Govt gives $2 Million to U.S. University's

New Delhi: To support its research on international migration from India, Indian government has given a $2 million grant to the University of Pennsylvania's Centre for the Advanced Study of India, headed by Devesh Kapur.

It is the first time that Indian Government has decided to award an empirical research grant of this magnitude to an academic institution outside India. G Gurucharan, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) said that Penn was chosen, because it is home to the CASI, which has become known around the world. It is the only academic research unit in a U.S. university focused on contemporary India. We see this as a small beginning."

As a Principal Investigator of the research project, Kapur will be supported by a group of scholars recruited specifically for the purpose of conducting the research, as needed during the next four years. Kapur's forthcoming book, Diaspora, Democracy and Development: The Impact of International Migration from India on India, will be published this summer. It is the result of six-year research by Kapur and is being published by the Princeton University Press. On the occasion, Kapur said, "I feel both honoured and humbled. The funds are for research on international migration because the MOIA believes that better policies are made on the basis of sound empirical analysis. There are no strings attached for the funds that are for a set of research projects and capacity building."

The fund will be utilized for a range of research projects. "These will include how to capture data on return migration, entrepreneurship among Indian Americans, financial remittances, knowledge flows resulting from international migration among others," said Kapur.

In the last few years, migration has influenced India far beyond a simplistic 'brain drain', as migration's impact greatly depends on who leaves and why. Kapur's research, for which he spent time in India interviewing people, offers new methods and empirical evidence for measuring these traits and shows how data about these characteristics link to specific outcomes. According to some sources, Indian government was pretty impressed with Kapur's empirical research on international migration from India and how it may affect the country in future both in economic and social terms.