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By Sharron Hannon
shannon@uga.edu
Gary Bertsch, director of UGA’s Center for International Trade and Security, met with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee during his recent visit to the United States to discuss preparations for the university’s India Initiative that will be launched formally early next year.
Vajpayee, known abroad as the man who ordered tests of nuclear devices two years ago, is revered in his country as a consensus builder. While in D.C., he spoke before Congress, met with President Clinton at the White House, and participated in the dedication of a statue of Mohandas Gandhi at a park outside the Indian Embassy.
Bertsch met with Vajpayee at Blair House, which is made available to visiting heads of state. “It was really fascinating to sit across a table from him and the foreign minister,” says Bertsch. “I was able to discuss plans for our initiative and they were well received.”
The Center for International Trade and Security has been involved in policy-relevant research on Indo-U.S. relations for the past five years, says Bertsch. One of the products of this work was a book called Engaging India: U.S. Strategic Relations with the World’s Largest Democracy (Routledge, 1999), co-edited by Anupam Srivastava, director of the center’s South Asia program. The book has been received favorably by policymakers and analysts in both countries, says Srivastava, noting that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented a copy of the book to her counterpart, India’s Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, at the U.N. in September 1999.
“The book consistently argues that the nuclear and missile tests should not, and will not, mean an end to U.S.-India cooperation,” says Srivastava. “Instead, these ought to, and will eventually, pave the way for more dialogue, positive policy attention and clearer understanding of each other’s perspectives and interests.”
Indo-U.S. relations traversed a gamut of cooperative spheres until the early 1970s when Cold War exigencies made non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and regional security the predominant focus of bilateral dialogue, says Srivastava.
“The end of the Cold War, economic liberalization in India, and the spectacular success of the Indian diaspora in the United States have helped create an environment for recapturing the earlier wide-ranging bilateral cooperation,” he says. “The University of Georgia is ideally suited to promote such cooperation by providing a locus for collaborative research, teaching and public service projects with relevant counterparts in India.”
The India Initiative will bring together ongoing work of various university departments in areas such as agriculture, health, environment, media, trade, strategic technologies and scientific cooperation. It also will encourage academic and student exchange through fellowships, internships, research grants and public dissemination of research results via periodic conferences and seminars and publishing reports, monographs and occasional papers. The university is seeking individual and corporate support for these efforts. |
