India/western Sociology

[acharya]

In the mid 90s the NRI community raised lots of money to fund India studies chairs at all the great utys in US- Columbia, Berekely, Stanford, UPenn and others like UCSanta Cruz. The speil at that time was such chairs would raise more favorable studies in the academia. I havent seen much and the community doesnt even know who the profs are! instead of creating an umbrella group to fund the cahirs the community leaders with money just wrote checks in their own names to get the chairs named after them and baad me jhaye India studies and sociology studies. Each millionare was vying with the others to get chairs named and it was quite cheap- ~ $1M at a State Uty and ~ $5M for an Ivy League. Reminds one of the old saying "fool and his money are soon parted" but then the folks had self and group before natioanl interests.

So rely in on NRI and businesses to fund such chairs is good but wont produce results. In the 90s Bharat Karnad went to big Ambani and to create a foundation for the purpose fo creating an Indian cotrolled awarensss of India in the US. <b>However Mukesh, who is Stanford grad, interjected that he doesnt see any benefit in such a funding of India studies for their business group as they dont plan on being in US. </b>So what could have been done for a few hundred crores in the 90s will require much more in current times. The lesson is the business group has to be engaged in business in India and not just because they have money. They see no munafa as the guy said in "Guru".