“As we think about the Indian-American community, we’ve prospered, and we’ve done very well here in the US, and have continued to give back to the U.S. economically, academically and so forth,” he said.
Responding to Bera, Sanjay Puri, founder and CEO, Alliance for U.S. India Business, said education is very important.
“We look at those students who come from India as a big source of revenue, because they pay full fare, but they also contribute a lot in terms of technology,” Puri said. “You’ve got to understand that in India, there’s a huge education market. Every Indian parent will sell their land or other things to educate their children. It’s a USD 50 billion market, but also builds very, very strong bonds,” Puri said.
“The benefits are to those companies, benefits are to the US, benefits are to India and to the educational institutions.
So I think that’s a win-win situation, and we should start looking at STEM teachers here too, because there’s a crying need, some of the math and science experts that exist in India, it’s incredible,” Puri said.
Sadanand Dhume of American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based eminent American think-tank, said there are practical ways in which the Indian-American community, which is about three million strong, can contribute.
“It’s a wealthy and educated community. It can give back in terms of business ties, Indian-American owned companies investing. I in fact think that the more important thing is the contribution of this community to India in terms of ideas,” Dhume said.
“This is a community that has prospered in the US, precisely because the U.S. has got certain really big things right in terms of its ideas of pluralism, in terms of its ideas of tolerance, in terms of its ideas of economic freedom,” he said.
“The key role for the Indian-American community in terms of giving back to India is to take the principles that have made the U.S. prosperous and strong and find ways to promote those ideas in an Indian context,” he added.
Source: Silicon India
