AS the world community moves deeper into the third decade of the 21st century, collaboration, cooperation and understanding between nations of the world become more important for co-creating a bright future for the eight billion-plus people of the world.
The 21st century being the century of the people, the countries that offer avenues and opportunities for their people to contribute to the socio-economic development and their participation in all aspects of governmental policies and programmes shall have a much greater chance of leapfrogging on the pathways of sustainable and inclusive development.
The USA and India being the two great democratic powers of the world, the two GDPs are placed in a position of great advantage to lead the world with sustainable prosperity and inclusive development. Traditionally, both the great democratic powers, namely USA and India, the Bharat, are unconditionally committed to upholding the dignity of man, assuring equality, justice and liberty to all its citizens and have lived up to these noble principles of a civic society. Now that the time is right for likeminded nations of the world to forge their alliance, collaborate and cooperate for creating a prosperous and developed world, the Bharat-US relations require a new impetus to forge cooperation in areas that shall define the future of the world community.
Multi-sector collaboration
These may invariably include higher education and research, joint engagement in development of path-breaking science and technology innovations that shall make circular economy work for the collective advantage of each other and for the vast humanity that is looking towards these two great democracies to lead the global community to the new horizons of sustainable and inclusive development. Further, the Bharat-US cooperation now on needs to be multi-sectoral, covering trade and investment, hi-tech agriculture and food-tech, defence, higher education, science and technology advancements in areas such as, cyber and network security, clean energy technologies, space technology and applications, sustainability sciences and environmental and human health.
In Science & Technology, as well as in higher education, both the US and Bharat have a proven track record of cooperation and collaboration. All IITs and several other institutions of higher learning in India and the leading universities in the US have for long enjoyed working together to create great strength into the respective economies by capacity-building, both for hi-tech savvy human resources as well as strengthening the reservoir of intellectual property and futuristic technologies.
S&T defining feature
Science & Technology cooperation has been the defining feature of the strategic partnership between the two great democracies of the world. The potential for India and the US to work together to address the common global challenges through scientific and technological interventions was well recognised by the Indo-US Science Technology Forum in December 2022. Both sides have shown their keen interest to work together in the critical and emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning, quantum technology and applications; precision and climate resilient smart agriculture; biotechnology, bio-economy, clean coal technologies, carbon capture utilisation and storage, hydrogen fuel cell technologies. Naturally, the two great democracies with their intense focus on science & technology propelled socio economic development along with a committed compliance to achieving SDGs have a lot to gain from their strategic partnerships.
It is heartening to note that US universities are the top choice for higher studies for talented students from India and have been so for the last several decades, in 2022-23 alone 2,68,923 students from India have gone to US for higher studies. While the US remains the top choice for students from India, the Indo-US cooperation needs a new impetus from Government of India to attract talented students from the US to India’s top-ranked institutions like the IITs, IISc, AIIMS and several other reputed Government and private universities.
New era of cooperation
Just imagine if the Indo-US cooperation could provide good number of scholarships for talented students in the US to pursue their full time UG and PG studies in IITs, AIIMS and other reputed institutions, the pathways for inward mobility of talented students from the US and other advanced nations of the world could be chartered, creating a new era of IndoUS cooperation. These students coming to India for higher studies from the US could be further facilitated by way of internships and subsequent work opportunities in MNCs and Industries benefitted by the Indo-US cooperation.
Given the focused attention of the Government on Viksit Bharat@2047 under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India needs to become a major attraction for costeffective higher education and impactful solution research for talent from around the world.
