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Levin’s Passage to India
November/December 2005
by Rakesh Mohan ’71

Rakesh Mohan ’71, an economist who has occupied various positions in official economic policy making in India, is currently deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

I entered Yale in the fall of 1969 as a transfer student, along with the first women undergraduates. I was then the only Indian undergraduate at Yale. Despite the fact that the university derives its name from Elihu Yale, the late-seventeenth-century governor of Madras, and his donation of £652 10s—perhaps given as atonement for his sins in India!—Yale has been notable among the elite U.S. universities for its relative lack of presence in India. I was therefore surprised last year when, first, T. N. Srinivasan, the Samuel C. Park Jr. Professor of Economics, and, a little later, Sharyar Aziz ’74 , a fellow member of the senior society Elihu, asked me if I would help with the visit of Yale president Richard Levin to India last January. I was delighted at this news: to my knowledge no Yale president in the university’s 304-year history had ever set foot in my country.

Since I graduated in 1971, I have had little institutional contact with Yale, particularly after I returned to India in 1986. I did, however, maintain a warm relationship with Yale professors Robert Evenson and David Apter, and I attended my 30th class reunion in 2001, Yale’s tercentennial. President Levin’s announcement the previous year of a need-blind admissions policy for international students showed that Yale recognized the importance of a greater international presence. The India visit was the part of a strategy for expanding all of Yale’s international activities.

Just prior to the president’s visit, I was also invited to become a member of his Council of International Activities (PCIA). Although I had spent only two years at Yale, these were the most intellectually exciting of the nine years I spent in higher education. I have therefore always felt greatly indebted to Yale, particularly since I had a full scholarship from the university. Now, I finally had a chance to make some contribution, albeit small, to Yale.

President Levin’s whirlwind visit was almost as organized as a military campaign: he visited four cities in six days and met India’s president, prime minister, finance minister, and education minister. In addition, Yale’s president delivered a formal lecture on his pet academic theme of patents, concluded academic agreements with three institutions, and met a variety of Indian business and academic leaders, along with a good number of the few Yale graduates in India. He also visited the chapel where Elihu Yale was married.

Among Levin’s engagements in Delhi was a forum on the Indian economy that he moderated. In it, I, as then-secretary in India’s ministry of finance, had a lively debate with Professor Srinivasan. He talked about how the “glass” of economic reforms in India was half empty. I countered that it was more than half full! In my presentation, I emphasized India’s steady economic growth during the past quarter century. But Professor Srinivasan pointed to our high and stubborn fiscal deficit, lack of labor reforms, and slowdown (or stoppage) of privatization. It was a debate in the true Yale academic tradition, with the moderating influence of its president.

In Mumbai, I had organized a luncheon at the Reserve Bank of India with its governor and a dozen of India’s most prominent business leaders, none of whom, alas, have any Yale connection. The same afternoon, President Levin delivered a lecture, organized by the Indian Institute of Banking & Finance, on “Patents in the Global Perspective.” Despite the rarefied nature of the topic for an audience of bankers, the talk was remarkably well attended. It was President Levin’s last formal engagement in India before returning to New Haven.

For me the visit continued in April 2005, when I participated in the PCIA meeting. I was impressed with the systematic thought that is being given to increasing Yale’s international profile through curriculum changes at Yale, both for undergraduates and graduate students; through formal academic exchanges with leading universities elsewhere; and through international student internships and semesters abroad for undergraduates. I could not help observing the advanced state of Yale’s engagements with China. I hope that the university’s engagement with India will catch up sooner rather than later.

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