study, often paying their fees, though, all the way through is supposedly about 100,000. And there are only 2,700 Americans. And I said this to the Ambassador yesterday, she said, no, maybe it's a little more now. It's about 4,000, she said. But the figures that I saw somewhere was 2,700 in India. And they are only doing short courses. They don't come for degree courses, but they come for short, interesting courses like Sanskrit or Ayurveda or whatever. So the full potential for collaboration can be realized only by the identification of complementarities in the two systems. And that, I think, is what is the exercise which is taking place. The long history of interaction between the academics of the two countries, and the presence of the large Indian American community in the US, together with the language advantage, because if we went to China, we would not be able to talk to them as much as we can talk to you, though we speak our own version of English, but at least we have that advantage. So the presence of the Indian American community, the language advantage, and the identification of complementarities in both these two sides should lead to greater collaboration between India and the United States in the field of education. And I'm one of those who feel committed and also feel encouraged by this potential. We have an eminent educationist in Kerala, Dr. Rajput Shankar Nair, who has been giving some attention to international collaboration. He's our main man in the Kerala University. And after I came here, I sent him a message and I said, is there something that you would like me to say? And he said something very interesting, which I thought I'll read out to you. So he took an image from the oil industry, talking about India-US Collaboration Education. He says, whereas the US possess an excellent knowledge refinery in its university system, India has immense crude material. And it's what he calls human resource with great potential that awaits to be made the fuel of economic progress in the world. So I thought it was a very good imagery. So you have the refinery and we have the crude. What we need to do is to refine it and present it to the world. That was an interesting one I should share with you. And he also said the Indian University system is waking up from its lumber and positioning itself to leverage this. And so it's an opportunity and the stage is set and the willingness is there on both sides. So the mutuality of this endeavor is beyond question. The needs of India have been identified. So in this process of dual what we can offer, what you can offer, our needs are fairly clear in the many reform reports available. And my responsibility is basically reform. I have no administrative responsibilities in higher education. My job is basically to see whether something new can be done. So we endeavor constantly to get our universities to the level of world-class universities listed in world rankings. But more importantly, education in India aims at four things which our leaders always mentioned. Expansion, equity, excellence, and employability. The four E's, which we are trying to get. We have accomplished expansion to a certain degree. Though we are below many developed countries in enrollment rates. So if you look at enrollment rate, it is around 15. So from an elitist education, we are moving to a mass education. And Kerala is better than the national average, which is about 17%. And the target for 2020 is 30%. And that is really dramatic. When Sibel was here, Minister Sibel was here, he spelt out those numbers. You know, 4,000 more colleges, 1 million more teachers. Anyway, but I'm not a graded fan of expansion beyond what is necessary. And so more than expansion I would, I think we have, it's not the new colleges and new teachers that we want. I think what we need is refinement of the education system. In Kerala's blueprint for higher education reform, which we prepared after the council was formed. Expansion, we have begun to address inadequacies in what? Inadequacy in infrastructure, one of the main problems. Inadequacies of use of technology is not even 15% access to the internet. Then inadequacies in industrial linkages with the academia and internationalization. So specific recommendations have been drawn up by my council on all these five or six issues. And we already submitted reports to the government of Kerala on all these aspects on infrastructure, on technology, we have started what is called IT at colleges program. Training of teachers, we are setting up a faculty institute. Research, we are giving a lot of importance. For the first time, Kerala has decided to give autonomy to colleges. We never had autonomous colleges in Kerala before. Then we have a specific plan for industrial linkages and also, as I said, internationalization. So on each of these, what I did was, because I couldn't, I didn't know any of these. So I appointed experts in each of these areas. And we have submitted reports and the government is in this, in different stages of implementing our recommendation. So we have decided to establish autonomous colleges for the first time to set up a state accreditation and assessment council because we now have a national accreditation and assessment council. But the University grants commission has recommended that there should be multiple bodies who do that. Of course, because, so now Kerala will, for the first time in India, one of the states will have an accreditation body. The national is called NAC and we call it SAC, National and State. And that is in the finalized final stage of being set up. Together with, but of course, this will supplement and complement the national assessment rather than that. But we have given some new criteria. We have taken the national criteria and with that we have added some criteria of our own, which is special for Kerala situation. Again, that we can discuss if you are interested because the Kerala system is somewhat different from the traditional education system because we have what are called aided colleges where the salaries are paid by the government but managed by private. They are not private universities. They are as good as government but managed by private. So there are certain things that we have to do in terms of, you know, criteria relating to performance because of this particular thing. And also we want to include something with the national accreditation does not do is to judge teachers to provide them incentives and disincentives. I think when Mr. Raju was here, I was told by the State Department today that he mentioned that there has been dramatic increase in the salary of teachers university, which is very true. A university teacher gets as much as the vice chancellor gets. This is because we brought in what is called the UGC scales. But the unfortunate part was UGC scales were given but UGC standards were never adopted. So they thought it was a gift and they took it home but nobody is working harder than before. I started off as a college teacher back in, when was it like she was my student at the time. So my salary was rupees 125, which is today's rate of exchange will be two dollars per month. That's what I drew. And today it is 100 times more. Like all these teachers salary when you join. But are they teaching 100 times better than I did? It's the question. I ask them, I keep asking them. They don't like to answer that. They say, oh, that's a different world altogether. But it must be some relationship. I don't think the prices have risen to 100 times in Kerala since 1966. So that's what I keep telling them that they need to work a little harder. The new more money that they're getting. So what we can do is basically to introduce incentives and disincentives. I keep telling them the American model where the teachers do not know whether they have job when the college closes. The next academic year you don't know, isn't it? But there, once you enter as a lecturer, you will become a professor without any testing on the way, without any evaluation by anyone. And I told them that we'll start introducing annual contracts for you. They smiled. But they, I knew what they would do. They get me out of that place. If I try anything like that, because security of job is a fundamental thing for any Indian. So if I tell them that next year, I keep telling them my son doesn't have a contract for next year. He will only know it in September. They're not impressed at all. I said, we don't want that reform. They say, but we certainly need to bring in incentives and disincentives which we are working on. And this assessment council will probably do that job. Then we are establishing a faculty training institute. At a time in the digital world is challenges, challenges the lecture driven teaching system, we have to embrace technology on a massive scale. And that is very low. Then skills development and job creation should be also a priority for us. So these are the, but I, I spelt it out because if you're looking for what we can do together, we have to see where we can assist in this process. So if you have identified the issues and these are not very different from national issues. Though I'm speaking from my Kerala experience. But the national issues are not very different. They're needless to say the US universities have accomplished most of these infrastructure, no problem, technology, no problem for you teachers training, no problem. So all our issues are, are not your problems at all. And therefore the possibilities of collaboration are endless in my view. Time is not far when American universities will be able to open campuses in India, thus directly educating Indians in India. Think again, Mr. Siebel said here, don't tell us what education you can give us if we come here that we know. But what education can you give us in India? Is the question that he, that he asked, which is, which is a very important question. Because the disparity in income, disparity in expenses, therefore it's important. And I think it was Sam Pitroda who said the other day, in India, you can get a degree for $2,000. Here, here you're $45,000 a year. So you cannot compare. Therefore, we need to think about. Once the bill comes, I'm sure the American University will open their doors in India. Of course, there are difficulties, problems because these universities will not be able to make profit in India. Even if you make profit, you will not be able to take away from India. So who will come is the question that many people ask. But the answer is very, very good. Everybody wants to come. Even before the bill is adopted, people are already looking for campuses, land in India, many American universities. So they are coming not to make money. They're coming for a different reason. Maybe the raw material that Dr. Nair spoke about. And you can institute some refineries and we can get these people out into the, the several university research centers are already operating in Indian cities. Just a few days ago, I met the Columbia representative in Mumbai, who has set up research centers in Mumbai. And actually he's giving those results to Columbia here to understand poverty issues. So that's already happening. And he's not getting any money from India. All his expenditure comes from Columbia. And the results are available to the Indian government who wants it. So, and that is the present stage, but that can move on to a greater stage of collaboration. The polytechnics in India, something called polytechnics in India, were actually modeled on the community colleges. Many people don't seem to remember it. But when I look back, I found that it was on the basis of, we didn't call them community colleges, but they were called polytechnics. But now there is a great emphasis on community colleges, as you may have noticed, in Sibel stocks and Palam Raju's. So, and I think they even went to Montgomery, you know, community college to study the situation there. So, we may, so we already have polytechnics, but the difference between polytechnics and community colleges is there they go after higher secondary. Graduation is not necessary, because it is a diploma course. So when the community colleges, maybe it will lead to a degree and without losing the technical aspects or vocational aspects of it. So, there is a program of expansion of such institutions is on the annual to develop our workforce. The importance of creating job pools is a priority for both India and the U.S. Knowledge networks and that link research institutions in the two countries will be of immense value. International research collaboration now holds the key to competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. And in the 12th plan, 12th five year plan period, which we all keep repeating, this is 2012 to 2017, we have a specific program of allocation of resources. Special efforts will be made to strengthen international research linkages and involve a large number of Indian institutions in forging such links. Such collaboration will leverage the Indian diaspora, which is recognized worldwide as a powerful asset for research, innovation and entrepreneurship. The U.S. experience collaboration between the academy and the industry should be of immense value to India. India would be setting up a body to promote such collaboration in the 5th five year plan. The corporate sector could participate in existing higher education institutions by setting up of institutes offering degrees in specific fields, creating centers of excellence for research and post graduate teaching. Establish teaching training centers to train faculty, then appropriate corporate bodies in the U.S. such as the U.S. India Business Council should be able to work with CII and FICI who are in the field. In Kerala of course we have a big handicap here because we do not have much industry to speak about because of our history of union problems and so on. But now we have a knowledge industry which is very active in Kerala. So we are tapping those resources. So what we are telling them is instead of coming and recruiting our graduates from the campus as a great favor to us and then saying that they are not good enough, so they should tell us what they want five years in advance and then we'll produce those. But provided you put your money where your mouth is. And that is the idea that we are developing. And Narayana Murthy, the Infosys chairman again, so he headed a committee of the Planning Commission on this and he said that higher education can improve only 50% of the outlay for higher education comes from the private sector. That was his recommendation. But one idea I would like to try out here is entirely my own. I don't know whether this is any potential is outsourcing of US higher education to India. If you can outsource so many other things, why not higher education in India? You will smile because you don't know how it will work. But it's worth trying in my view. I think it is an idea whose time has come as Indian educational institutions attain excellence. It will not happen unless our institutions are good enough for you. The IITs in India can match the best institution in the world, for example. Now it is more difficult to get into IIT Delhi than to Yale or Columbia. It's a fact. Some people who don't get IIT come to Yale. So that is a kind of demand there is. So far we have not been able to offer IITs to others because we don't need our own. We don't have enough for ourselves. Two things, medical degrees and IITs. There was no way we could offer it to foreign students. Even now it is a situation. But we are pushing hard to open it up even as a sacrifice in order to get other countries, particularly the U.S., to get interested in outsourcing of education in India. And that will be like IIT graduates from India have had no difficulty getting jobs in the United States. Many engineering and management schools are already attracting foreign students. Like it has happened in the field of health, the availability of equivalent or even better services at lower cost should attract university students to India. This is a bit of a dream, I agree. And the moment it's not possible for two reasons. One, we don't have these seeds to give, which will be a hard job. And the second, it doesn't have that kind of reputation unless you get on to the university ranking system. But in the long run, now today it is a fact that people go for hard surgery to India for cheaper and better service because Nersing, for example, is much better in India than in developed countries. So I believe even insurance companies are now encouraging people to go for treatment. It is already happening. There are institutions like the All India Institute of Medical Science and others where it is called medical tourism. But it's not really tourism. It is a medical pilgrimage, shall we say, whatever it is. So why not have educational pilgrimage or educational tourism to India? It's an idea which I had in mind, but I never expressed it anywhere for fear of being rejected outright. So a strategy for higher education internationalization envisaged in India during the 12th five-year plan would include faculty and student exchange programs, institutional collaborations for teaching and research, and just taking it out of the plan, exposure to diverse teaching learning models and enhanced use of ICT. Globally, compatible academic credit systems, curricular internationalization and process of mutual recognition of qualifications are envisaged. The U.S. as the home of several world-class universities will be able to play a major role in these activities. I have no doubt that these areas will engage the attention of our leaders and planners when education becomes the driving force in the forthcoming strategic dialogue. Thank you very much. Excellent, Trini. Thank you very much. I do think your description of your proposal as educational tourism would probably go down better than calling it outsourcing to India. The word outsourcing has a certain has a certain connotation right now. We want to get away from that debate. So I think tourism, pilgrimage as opposed to outsourcing a better way to describe it. Let's go to questions. And Ray Vickery and I spoke at the beginning that I wanted to call on him because he has to depart for another appointment. So Ray, who has written on the subject of higher education and education in India, you have the floor. Thank you, Annuary. Everything you say in terms of educational opportunity, level of literacy, of course, is absolutely correct. And it can be done anywhere in India. I think it can be done in Kerala. OK. But of course, as you yourself know, the policy framework has to be central. It cannot be. But the good news is that whatever we are thinking of doing, if we just juxtapose it with the central planning programs, you will find that is almost identical. So there is really no conflict between the state's aspirations as well as what the center wants to achieve. Of course, about the university bill, the it is not as bad as you seem to picture it because according to whatever information we have, there are many universities who are willing to come even under those terms for the sake of coming. I don't know, this may be true, may not be true. And one of the reasons why these bills were put up was also to regulate the current system, which is very exploitative. There are many so-called universities leering students and taking them here and there and then finding themselves abandoned. It has happened in several cases. If you go to Sarojini market, you will find so many British and American universities names hanging, boards hanging there saying pay two lakhs of rupees a year and you will become a professor or something like that. So these things happen. So it is not only facilitating but also regulating as one of these. But certainly I also feel that there should be sufficient incentives on the part of foreign universities to come. But certainly the policy of the government of India as it is spelled out in the five year plan document used to entice them to come. And within those thing, whatever we have proposed so far in terms of policy, what we want to do, sake of internationalization, have been accepted by Delhi. There is no real... But we cannot give the kind of guarantee that a bill or an act like that will give to the universities. And that is not in our hands. But I have not seen anything today which prevents or circumscribes the freedom of the states to do what you want in terms of cooperation with foreign universities. So it's not... I don't think it is a problem. But the problem of a national policy on internationalization is not in our hands. We can recommend, we have been doing that. And we have been taking a very, very liberal position on that. And that's already there. But I cannot promise you that we will make a plan and then that will help you to come. That may be difficult for us to do because of our, you know, the structure of our central and state governments. But education is the only area where there is not much of a conflict between the two. That's why I said that was the good news. When everything else, there is a problem between states and the center. But when it comes to education, there is hardly any difference. Follow up on this and then Molly, after that. Basically, I'm from the state of North Carolina from the research triangle park. And we have three great universities there. University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University and Duke. One is greater than the other. He's Duke. And it's not Duke. It's not Duke. It's not NC State that leaves Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill, that's UNC University of North Carolina. NC State is different. It's intimate. They're all good, they're all good. Anyway, last spring, University of North Carolina system had a India-U.S. summit on education. They brought the 16 campuses together to understand what projects, what collaborative studies are going on between the state universities and India. So they came to the conclusion that there are eight. And they basically put me to facilitate a joint initiative between India and U.S. in education. And I like to come to Kerala because I'm from Kerala. And most of the time they go to North India. So I want the big hub for education is in South, actually. And I'm not doing it bad in Kerala, actually. So my point that I'm trying to emphasize is that we have to see what's the value proposition for the U.S. universities and the Indian universities. U.S. universities, as you know, from North Carolina's perspective, the state has got a lot of funds. And the state universities are suffering from getting money from full-paying tuition students. So they look at India as a good opportunity because India, by 2020, will have 50% of its population under the age of 30. Is that right? So there is a big opportunity to bring Indian students to study in North Carolina. So that is the value proposition that North Carolina is looking at. In return, what we are also offering India is that University of North Carolina has a good program on junior faculty training, which we have done in Middle East and also in Europe. And we want to extend that to India. And we are planning to bring 200 junior faculties from India and we have presented a proposal to the minister for human resources on May 14th to see if he would encourage that. And if the funding is not available, we're also working with the World Bank to see if funds can be available. So it has to be a two-way traffic where everybody is benefited. So my point is that, as Srini has said, that universities are coming to India, I don't know how many of them, because I know Duke tried to set up a campus in Delhi and it flopped out because of this issue. Do you have your card? Yes. Can I have it? Do you have your card? Yes. Can I have it? I don't know. You don't have a card? You don't have a card? No, I don't. Srini has come to take his... He knows me. No, seriously. He's come to North Carolina many times. Absolutely. Okay, because... I've agreed. If it can't be North Carolina and India, do North Carolina and Carolina. Do you have a sister state, a brother state? I would like to develop one. Actually, I was in Kerala. Okay, so... So before you come, he comes. Don't wait for me. That's good. But that's a great idea. That's a great idea. But when you said two-way, you only talked about the students coming here and the teachers coming here. Who goes to India? That's what we are bringing junior faculties... To here? To here, to train them, because India needs both capacity and quality. So we need... Which is the two-way in it. Is that we are going to provide training to junior faculty. No, but what I was saying was this balance is the problem of American students not going there. This is 100,000 versus 2,000 faculty. Yeah, I'm... 2,700. I can tell you an example. In North Carolina, we have started an Ayurvedic center. Okay? And they are not... State of North Carolina is giving licensing for Ayurveda. And the Kerala University can meet those requirements and we can send students there for... Yeah, that is attractive to us. Okay. And I'm from North Carolina. I don't know. So if I come. It's part of the two-way. Part of the two-way. Are you? It's the day. Very good, thank you. Molly, would you also introduce yourself? We'll start going around the room now and if you could introduce yourself in your affiliation. Be great. Dr. Molly Tease, Senior Advisor for Education, US Department of State. And of course, as you mentioned, Ambassador Inderforth, I've been working closely on US-India building partnerships. I think so many of the things you say are exactly the things we've been talking about together, music to our ears. I just wanted to build on what you said and then ask a question. I do think exactly right. These kind of state-to-state and city-to-city relationships are really the future. Okay? 10 years ago in India, I was working for the World Bank, worked on polytechnics there for years and basic it. We weren't encouraged to do state-to-state sort of things. It was all national focus, but that's really changed. And what I see is that through these development of relationships with a university system, and then that grows to perhaps the governor and a larger, the community colleges in North Carolina, that's where the deep relationships grow and that's where down the road, if regulations change, then maybe there's interest in establishing more of a presence both ways. It's great to see Mark Bruner here from the state of Virginia. They have done some amazing outreach and I think focusing on a particular state and leveraging the sister cities, for example. There are volunteers and they've got sister university programs, right? So these are longstanding relationships where people have, they know each other already and are willing to extend it often to build in school and university partnerships. You mentioned the India study program idea and I didn't know how that might link as you probably know, we have a large national resource center program called, it's funded by Title VI funding through the Department of Education and it is really funding to make sure that there are enough Americans who understand foreign cultures and languages. It's actually that kind of scholarship how I got through college, studying Hindi through a Flass Fellowship. So there are 10 of these centers around the United States that have incredible libraries, resources, they teach Indian languages and are a great resource maybe to build on for your idea for India studies programs because they've been going on for 50, 60 years. So I'm wondering how you see building up India studies here in the United States and perhaps what we can do to support that. We went by the experience of my Soviet university. One of our IIT professors who did the collaboration with the United States, he came up with this idea actually and he felt that if we offered these then the centers that teach Indian culture and Indian languages here might find it useful to send their students at least for short periods of India. And apparently it worked in- We all have studied abroad in India. Yes, that's fine. That's fine. No, in fact, we are supposed to come up with specific proposals with specific colleges and universities in the US in the next two or three months. Okay, I figured. No, the consulate is also aware that we have been talking. She also runs the Passport to India program. I see. So she, her idea is to get people in there. The DI misdue this morning, I'm sure. The government funding. I worked with the private sector and asked them to reach out exactly what you said brought in the opportunities, the menu of opportunities for America's India. So in addition to humanities. But it's expensive and there aren't that many specific opportunities. So companies like Honeywell, like United Airlines, like Citigroup are providing funding for American students to do that. And the more that go, the more tell their stories and they've really started a. So we gave the opportunities that won't become takers, that's what they mean. Absolutely. And who's managing the funds? So the way the partnerships work is that the funding does not come through the State Department. There's no tax dollars being spent. This is just me matching a company with an institution or program of their choice or many of the people work for that company as interns. For example, the Honeywell Passport to India interns are working at Honeywell in Gurgaon as interns. Fully paid. But United Airlines wanted to join the program. Well, nobody wants to do an internship at the airport at the Indian National Airport at the United, right? So what made sense for them was providing free tickets for students who would like to study abroad in India, but who can't afford it. And they chose to support students at University of Chicago and University of Texas, Austin, Hindi, Urdu flagship program. So students who wanted to go to India for a semester abroad can now go thanks to United Airlines. City Group is actually funding the Columbia University, Columbia Experience Overseas students that you met in Mumbai. And they're another one of our partners. So without the City Group funding from, it was Mr. Pundit's office. The CEO program wouldn't have had students there this year. We're really excited about that group. Short internship at the India or Gandhi International Airport is a better idea. United Airlines, it wasn't there first. What's the place? I'll work on Delta for that. Great airport. It's got a massage for me going on. Thank you so much. Good. Yeah. Great. Please. Thank you. Dear Goya, my question is Mr. Ambassador, first of all, of course, welcome again to Washington. And we all miss you. I'm sure you're even Ambassador in the front. I had asked this question in the White House when former US Secretary of Education, Mr. Bill Bennett was speaking on the US, India education. And my question was that about the, and now he has written a book. I just got an invitation from him next week. He said that I want to invite you for his college worth. That's the name of his new book next week. Same thing we are discussing here. My question is that where do we stand now as far as the Singh Obama Knowledge Initiative was announced and also, of course, also we had a press conference with Mr. Kapil Sibu. They were talking about basically technical education for the masses of India. And I understand that we, like Ambassador Indipati, call about the highest number of school education in India. But still, masses of Indians are lacking the basic education, which now we are in the 65 years of independence. There was a time when people were going for education knowledge and spiritual education and so forth in India from all over the globe. But after that, it was destroyed by a number of invaders by the time where India was invaded by so many. What is the future now for the masses in India? That's the, because education is the key and I'm sure corruption is also playing a major role in India. And unless we control this corruption, then nothing will move. Thank you, sir. Absolutely, you're on right on track. But on the Sing Obama Initiative, maybe she will be able to give us a clearer picture. What I read was 18 projects have been approved, $25,000, $250,000. Obama sings Sing Obama awardees at the Higher Education Dialogue in June. Secretary Kerry and Prime Minister Singh will make those announcements. And our Mahatma Gandhi University is already a partner in one of those projects, I know. But the impression I have about that initiative is it's just the beginning. It's a rather modest program. $5 million from each side. Yeah, I know, it's rather modest considering the kind of requirements on both sides. And when you give the names of your leaders to it, I thought it should be 500 million. Anyway, but that is the only comment I had about that because it needs to have many more resources than that. And the point that you made about basic education and professional skills, I think it's a big issue in India. I keep telling this to my own universities. The point is everybody wants to be a doctor and or an engineer. They cannot think in terms of anything else. So if I go to the college and say that, you know, now you are in the BSc physics class and there's not going to give you any advantage, your education not going to be of any help to you to get a job. But I have these positions of 500 plumbers and 300 welders and 1500 plumbers. Why don't you go for that? Nobody will go. Two reasons. One is there is no dignity of labor in India because we are associated with the caste system and various other things. So if you are a plumber, you should be born a plumber in a plumber's family. And that mentality we have into overcome. And so there'll be no takers for the kind of basic education that Mahatma Gandhi suggested. He said that at that time. Don't produce all these clerks for the British Empire. Educate yourself for skills. But nobody listened to Mahatma Gandhi and nobody listens to me either. So that is one big issue. So what he will do is he will go for his BSc physics, he'll go for MSc physics and then he'll become a plumber because there's no other job available. But he'll be an MSc plumber, you know. So what a national waste to teach him all this physics and chemistry. That is really the issue. And also the salary structure. This easier the job, the better the salary in India. And like here. Here the harder the job, the better salary, I presume. But there we have. Anyway, I tell them that. Whether it is true or not, I tell them, you know, look in America, the harder the job, the better the salary. I keep telling them that. I know it is not true entirely. I'm sure the Vice Chancellor gets more than the woodcutter. But I keep telling them that. But in our case, the easiest job, you will not believe it. There is some system called Payment for Looking in Kerala. Have you heard of this, yeah? For looking. You know how it works? I get a container from the United States. My personal assets come to my house. I mean, just to give you an example. So the container comes there and I have some workers who would take this into the house. And as they do that, a group of people will arrive. And they say, we are in charge of this area. And we are entitled to this job. So then we say, all right, you do that job. He said, no, you will do the job, but you will pay us. Really, it exists. It exists literally. Many governments have said, no, we will abolish this looking charges. And they only look. They will not do anything. And the charges are fixed. Mafia. Yeah, it's not even mafia, it's unions. So I give that example. So the easiest the job, the best paid. So when it happens, everybody would want to have that job rather than plumbers or the welders. So it's a, I mean, I would not have said it in a purely Western audience because they wouldn't even understand it. But this is the system. And therefore, when you talk about basic education, you have to bear that in mind. And so when you talk about employability, everybody is talking about a white collar job. Nobody is looking for a blue collar job. And they are willing to do that, not in Kerala, but they are willing to do it in the Gulf. You know, they will go to the Gulf and do the plumber's job and the welder's job because this dignity of labor doesn't apply there. There is dignity of labor. Or at least there are people back home don't know. So that is why basic education has failed. And everybody aspires to be an Einstein. So, but then they realize that that's too much and so then they go for something. And even my own father would not have allowed me to go and become a plumber at the age of 15. Even if somebody had told me that is your level of capability. He'll say, no, but I'll try. I'll send him to the university and see what happens. So this is a big issue. It's a mindset issue in education. Yeah, you have to deal with it. As opposed to a Germany, which has a mentality of higher education, vocational education, apprenticeships. These things are seen as honorable professions. And people get diverted into one or the other and they make a living, divide for a family, and the rest. And it's not seen as something to look down upon. Or a shame on the family. Or a shame on the family. It's not true. Yeah, interesting. That's why the Germans do better than us. With an MOU for exchanges. Confucius Institutes, I think even in India we don't have it at the moment. There have been demands for it from the Chinese and also from the sinologists in India. They think it's a very good idea. But I wrote recently that, you know, Chinese get away by their reputation of inscrutability. Because you don't know what they have done, so we are all studying. The answer is, what happened in Ladakh? They'll say, you don't know Chinese culture. And I can't say anything. If I don't know Chinese culture, how do I know why they came and occupied our land? Oh, you don't speak Chinese. Well, why are they left? So now, the rest of our lives, we'll be sitting and studying Chinese language, Confucius thinking, et cetera, to understand why they came into Ladakh. Like the 62-aggress Chinese aggression, we haven't yet figured out why, right? So, great advantage for the Chinese. They get away with murder by saying that, you know, we are inscrutable, we don't know what we'll do next. Anyway, but India-China collaboration is growing. And the, but I have no experience of any kind of work that we have done with the Chinese, nor have they shown any particular interest. Even though if they show much interest, it should be in Kerala, because ideologically, we are the only people left as communists in the world. Even the Chinese are not communists, but we are. The first Confucius Institute is here at University of Maryland College Park. And I took minister Sibyl there, because I really wanted them to see, you know, the free Mandarin language, the integration with the faculty, this interesting free resource for the, not only the university, but the whole community. And I think one of the things that we talked about in that, I've talked to Ambassador Rao about, is the idea of Tagore Institutes in the US. We don't know enough about India. Yeah, Obama's saying could be bigger. Yes, the Fulbright, passport India could be bigger. But this idea of a small institution that does some language study and some cultural programs at an institution that everyone respects, I think is a very powerful one. You're no worry about brainwashing, though. You know, I don't know how many hundred there are already in the United States, but they've welcomed them because it's really free language and everyone wants to learn Mandarin. In the greater Washington area, there's nowhere to learn Hindi. Okay, my, no, no, unless you hire somebody's granny, nanny out in Fairfax, Virginia or something. But the idea of, you know, to bring the great elements, just like these Confucius Institutes do, they have the scrolls, they do a tea ceremony, it's all, yes sir, four billion dollars of cultural diplomacy money a year. Well, they do have India, USDA, and I've done India in Mandarin. There you go. There you go. One in Mandarin, four in Hindi. There you go. So there's not an interest in it yet. I think it's a chicken in the egg. Yeah. I do think more, the potential is there. When the Kennedy Center hosted the India event, I silly thought I could take my kids and family, the lines, if you tried to get there, the lines were all the way past the State Department. Just a thought. Yeah. Well, I do that first. Yeah, I did want to say, just one point for the, you know, Ray talked about some ways that, you know, hopefully states could be more progressive in pressing the center. There's one particular issue that I've been following very closely, Rick Rosso with Maclaurde Associates, which is one thing that companies hate is this 2% mandatory CSR initiative in the company's bill, but it's gonna happen. Something the finance minister mentioned in his budget speech, though, that I think is very, very interesting is that that money could potentially be used to fund business incubators at universities. That could be a huge dooropening to a tremendous source of funding and so many of America's greatest companies that we take great pride in internationally were built in these business incubators universities. The policy framework around that and what qualifies for it and will it be an attractive system for companies to use the CSR mandate or CSR generally to fund those incubators is still very unclear, but it could be a great role, I think, to open up a new avenue for some funding for the universities in Kerala by helping to supplement and shape that policy, I think. So I did want to say too that on the corporate, ask a question on corporate skills development, you talked about having companies address universities with some of the skills they're gonna need in the future and that's certainly very critical, but I'm wondering with certain education mandates in some industries, I spent a number of years working at New York Life on their international business development and we put through 150,000 agents in India through 50 to 100 hours of agent training and it was a huge, I mean we had to set up practically our own university system in India to put that many people through and there's always raising, why don't you talk to universities, that kind of stuff and there always seemed to be kind of a bright line, but a lot of industries in India have these mandates of startup education to get a license and ongoing education. Has there been much engagement with those groups? Not so much teaching them the technical skills to enter the workforce, but the ongoing skills, has that been an area that companies have approached you about shaping curriculum for ongoing education, that kind of stuff? Yes. I just couldn't understand, all the training centers all throughout the country that we'd set up from scratch and professors at each one teaching the basics and it's like, there's school, yeah. You take, well, yeah, because I mean you have to give somebody from whatever they had to being able to go out and sell an insurance policy, so teaching them about the basics on finance, that kind of stuff. You did the math's basics, yeah. Multi-track diplomacy. My question has to do with traditional Indian knowledge and I'm not sure if I missed this. I heard about the Ayurveda Center that's being opened in North Carolina. So my question here is whether you think there's any opportunity for India and the US to collaborate in terms of advancing Indian, traditional Indian knowledge through the use of modern technology where the US is a leader. And maybe that's happening a little bit, beginning to happen with the Ayurveda Centers because it seems like traditional Indian knowledge in various sectors completely stopped with the advance of Western knowledge in terms of whether it's allopathy or even if you go to architecture. I recently read about how architecture in traditional desert regions of India used kept the structures cool by through the flow of water under the structure. Now, knowledge like that kind of stagnated did not advance. Is there any scope for collaboration in terms of using modern technology to engage traditional Indian knowledge to see if that can go further? And it seems like there's demand when you see all of the tourism that's happening, medical tourism in terms of Western people coming to for healing to Kerala. Similarly, it seems when you look at the current buildings or structures in India, and if you look at sustainability, you're looking at a country that has hot climate but the wind, it's closed and the energy you use in terms of air conditioning and all the rest of it does not make sense. And it seems like we did not sufficiently engage or we stopped engaging in the advancement of traditional knowledge that's indigenous and that would be, I feel of use. I'm wondering if there's any scope for collaboration in that area because the US is a leader as far as technology goes. So can we use technology and apply it to these traditional areas for advancing it further? In fact, it's happening in a big way in the sense that if you now go to Kotekal, for example, the original place for Ayurveda, you will find the technology they use is not the ones that they used originally. The medicines are the same, but the ingredients are the same, but the tablets are much more sophisticated. There is greater amount of diagnosis than, and so on. So it is happening and definitely it has to increase in order to attract because there are certain countries where Ayurveda is not even allowed to be practiced because it is not considered sophisticated enough. So it is a beginning of a process and it can only go happen through greater collaboration than through countries. So this is very important. And once we have more requirements, say for example, Ayurveda, then naturally people will invest more in technology. So it's a two way. And that's already happening in the traditional areas. Technology is being used to a great extent and this kind of collaboration, if it takes place, that'll even help more in the future. I'd like to add an example of reverse engineering. In the state of Andhra Pradesh, they have a lot of problems with that in the water. They use mud pots to percolate the water through to get rid of the lead. And state of Virginia had the same problem in southern part of Virginia and they have adopted that technology. They were using maybe expensive membranes to remove the lead, but now they're using mud pots too. So is there a scope for this happening at the university level? I know of NGOs and small and big people that are getting into the competition to have caught the attention at the policy level, but that's the central government and get it into the university system. We have a last question. Dr. P. Thank you. Good to see you again, TP. And simple question. We have talked about variety of in US India, India itself, issues of higher education. Can you tell me what is the low hanging fruit that we can immediately put to use or go after it and that will have a big impact? I outlined the long hanging fruit that we are looking for. No, no, no, not too many. I mean, I probably am married. The lowest. The lowest is having these semesters in India for India studies. And maybe some courses to be designed in order to attract American students to India. Those are the immediate things that we are doing. So, and that we are working on it very diligently on that. Maybe next year when I come, I'll come and tell you that, yes. Excellent. If we can get your remarks. Yes, I have. Put them on our website for all of you to be able to have access to. And we'll also put Vice Chancellor Srinivasan's coordinates and contact information. So when you make your next travel to India, come to Kerala. Can I invite them on your behalf? Yes, absolutely. Come to Kerala. He's not going to put you up. But he would love to see you. The collaboration, yes. All of you that are involved in India, education. Just follow him on Twitter as well. Yeah, right. He's my follower, yes. Okay. Do that. But I think that we all have an excellent contact on this particular subject, as well as others in Kerala. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.