Clinton's interaction with emerging young Indians

By Arunkumar Bhatt

MUMBAI, MARCH 24. After five-day long hectic official ceremonies and talks and a bit of tourism, the U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, sat down here today with emerging young Indians in diverse fields and noted down what the ``generation next'' of India would be like.

The Indians -- four women and three men -- impressed upon Mr. Clinton that they were highly optimistic about the future development of their country and the opportunities it presented. With a network of about 2000 research institutions, India had one of the largest investment in science and technology and human resources.

"We told him that India missed the industrial revolution and Detroit but its presence is full-fledged in the information revolution and Silicon Valley,'' Mr. Kalanidhi Maran of Sun TV who participated in the talk told The Hindu. He said the meeting was very personal and highly interactive.

Public health expert and industrialist, Dr. Swati Piramal, said that Mr. Clinton was interested in general issues of welfare, community health and education but the Indian side was more focussed on India. ``The cost of research in India was low and in case of collaboration the know-how could flow from India to the United States as well,'' she said.

The other participants were, Dr. Nitin Chitnis, a leading researcher in Malaria, Mr. Nandan Nilekani, Managing Director, Infosys, Ms. Neeraj Chatterjee of SEWA, Ahmedabad, and Ms. Jarju Ile, social worker from Arunachal Pradesh.

Mr. Clinton talked with the seven Indians for one and a half hours, instead of the scheduled one hour. He mentioned the need to empower women, protect the environment and improve children's health and education. Emphasising the use of information technology for education, he said the supply of a computer and a printer instead of few books could enable a school to obtain any amount of education material from the Internet.

He told the group that he was very much impressed by the achievement of women's cooperatives and the Panchayati Raj institutions. A good Government could make a lot of good things happen and a bad Government could ruin everything.

The group told Mr. Clinton that it endorsed his view that India should work hard to preserve its bio-diversity, said Dr. Piramal, ``but we fear that our biological resources are being stolen by unfair patent laws.'' She said that the President noted down the point and promised to look into it.

The participants found the chat highly energetic and vibrant. After the President left, they agreed that they should form an informal group to work in areas that figured in the talk, particularly, education, health, ecology and development, said Mr. Maran and Dr. Piramal.

Ms. Chelsea Clinton also joined the group but hardly participated in the discussion. Later, Mr. Clinton and his daughter visited an antique shop next door and spent a good 20 minutes there.

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