It is a phenomena older than the era of Indian economic liberalisation which started in 1991, the dotcom boom which started a few years later and the outsourcing craze which started around 2003. Nonetheless, it is the influence of all these activities which have made India a popular subject of study at US universities in the last few years.

There are over 60 universities across the US that offer courses on India and South Asia and most of these are a part of the Humanities stream.

Funding

It costs anything between $15-20 million to start a reasonably good South Asia/India programme at any US university. The set-up cost for such initiatives borne by a private university would be slightly higher than what it would cost a public university.

According to members of administration and faculty that FE spoke with, it costs between $2-5 million to get a chaired/full-time professor for a new department. In addition, at least 4 to 5 departments need to have senior faculty teach India-related subjects.

Stanford University, for example, already have faculty teaching India-related subjects in the Anthropology, History, Development, International Relations and Economics departments. Three years ago, Stanford University got $8 million from Mukesh Ambani with the objective of contributing towards scholarships for Indian students and also to get a chaired professor for the centre for South Asian studies. There have been further donations from others thereafter to the centre like a recent one to the tune of $3 million.

The most encompassing programme thus far has been announced recently by Yale University as what it calls the ?Yale-India Initiative?, which the university claims is the most ?ambitious interdisciplinary effort of its kind to date.? The budget stands at $75 million of which Yale will contribute $30 million from its own coffers. Nandan and Rohini Nilekani were first to extend their support and gifted the initiative $5 million.

Although a chaired professor is yet to be appointed at Stanford University, Rafiq Dossani, senior research scholar and executive director of the South Asia Initiative at Stanford University says, ?The first initiative started around 1999 but then died down because of the downturn of 2001. Today, the financial crisis withstanding, there is a big push towards South Asian studies at Stanford University.?

Faculty

There has been a noticeable surge in demand from universities in the US for faculty members specialising in South Asia. This goes hand in hand with increasing demand from students to take these courses. Yale University, for example, seems to be moving quickly on this front and has recruited two professors in the last few months dedicated to the India programme and plans to hire eight more over the next two years.

According to Dossani, ?Stanford has a dearth of India-focused faculty though there are more and more people specialising to teach on India, which was not the case ten years ago.?

According to Dossani, the future is more positive, ?The receptivity to US faculty is much better in India than in China. There was a time in the 1970?s when academicians such as Milton Friedman were asked to leave India by Indira Gandhi because the kind of research being conducted by them would reveal the sorry state of the Indian economy due to domination of restrictive policies, such as the licensing raj.?

University of Pennsylvania?s department of South Asian studies on the other hand has enough faculty to enable students to do a BA Major or Minor or even MA in South Asian studies. Of late, the university also offers PhD programmes on South Asia.

Students

?It is in the 1990?s when we first saw an increase in demand for South Asian studies at Yale, especially among second generation Indian-Americans whose parents had moved to America from India in the 1960?s,? says a Yale representative. About 5% of the student population at Stanford University is of Indian origin, of which marked numbers are second generation in America and have an interest in the India programmes.

Young American citizens too view China and India differently today and realise that they need to know about these countries in order to work in the global environment. Yale last year had about 150 of its students spending time in India. Further, out of 22 students who did internships last year in India, only one was Indian.

As per Lisa Mitchell of university of Pennsylvania?s department of South Asian studies, ?South Asian studies is not a subject offered at high school and many a times students take it simply because it gives them a chance to explore and study a subject they may not have a chance to explore again.?

Courses

Courses on India range from historical and philosophical ones such as the ?Religious Studies? class taught at Stanford University and ?Hindu Mythology? taught at the university of Pennsylvania to courses which are more contemporary in nature such as ?Development Issues in South Asia?, ?Society and Culture in South Asia?, ?Non-violence, Nukes and Nationalism?, and ones such as ?Cities in South Asia? which is taught at the Humanities department of university of Pennsylvania and is popular more so with undergraduate students from Wharton Business School.

Yale as well offers courses such as ?Banking in India?, ?Trade Policy within India?, and ?Development of Indian Economy?. Yale will double from 40 to 80 in two to three year?s courses on India which will be available in eight of its major schools including Architecture, Law, Management, Nursing, Public Health and Environmental Studies. India-related courses are not new to Yale. Yale is the first university to have started teaching Sanskrit and has been doing so since the 1840?s.

Ancillary programmes

In addition to full time bachelors and master programmes, most of the US universities have comprehensive ancillary programmes such as study abroad programmes and language studies. Yale, for example, already conducts Sanskrit, Hindi and Tamil classes and plans to start classes in Bengali and Urdu. University of Pennsylvania has ongoing film/lecture series on India. Yale University, through the ?India Initiative?, plans to expand its summer school and executive programmes in India and enrich programmes such as the 10-day programme it conducts for Indian parliamentarians at its campus in New Haven.

Future

US universities are not treating India as a passing fad and although in the past they may have shown as much if not more interest in countries such as Japan and more recently China, programmes initiated on such countries still continue and have demonstrated staying power.

Mitchell notes, ?Just in the last two years, universities such as Stanford and Notre Dame (both in the top-20 list of colleges in the US) have added a dedicated South Asian historian to their faculty. Today each of the top-20 universities in the US has a South Asian historian in its ranks which was not the case 3-4 years ago.?