|
UC San Diego and Calit2 Host India’s
Ambassador to the U.S. During Extended San Diego Visit
Doug Ramsey | January 22, 2007
It was the first extended visit to San Diego of an Indian Ambassador to the United States, and Ronen Sen made the most of his four-day stay. The diplomat visited QUALCOMM and General Atomics; accepted a key to the city from Mayor Jerry Sanders; addressed the World Affairs Council; and met with the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune. But nowhere did Ambassador Sen engage more with his hosts than at UC San Diego.
|
| Ambassador Ronen Sen received a key to the city from San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders. |
| Click here to see a streaming video of the ambassador's public lecture at Calit2 (Real Player) |
|
“We want to build more universities and research institutions, but also to have greater interaction between U.S. educational, research and development institutions and their Indian counterparts,” said Sen. “This is one of my priority areas, so wherever I go, I tend to make a beeline for these centers of excellence.”
That he did. In his first 48 hours in San Diego, Sen met with senior officials of UCSD’s Institute of the Americas, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Jacobs School of Engineering, and California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). He held a private meeting with staff and faculty involved in Calit2’s India initiative, attended a luncheon co-hosted by Chancellor Marye Anne Fox and Calit2 UCSD division director Ramesh Rao, and gave a public lecture in Atkinson Hall.
At the Friday luncheon, Chancellor Fox called India a “crucial ally” for U.S. universities with strong science and engineering programs – especially if they want to address global issues such as the environment and sustainability. “It is one of the most pressing challenges we face,” said Fox. “We must unite our resources in research and education so we can respond to our obligation to understand the complex interconnections that sustain life, and create new products that will not hurt the environment.”
“What pulls us together is how to use high technology to solve societal problems,” added Calit2’s Rao, who organized and hosted last May’s U.S.-India Summit on Education, Research and Technology. “Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal was here for three days during the summit, and his visit made such a substantive impression that he wants to create an institute focused on science and innovation somewhere in India. We have now been formally asked to help them with this process of architecting what this institute in India might look like.”
|
| Sen spoke to a luncheon audience at the UCSD Faculty Club. |
|
Nuclear issues were high among Sen’s talking points throughout the week, following President Bush’s signing in December of legislation that will enable the U.S. to negotiate a permanent civilian nuclear agreement with India for the first time.
In his public lecture at Calit2, co-sponsored by UCSD’s Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) and the San Diego Indian American Society (SDIAS), Sen called the agreement an “historic landmark.” “It is a manifestation of an incredibly rapid transformation of the relationship between India and the United States into what can truly be called a strategic partnership,” he said. “It will promote energy security, facilitate economic development without adversely affecting the environment, open up new areas of business cooperation, and reflect our shared commitment to nuclear nonproliferation. So there is no downside to this agreement.”
He did warn, however, that it’s just the beginning. “It is now U.S. law, but the process is not complete,” said Sen, who missed the signing ceremony at the White House because he was called back to New Delhi to face harsh questioning in Parliament over the deal. “Now we have enabling legislation, allowing the two governments to negotiate a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement. Any agreement will be subject to congressional approval, but it won't be debated in Congress -- there will be a straight up-or-down vote. It will have to get the concurrence of the 49-nation Nuclear Supplies Group, which operates on the basis of unanimity, and then there will have to be negotiations between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on a specific agreement to apply safeguards to India's civilian nuclear facilities.”
|
| left to right: Irwin Jacobs, San Diego Indian American Society co-founder M.C. Madhavan, Ambassador Sen, Calit2 UCSD Division Director Ramesh Rao, IR/PS Dean Peter Cowhey, economics professor Jessica Wallack, and Calit2 Director Larry Smarr. |
|
At the luncheon dialogue moderated by IR/PS Dean Peter Cowhey, Sen stressed India’s strong record of preventing the spread of nuclear technology or materials from its home-grown nuclear energy program. At the same time, he said, nuclear power is the only hope of meeting the Indian economy’s booming demand for energy without substantially harming the environment. “We don’t want to make a choice between perpetuation of poverty and environmental protection,” said Sen, noting that today nuclear power accounts for less than 3 percent of India’s energy needs. “Energy is our Achilles’ heel.”
IR/PS professor Miles Kahler asked the ambassador about meeting basic needs in a country where 47 percent of children under 5 are malnourished, and the adult literacy rate is 61 percent. Sen responded that to tackle social needs, India cannot afford to divert a large chunk of government funds to pay for the additional 60,000 megawatts of nuclear power that are needed. “With scarce public funds, we should invest in areas where the private sector will not invest. Nuclear power reactors are expensive, yet very profitable in the long run. But investors want longer-term assurances and this agreement will inspire investor confidence.”
Sen is a career diplomat who has held the country’s top diplomatic posts: High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Ambassador to the Russian Federation, to Germany, to Mexico, and to the United States, since August 2004.
|
