WASHINGTON, DC – A top Obama official has made it abundantly clear that “America’s vision of a secure, stable, prosperous 21st century world has at its heart a strong partnership with a rising India”.

Speaking at a reception hosted by the US India Business Council, ahead of the first-ever US-India Higher Education Summit, Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns said, “The question is not whether we will have a strategic partnership, but whether we are doing as much as we possibly can to ensure that we realize its full promise. Few questions will matter more in the new century unfolding before us”.

He was addressing an influential gathering of business leaders, government officials, academics, public policy experts and members of the press corps, at the sparkling new home of the US Institute of Peace, just ahead of the US-India Higher Education Summit, co-chaired by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Minister of Human Resource Development Mr. Kapil Sibal.

Optimistic about the tremendous positive momentum in India-US ties and its significance on the world stage, Burns told the audience, “The truth is that we have crossed a threshold in our relations where - for both of us, for the first time - our success at home and abroad depends on our cooperation”.

He said, “We have high expectations for this relationship in the years ahead. I believe that India and America - two leaderships and two peoples with so many converging interests and common concerns - can help shape a more secure, more stable and more just global system. I am confident that India can make a decisive contribution to building what Secretary Clinton has called ‘the global architecture of cooperation’ to solve problems that no one country can solve on its own”.

While acknowledging that diplomatic and security dialogues between India and the US are vital and continue to grow, Burns said they are not enough. He called people-to-people cooperation “the bedrock of the global peace and prosperity” sought by both nations.

“As Secretary Clinton has said, our greatest friendships have never existed only in the halls of power. They live also in the hearts of our people, in the warmth of common experiences, in family ties and in the shared values we both cherish and champion. One of those values - which I have seen Indians and Americans sacrifice so much to deliver - is a passionate concern about the education of our children, whether they are growing up in New York or New Delhi. So, it’s fitting then, that we have declared education to be one of the pillars of our strategic partnership”, Burns said.

It is noteworthy that Indians are the second-largest foreign student population in America, after the Chinese. But, the figures are skewed. While over 100,000 students from India are pursuing college or graduate level study in the US, only some 2,500 Americans study in India. Mindful of the disparity, Burns admitted that “the number of American students studying in India is far too few, and the process for our schools to partner with Indian counterparts or to create new institutions of learning in India remains challenging”. He mentioned it is one of the reasons the US State Department organized the Summit. “We want to do everything we can to lift the barriers to greater cooperation between our educational institutions and help these ties flourish”, he said.

There is also the issue of the Tri Valley University scam in California and investigations at the University of Northern Virginia where many Indian students have been left in the lurch following visa fraud allegations against the institutions. Sans specifics, Burns acknowledged, “It remains a long and sometimes arduous journey from India to study in America. Our education system is full of thousands of excellent schools. But, it is also decentralized and not always easy to understand from the outside”.

He was optimistic that today’s students will become tomorrow’s leaders and “constituencies for a strong US-India relationship”. In this regard, he mentioned Mr. Ratan Tata, the Indian Chairman of the US-India CEO Forum, educated at Harvard and Cornell, whose companies are creating jobs in the US, and Indian External Affairs Minister, SM Krishna, who studied at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, became a Fulbright Scholar at the George Washington University, and now is a champion for strong US-India ties.

Burns hailed Minister Sibal as “an accomplished lawyer and legislator who has been a champion for policy innovation at home and a strong advocate for closer US-India relations, and someone I admire greatly”.

In his address, Mr. Sibal described India as a nascent democracy where half of the 1.2 billion people are under the age of 25. “Our young population, almost the size of Europe, is energetic, on the move and full of hope”, he said. “The young are our future. We have a responsibility to create an appropriate environment to help them plan their future”.

The Minister presented a compelling case for increasing the supply of higher education in India. The Gross Enrollment Ratio is about 15 percent in India and increasing that proportion to 30 percent by 2020 would require providing opportunities in higher education to an additional 30 million children, a staggering figure for most countries. “To do that, we will need to build an additional 1,000 universities and 50,000 colleges”, Sibal said. “To serve these institutions, we will require quality faculty of over a million assisted by quality support structures”.

Ron Somers, President of USIBC, a premier advocacy group representing some 400 top US companies doing business with India, noted that “against the backdrop of a fragile global economic recovery, and as the world becomes ever-more competitive, the knowledge partnership between the US and India will become central to assuring that American as well as Indian companies remain globally competitive. This competitive edge will only be possible to achieve if the human capacity of our societies is properly equipped to take on the challenges of tomorrow. Looking to the long future, we stand a very good chance as partners in building a capable, high quality global workforce that can shape the 21st century”, he said.

On the occasion of the opening reception for the Summit, USIBC felicitated a new tie-up between Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, and the Tata Institute of Social Studies (TISS). These institutions announced a new joint Center for Sustainable Growth and Talent Development that will provide expert support for India’s National Skill Development Strategy.

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At the USIBC opening reception for the US-India Higher Education Summit, in the center are: Mr. Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Development; and Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. Also seen are representatives of Rutgers University.

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At the USIBC opening reception for the US-India Higher Education Summit, Mr. Kapil Sibal, Indian Minister of Human Resource Development, is seen with Ashwin Saboo (left) and Ajay Kapoor (right), an undergraduate student at American University.