Some high-profile Indian-American economists who support Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his economic goals have led the effort to set up a new center for the study of India’s economy with the ambitious agenda of influencing future policies, bringing prosperity, and defining India’s future role in the global economy.
On the eve of Modi’s arrival at the financial capital, the Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs announced Sept. 22, the establishment of the Deepak and Neera Raj Center on Indian Economic Policies which will be formally launched Oct. 5. Deepak Raj is managing director of the private investment firms Rush Brook Partners and Raj Associates, and provided $4 million of the $6 million needed to get the center off the ground, Columbia University Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, the director of the new entity told Desi Talk. Bhagwati and his wife Padma Desai, also a professor at Columbia, gave $500,000 toward the center and Uday Kotak, executive vice chairman and managing director of Kotak Mahindra Bank gave another $1 million. “We wanted an institution focused on India, unlike the several South Asia studies centers,” Bhagwati said.
A slew of high-profile guests will be at the launch including India’s Minister of Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information and Broadcasting Arun Jaitley, who will deliver the keynote address on the Columbia campus. Also attending will be India’s Ambassador to the U.S. Arun Kumar Singh, as well as elected officials, policymakers, academics, and private-sector leaders.
The effort to set up the center was led by Columbia Professor Arvind Panagariya, currently serving in Modi’s cabinet as vice chair of his National Institution for Transforming India Aayog or Niti Ayog.
Bhagwati, long an advocate of free trade, who has advised the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, co-authored a book with Panagariya entitled “Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduces Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries.”
The Center “will provide research and expertise necessary to inform policy decisions, deliver increased prosperity, and define India’s future role in the global economy,” the release from SIPA said.
“We have the financial and human resources here at Columbia to do the kind of research that will inform public policy in India toward growth, which ultimately will lift more people out of poverty,” Bhagwati told Desi Talk. “As a new government pursues landmark reforms, this is an especially auspicious time to be launching a center devoted to the challenging policy questions that will shape the world’s largest democracy and strive to provide better living standards for untold millions,” he is quoted saying in the release.
Several research projects are in the offing already according to Bhagwati, among them comparing the political systems of the U.S. and India where the legislature can stall a President or a Prime Minister’s agenda as in the case of President Obama and Prime Minister Modi; the diaspora and its sense of discrimination in the U.S.; and how education can be made more accessible to the poor in India. “We want to focus on India and U.S. commonalities and differences in different areas,” Bhagwati said.
Pravin Krishna, the Chung Ju Yung Distinguished Professor of International Economics and Business at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, will serve as deputy director.
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