Passage to India: Visitors impressed with potential links
Premier Jean Charest led a delegation to India last month to develop trade and education links. Concordia was represented on the trip by Vice-Provost (International) Liselyn Adams and President Emeritus Frederick Lowy.
Adams reports that the whirlwind visit— less than a week of workable days after time zones are factored in — greatly deepened their knowledge of India and raised our profile in the world’s second most-populous country.
With more than one billion people, 18 official languages and hundreds of postsecondary schools, India offers enormous potential — and competition.
The literacy rate, once relatively low, is now around 60 per cent, and the inroads being made into the global marketplace by India’s higher technology sector are the talk of the business pages.
The visitors from the Quebec universities, including McGill, Laval, the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec system and Sherbrooke, attended three round tables in three cities. Each representing a cluster of Indian institutions, 26 in all.
Indian education officials are especially keen on establishing links in the sciences, such as plant genomics and nanotechnology. They are also interested in exchanges in the social sciences, languages, new media, women’s studies and in animation, a relatively new art form there.
Business schools were well represented as well, and Concordia will continue to build on its successful partnerships in engineering and business. A team from IIM Bangalore came to Montreal in January to compete in the John Molson International Case Com-petition for the first time, and did well.
A reporter for one French-language Montreal newspaper questioned the value of a junket to a country so strongly oriented to the English language through its colonial history.
However, Charest visited an institute for French studies on the trip, and announced a $50,000 contribution to establish a Quebec Studies Centre within their Institute of Francophone Studies.
Adams said this gesture was greatly appreciated, and she feels sure it will foster stronger connections. “We proposed an inter-university network on India studies to parallel theirs on French-Canadian studies.” This could provide opportunities for researchers and graduate students in both countries to contribute to these programs.
Concordia already has many Indian connections (see “Game theory”, p. 8). Indeed, 13 per cent of the faculty in Engineering is from that country, including Vice-Dean Rama Bhat and former dean M.N.S. Swamy. Also from India are retired Economics professor Balbir Sahni and Political Science professor Reeta Tremblay. Cinema professor Tom Waugh has studied Indian cinema in depth, and several other Concordia professors have worked in that country.
The next step is to build more structured relationships. “I favour starting with links among researchers. These will trickle down to graduate students and ultimately, undergraduates,” she said.
Although their sightseeing was squeezed into a few hours, Adams and Lowy value the social contacts they made on the trip. One academic administrator even phoned Adams to make sure she got back safely. It’s the kind of gesture that bodes well for a lasting academic connection.