Engineering Mobility? The ‘IT Craze’, Transnational Migration, and the Commercialisation of...

Working Paper Series

Working Paper No. 7

Engineering Mobility?The ‘IT Craze’, Transnational Migration, and the

Commercialisation of Education in Coastal Andhra

Carol Upadhya

August 2014

National Institute of Advanced StudiesBangalore, India

Amsterdam Institute for Social Science ResearchUniversity of Amsterdam

ENGINEERING MOBILITY? ThE ‘IT CRazE’, TRaNsNaTIONaL MIGRaTION, aNd ThE COMMERCIaLIsaTION Of EduCaTION

IN COasTaL aNdhRa

ProGlo Working Paper No. 7

Carol Upadhya

August 2014

Copyright: NIAS and AISSR

No part of the paper can be published, reprinted or reproduced in any form without permission.

Published by:

National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, and

Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR)

Bibliographic information:

Upadhya, Carol. 2014. Engineering Mobility? The ‘IT Craze’, Transnational Migration, and the Commercialisation of Education in Coastal Andhra. Provincial Globalisation Working Paper No. 7. Bangalore: National Institute of Advanced Studies and Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research.

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ENGINEERING MOBILITY? ThE ‘IT CRazE’, TRaNsNaTIONaL MIGRaTION,

aNd ThE COMMERCIaLIsaTION Of EduCaTION IN COasTaL aNdhRa

Carol Upadhya

AbstrAct The region of Coastal Andhra Pradesh has been an important source of Indian software engineers, mainly because of the dense concentration of private engineering colleges located there. The outward mobility of educated youth, who work as IT professionals in different cities in India and abroad, has created a pervasive social imaginary that equates an engineering degree, a software job, and migration (especially to the US) with economic success and social prestige. Catering to and fuelling these widespread aspirations is a burgeoning education industry, ranging from small ‘English-medium’ schools to expensive ‘corporate colleges’. The paper argues that a regional culture of migration has profoundly shaped not only the education sector but also popular social imaginaries and mobility strategies. These recent developments are contextualised more broadly within Andhra’s colonial and postcolonial social history and a specific regional formation of caste, class, and capital.

EnginEEring Mobility? thE ‘it CrazE’, transnational Migration, and thE

CoMMErCialisation of EduCation in Coastal andhra

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Acknowledgments

This paper is part of an ongoing study conducted by the author at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore under the Provincial Globalisation programme, funded by WOTRO. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the International Conference on Regional Towns and Migration: Interrogating Transnationalism and Development in South Asia, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, October 10-11, 2013, and the workshop on Social Mobility and In/equality in Post-reform India jointly organised by the Centre of Global South Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen and the Department of Sociology, at Delhi University, November 7-8, 2013. I thank the conference and workshop participants, and my colleagues and students in the Provincial Globalisation programme, for their inputs and feedback – especially Sanam Roohi. I am also grateful to Dr. P. Srikant and Dr. S. Ananth for their contributions to my research, and to Anju Christine Lingham for research assistance and editing.



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IntroductIon

Travelling through the villages and towns of Coastal Andhra, one is struck by the public visibility of education.1 Signboards for schools and colleges appear on almost every urban street and along rural roads. In cities such as Guntur and Vijayawada, large, colourful hoardings for educational institutions bearing pictures of beaming young people compete with advertisements for sari shops and bank loans, while posters advertising ‘coaching classes’ for common entrance tests cover the walls of buildings. Schools, colleges and coaching centres even run advertisements on television, showcasing the performance of their best students in competitive examinations, and their ‘world-class’, expansive and well-equipped campuses. Also crowding the visual field of public spaces in coastal towns are advertisements for ‘education consultants’ who help students get admissions in foreign universities, as well as for classes in spoken English and computer training courses.

The efflorescence of private, commercial educational institutions and services in Coastal Andhra has been a key element in a series of wider cultural and economic shifts in the region since the 1990s, particularly the intense pattern of out-migration by educated youth driven by the demand for software engineers within India and in the global market. Catering to this demand, private colleges that provide the coveted engineering degrees which are supposed to provide an entree into the IT (information technology) industry have sprouted up across the region. Although the expansion in private educational institutions is an India-wide trend, in this region the phenomenon has been marked by particular cultural and economic features linked to the region’s social history as well as its position as a major supplier of Indian software labour.

The starting point for this paper is the intense symbolic value that is accorded to engineering degrees in the public culture of Coastal Andhra. I examine the pervasive social imaginary that was engendered by the IT boom, centring on the figure of the successful US-based software engineer – an ‘IT dream’ (Nisbett 2009) that impels families to devote substantial resources to help their children gain the requisite degrees and certificates. The rising global demand of software labour since the 1990s provided a key avenue of social as well as spatial mobility for engineering graduates. With the movement of many young people to the US and other countries via the IT route, an ‘IT craze’ swept the region, enhancing the desire for engineering degrees and spurring the restructuring of education all the way down to the primary level.

In the following sections, I attempt to unravel the connections between the culture and political economy of education, the pattern of mobility, the transnationalisation of particular groups, and the intense aspirations that are pinned to engineering degrees. The formation of transnational networks connecting Coastal Andhra with the Telugu diaspora, especially in the USA, has also been a key factor in the transformation of the education sector. Broadening the scope of the argument, I locate these changes within the region’s colonial and post-colonial social history and argue that the commercialisation of education is a product of a specific regional formation of caste, class, and capital.

AndhrA’s culture of mIgrAtIon

The IT boom that began in India in the mid-1990s, providing lucrative new employment opportunities to engineering graduates, reinforced and augmented the already popular demand for engineering degrees in Coastal Andhra (as elsewhere in India).2 Because the region was home to several private engineering

1 This paper draws on field research carried out by the author in Vijayawada and parts of Krishna and Guntur districts, between January 2012 and March 2014, totalling about twelve weeks, as well as internet and documentary research. The research included interviews with several engineering college principals and teachers and groups of students, education consultants, local businessmen, journalists and academics, and other key informants in the region.

2 The Coastal Andhra region, not an official administrative unit, is generally defined as the districts of Guntur, Krishna, and East and West Godavari, and includes the agriculturally productive delta areas of the Krishna and Godavari rivers.



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colleges, it became a key site for the production of software engineers for the global as well as the Indian IT labour market. Indeed, engineers from Andhra comprise a major segment of India’s mobile and ‘global’ IT workforce.3 Especially during the ‘Y2K crisis’ of 1999-2000, engineering graduates were quickly picked up by ‘bodyshops’ (Xiang 2007) or employment consultants, who sent hundreds of young men (women entered the profession in significant numbers only later) to the US and other countries, mostly on temporary contracts. The requirement for skilled programmers at that time was so great that even people without engineering degrees, who could acquire some basic training in the required computer programming languages, were able to land IT jobs abroad.

As Xiang (2007) has documented in detail, the bodyshopping business in Andhra Pradesh (AP)4 was centred in the state capital of Hyderabad, where a dense conglomeration of private computer training institutes, employment consultants, visa agents, and related services clustered in the Ameerpet locality. His study shows how these networks reached deep into Coastal Andhra and pulled engineering graduates into IT jobs through kinship and caste connections, and stretched outwards to the USA, Australia, UK, and Europe through chains of (largely Telugu) placement agents. Many Andhra software engineers moved along the pathways formed by these chains, working on contract jobs in various locations in order to gain enough experience and contacts to achieve their ultimate goal – to move to America. Many of these ‘techies’ were later able to find regular employment and settle down permanently in the US or in major Indian IT hubs such as Bangalore and Hyderabad.

The wave of migration by engineers from Coastal Andhra followed, and in some ways replicated, an

earlier movement of highly educated professionals (especially doctors) from the region to the US, UK, and other countries. This migration pattern, which began in the 1970s or even earlier, was an outfall of the investments made by rural landowning and urban middle class and business families in children’s education in earlier decades. Consequently, a significant segment of the Telugu diaspora in the West hails from this region; they belong mainly to the dominant landowning castes, especially the Kamma community, as well as upper castes such as Brahmins. A consequence of this flow is that Coastal Andhra has become deeply transnationalised: most wealthy, middle class and even relatively modest rural families have members or relatives living abroad.5

The first generation of migrants mainly came from affluent families that could afford the high costs of education and migration, while the second generation of IT migrants appear to be more socially and economically diverse. Due to the intense demand for IT labour during the Y2K boom, people from more varied social backgrounds were drawn into bodyshopping networks, creating a pattern of social and spatial mobility that became the focal point for aspirations in the region. Although the majority of software engineers probably still come from propertied dominant caste families, a number of young people from relatively modest economic backgrounds, and from lower castes, have also succeeded in getting IT jobs. The extent to which the ‘IT craze’ has filtered down through various social layers is illustrated by the frequently heard (and possibly apocryphal) story of the relatively uneducated village woman advising her son about the programming languages currently in demand (Chekuri and Muppidi 2003: 47-48). The wide circulation of popular knowledge about computer

3 Because there are no official data on the social composition of the Indian IT workforce, or on US immigrants by place of origin (apart from country), it is difficult to find a reliable estimate of the number of Telugu-origin software engineers in India or abroad. It is often claimed that the largest proportion of software engineers are Telugus, which is probably an exaggeration, but the numbers are likely to be quite significant.

4 In this paper, ‘Andhra Pradesh’ refers to the state prior to the bifurcation, which took place in May 2014.5 The older generation of migrants from Coastal Andhra, consisting mainly of medical professionals who went abroad during the 1970s and

1980s, and their transnational ties with the region, are the subject of Sanam Roohi’s dissertation research under the Provincial Globalisation programme (see Roohi 2013).



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courses, which software companies are hiring, and changes in visa regulations, point to the centrality of IT in the mobility strategies of many Andhra families.

The bodyshopping system went into decline after the end of the Y2K crisis and as the Indian software industry shifted from the provision of on-site labour to the offshore model. However, the demand for IT labour grew even more rapidly after 2000 as India established its position as a major global provider of software services, and in Andhra Pradesh after Hyderabad (the state capital) was transformed into an IT hub in the 1990s. The former Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, determined to promote Hyderabad as a ‘global’ city and a software hub, spearheaded heavy public and private investments in urban infrastructure – in particular, by constructing an entire new area on the outskirts of the city devoted to IT companies, ‘Cyberabad’. As Hyderabad grew and became globalised, the city became a magnet for Andhra regional capital as well as an important destination for Andhra software engineers.6 From the late 1990s, thousands of engineering graduates from the coastal region found software jobs in the city, whence many moved on to other Indian cities or abroad as they pursued their careers.

Although the growth of the Indian software industry slowed down after 2008, IT jobs remain highly desirable to students and their families in Coastal Andhra, not only because of the high salaries they offer but especially due to the possibility of migration to the US. Because Indian IT companies mainly hire engineering graduates, families invest heavily in helping their children gain these degrees with the

expectation of substantial future returns. Accordingly, engineering colleges advertise themselves mainly on the strength of their ‘placements’,7 displaying on their websites information about the number of students hired from their campuses, particularly by software companies.8 The jobs on offer are usually located in major centres of the IT industry such as Hyderabad, Bangalore, or Chennai, but once employed, a software engineer may get an assignment outside India (‘on-site’) and so a chance to settle down abroad. The bodyshopping system also continues to operate, albeit at a lower level, and it is still possible for an ambitious engineer to move directly to the US on an H1B visa if he can obtain an offer letter – which may be provided by a relative or friend living in America. This trend has further reinforced the high value placed on engineering degrees in the region’s public culture.

The desire to go abroad, or at least to move to other cities in India to find well-paid employment in the private or public sector, has reached such a pitch that the younger generation of rural landowning families seems to have virtually deserted the villages of the core delta areas. Moving out of the village to the town, and out of the region itself, is widely regarded as a mark of success. Although Coastal Andhra has produced substantial agrarian surpluses and a wealthy business class with diversified investments, it offers few employment opportunities for educated young people; consequently, migration is seen as the prime, or only, avenue for upward economic mobility. A ‘culture of migration’ (Ali 2007; Kandel and Massey 2002)9 has emerged, in which moving to America has become the default setting for social aspirations. In contrast to other migration-intensive regions such as Kerala, where

6 Kamat (2011) connects Hyderabad’s emergence as a centre of the global IT industry to the regional history of higher education and its imbrication in particular caste-class alignments. Most educational institutions in and around Hyderabad are controlled by Andhra provincial capital. Indeed, this was one of the political issues driving the student movement for a separate Telangana state, which was finally created in early 2014.

7 Recruitment has been professionalised and regularised since the Y2K phase; engineering graduates now typically apply for IT jobs through campus placement processes or employment agencies rather than bodyshops.

8 See, for example, information posted on the website of VR Siddhartha College, Vijayawada (a highly ranked college) on placements for the 2012-13 final year batch. They report 429 placements, the majority in major IT companies such as TCS and HCL. Students and their families check these statistics carefully when choosing colleges. See: http://vrsiddhartha.ac.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=548:placements-12-13&catid=1:latest-vrsec&Itemid=94. Accessed July 25, 2014.

9 The phrase ‘culture of migration’ is problematic if understood as a static set of practices and orientations that drive migration. Still, it is a useful shorthand for the widespread aspirations for mobility that mark regions such as Coastal Andhra.



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poverty, pressure on land, and the lack of local employment opportunities have led to a pattern of low-skilled ‘economic migration’, mainly to the Gulf countries (Osella and Osella 2007; Zachariah, Mathew, and Rajan 2001), in this case we find mainly ‘aspirational’ migration from relatively well-off families.10 Young people move out to augment their educational qualifications or in search of lucrative jobs, often with the ultimate aim of settling down in America.11 Particularly amongst status-conscious communities such as the Kammas, transnational migration has become a key modality of social and economic mobility, and young people are often ‘pushed’ to migrate by their families. According to an often heard mantra, the ultimate marker of success for Coastal Andhra people is to have ‘lands in Andhra, a house in Hyderabad, and a job in America’ (Xiang 2007: 30).

Migration carries the promise not only of enhancing a family’s wealth and property but also its symbolic capital. Raghu, an education consultant, retailed a comment that is frequently heard in coastal towns: ‘In Vijayawada, each and every house has someone in America’. He explained: ‘It has become a trend – I see my neighbour’s son has gone, so I also want to send mine’. Clearly this applies mainly to middle class and affluent families, and even within that category may be an exaggeration; yet my field research (and that of Sanam Roohi in Guntur) does suggest that within these social categories (and especially amongst Kammas), almost every family in major coastal towns, and in many smaller towns and villages as well, has at least one member living abroad.

This migration history has led to the crystallisation of a prominent Telugu diaspora, particularly in the US, comprised mainly of software engineers but

also including the first generation of migrants, mostly medical professionals. The social prestige enjoyed by NRIs (Non-Resident Indians),12 and their continuing involvement in the home region, have reinforced the popular social imaginary in which engineering degrees, software jobs and emigration are regarded as key to economic success and social prestige. Moreover, this pattern of mobility has created a dense transnational social field connecting Coastal Andhra with America and other places, (especially within particular classes and caste groups). These connections are materialised through various kinds of transnational resource flows, such as investments in real estate and support for local development or welfare projects (Roohi 2013). These financial transactions, along with periodic visits of NRIs from America who often host lavish ceremonies in their home towns, have also imparted significant visibility to their successful mobility strategies.

The transnationalisation of Coastal Andhra is reflected in the peculiar symbolic valence of the category of NRI in this region. Across much of India, the term until recently carried a negative value, but in this case it appears that the NRI was never an object of ridicule or derision. Instead, NRIs – especially those who are ‘well settled’ in America – are widely admired for their success and affluence, and so have become role models for local youth. The social value attached to the sign of the NRI is reflected in its incorporation into the names of several educational institutions in Coastal Andhra, such as the NRI Institute of Medical Sciences, Guntur and the NRI Institute of Technology (NRIIT).13 While several of these institutions have been set up by NRIs or with their contributions, others have no actual connection with NRIs. Instead, the term seems to signal quality,

10 There is also some amount of low-skilled labour migration from this region to the Gulf and Southeast Asia, which I do not discuss here.11 This pattern also differs from the ‘middling migration’ of educated youth from Gujarat documented by Rutten and Verstappen (2012),

whose movements are often more circular and less directed, and frequently seem to lead to downward rather than upward mobility.12 ‘Non-Resident Indian’ is an official category designating Indian citizens living abroad. In this paper I follow the popular usage of the term

in the region to refer to anyone living abroad, regardless of their citizenship status.13 Two institutions, supported by different groups of investors, use the name ‘NRIIT’ – one located near Vijayawada and the other near Guntur.

See http://www.nriacademy.in/, http://nrigroupofcolleges.com/nriit/, http://www.nriit.ac.in/, http://www.nriims.in/medicalcollege.htm.



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just as the words ‘global’ or ‘international’ are used in the names of elite schools to indicate a particular orientation and promise. Here, ‘NRI’ represents the successful ‘global citizen’ who brings ‘world class’ education and knowledge to India. The popular desire for engineering degrees and IT jobs is driven (at least in part) by the social imaginary that has been constructed around the figure of the NRI.

educAtIon As mobIlIty, educAtIon for mobIlIty

With the tightening of the IT job market and the decline in bodyshopping, a second route to migration has become common in the region – going abroad for higher studies. Following graduation, many students move to the US, Australia, or the UK, mostly to pursue master’s degrees in engineering, computer-related subjects, or other employment-rich areas such as pharmacy. According to ‘Raghu’, who runs an education consultancy in Vijayawada, it is mostly engineering students who apply for MS and other postgraduate courses in America. He estimated that about 300 students go abroad each year from Vijayawada; his agency alone sent 175 students to the US in 2013. According to him, the numbers would be even higher from the larger cities of Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam; however there are no official data on the total number of students going abroad according to their home state or district. Raghu said that only one-quarter of applications are accepted, which means that the ambition to study abroad is much wider than the actual flow of students. Most engineering college professors I interviewed estimated that about 10 to 15 per cent of engineering graduates from ‘good colleges’ in the region go abroad for MS courses every year.

Education consultants sell their services by promoting the desirability of a ‘global’ education. Students too assert that they want to study abroad in order to get ‘exposed to the latest technology’. Raghu spoke enthusiastically about his students: ‘Everyone here is striving for perfection – they are going out in quest of knowledge!’:

They want global exposure, they want experience, more knowledge; they want to sharpen the mind, to learn more things – that is why they go out for advanced education ... It is not only for money, not only for job. When they come back, they will get a good job with a multinational because they have an international education. This will help them to settle down in life.

Upon probing, however, he acknowledged that for most students the ultimate purpose of studying abroad is to emigrate. Indeed, most students who manage to get admission to master’s programmes in the US later find jobs and settle down there. According to an engineering college professor:

If you look at the M.Tech course content at the IITs, it is same as what they are going [to the US] for. There are plenty of M.Tech seats here. Moreover, they get scholarships here. So they are basically applying for these courses abroad in order to migrate.

Studying abroad requires heavy investment on the part of the student’s family, and sometimes even family property is sold to fund such education. Most students take education loans from banks, but these generally cover only tuition fees and not travel and living expenses. Raghu said:

Families here will invest any amount to get their kids educated. They trust in education – education gives you family background, it gives you income ... They believe in education because it is the only way to come up.

The long path to education migration begins much before college with obtaining admission in a good English-medium private school, which is then followed by a pre-university course in one of the expensive ‘corporate colleges’ (see below) and an engineering degree from a highly ranked institution. According to education consultants in Vijayawada, the total cost of a two-year postgraduate degree in the US is around $40,000-45,000, or about 20 to 25 lakh rupees (at the exchange rate that prevailed



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before the sharp fall in the value of the rupee in 2013) – an investment affordable mainly by well-off families. In addition, the application process costs around Rs 100,000, including GRE and TOEFL exams, application and visa fees, and so on – a large sum for an effort that very often does not succeed. However, the easy availability of education loans has made a foreign degree more accessible than earlier. According to a journalist in Vijayawada:

Now it is easy for middle class families to send their children outside for studies because they can get bank loans. Earlier a middle class family could only dream of sending their child abroad – it was too costly, they could not even think of it. But now this dream is seen as achievable by ordinary people – they have a passion to go outside.

Because their families make significant sacrifices to fund their education abroad, most students do not come back to India after completing their degrees but instead take up jobs outside to pay off their loans or contribute to their families’ assets. Parents too expect their children to provide some return on their investments in their education, once they are ‘earning well’ (i.e., in dollars). This expectation of reciprocity is materialised in substantial flows of NRI money into property – agricultural land and urban real estate – in the region.

culturAl economy of educAtIon

The deep symbolic value vested in engineering degrees in Andhra goes much beyond the access that they may provide to an IT job, high earnings, or the possibility of migrating to the US. Even in earlier decades, the dowry that a young man could command in the marriage market was closely linked to his degree, with engineering and medical graduates being among the most desirable matches, after only IAS (government) officers (Upadhya 1990). Of course, engineering has long been a central element of the technological imaginary of the postcolonial developmental state, conferring a high social status on engineers within

the Indian middle classes. But in Coastal Andhra, the distinctive symbolic valence that attaches to engineering is perhaps more closely related to the regional caste and class configuration that took shape during the late colonial and early postcolonial periods. This social formation was distinguished by a productive agrarian economy closely tied to regional market towns, the emergence of strong caste identities in the early 20th century in tandem with the crystallisation of a new regional elite, and the consolidation of provincial capital.

The construction of dams on the Krishna and Godavari rivers in the late 19th century, which supplied water to an extensive network of irrigation canals in the deltas, transformed Coastal Andhra into a productive agricultural belt, producing mainly paddy (rice) but also cash crops such as sugar cane. Increased productivity, the extension of cultivated area, commercialisation of agriculture, and the development of dynamic markets for agricultural produce, land and credit, created a class of prosperous landowning cultivators who also gradually diversified into other activities such as trade and money-lending. The expansion of trade and transport systems stimulated the growth of large market towns, which became economic and social centres for their rural hinterlands.

These developments led to the emergence of a distinctive regional elite, consisting mainly of members of the dominant landowning castes (primarily Kammas but also Reddys, Rajus, Kapus, Velamas, and Naidus), which had its base in rural land and agriculture and a strong foothold in the urban economy. From the 1930s, rural landowning families began to invest agricultural surpluses in a range of business activities in both rural and urban areas, as well as in children’s education as a means of upward mobility (Upadhya 1988). Large farmers often sent their sons to study in high schools and colleges of neighbouring towns, many of whom later took up white collar professions and became urban dwellers (Baker 1984; Washbrook 1973). As the regional economy flourished and diversified, provincial towns such as Vijayawada and Guntur



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became centres not only of trade and finance but also of education, drawing students from rural areas. By the 1970s, especially following the prosperity that the Green Revolution brought to many farmers, most rural landed families had at least one member living in a town or city, studying or engaged in a non-agricultural occupation.

The movement out of the agrarian economy, confined initially to the richest families, accelerated from the 1990s. The result is that the younger generation of most landowning households – even small farmers – are hardly found in the core delta villages today. This history of social mobility linked to rural-urban migration has imparted a distinctive shape to regional capital and to the regional dominant class. These groups remain rooted in land and an agrarian ethos even as they became committed to ‘modern’ life and merged into the urban middle classes. For the elite as well as aspiring classes, education became a central social value as well as a key modality for the creation of value (Upadhya 1997). The culture of education that was crafted in the early 20th century has permeated more widely in Andhra society, partly accounting for recent developments in engineering education discussed below.

The strong interest in education in Andhra was also linked to the rise of caste politics and the consolidation of the major dominant castes into region-wide social categories in the early 20th century. The deep interest amongst the Kammas, for example, in education was reflected in the establishment of a number of schools, colleges and student hostels by wealthy caste members from the 1920s, often through family trusts that continue to manage educational institutions in the region even today. The many caste associations that emerged during this period were primarily engaged in promoting education within their own communities (Choudary 1954). For example, the Kammavari Sangham focused on providing scholarships and hostel facilities ‘to the poor and meritorious students of the Kamma community’ (quoted in Kamat, Mir and Mathew 2004: 10; no

citation given). It is noteworthy that the caste associations of Kammas, Reddys, and other dominant agricultural castes were formed not by rural farmers but by educated caste members who were government servants or lawyers living in towns (Washbrook 1975).

Another element of Coastal Andhra’s socio-economic configuration is a particular ‘culture of business’ that emerged after the 1930s, and which was strengthened by the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (Ananth 2007). With rising agrarian surpluses, large farmers began to diversify their economic activities by investing agricultural profits in small businesses such as rice mills and cinema halls in their villages, or in agricultural trade, finance, transport, construction contracting, the liquor trade, and film production, in major towns of the region and in Madras (Srinivas 2010, 2013; Upadhya 1988). The pattern of economic diversification among Kammas goes back to the 1930s, pushed in part by their experiences during the Depression and the desire to mitigate risk (Ananth 2007: 118). A major consequence of this trend is that the dominant business class in Coastal Andhra came to consist mainly of members of the landowning castes (especially Kammas) rather than the ‘traditional’ trading community of Komatis (or Vaisyas). The formation of ‘provincial capital’ that emerged in this region (Parthasarathy 2013) thus has been deeply shaped by its base in land, agriculture, and caste.

For this regional business class with diverse economic and property interests and a strong interest in education, it was perhaps inevitable that education would become yet another lucrative business opportunity. Investment in educational institutions was particularly attractive to Kamma landlords and businessmen because it could be represented as a social service or philanthropic gesture, thereby enhancing the social status of the founders. From at least the 1970s, education became a major avenue for the accumulation of capital in Coastal Andhra. Against this background, it comes as no surprise that the majority of



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engineering colleges and education groups in the region are owned and managed by local business families, politicians, and other regional elites.

the educAtIon busIness

Under the Nehruvian planning regime, there were very few engineering colleges in the country, all of them government-run. Seats were scarce and competition for admissions stiff, which meant that engineering education was accessible mainly to the children of the elites and middle classes who had the requisite economic resources and educational qualifications. To cater to the growing demand for engineering degrees, the government gradually began to loosen restrictions on the establishment of private educational institutions as a means of expanding access to higher education, thereby creating a new avenue for investment.

The recent trend towards privatisation of higher education is often attributed to ‘neoliberal’ economic and political reforms since the 1990s (Chopra and Jeffery 2005; Kamat 2011). In AP, the commercialisation of professional and technical education also proceeded rapidly during this period. However, the trajectory of commercial education in Coastal Andhra must be contextualised within the region’s longer social history, described above. Andhra Pradesh was one of the first states (the others were Karnataka and Maharashtra) where private professional colleges were established during the 1970s. The ‘capitation fee’ (which refers to the large donation needed to gain admission) phenomenon has been attributed to the rising aspirations of the emerging non-Brahmin

elites of these states, where higher education and professional occupations had long been dominated by higher castes, especially Brahmins (Kaul 1993). Dominant caste (landowning but usually middle-ranked) groups such as Kunbis/ Marathas in Maharashtra, Kammas and Reddys in Andhra Pradesh, and Vokkaligas and Lingayats in Karnataka, began to set up educational institutions as a means of accumulating the forms of cultural capital that had been monopolised by Brahmins, and to gain access to government jobs. The mobilisation of resources through caste- and kinship-based networks was crucial to the expansion of private engineering and medical colleges during this period (Kamat, Mir and Mathew 2004: 21, note 10).14 VR Siddhartha Engineering College, founded in Vijayawada in 1977, was the first private technical institution in Andhra Pradesh. Subsequently, several private colleges were started in Hyderabad and in other towns and rural areas of the state, particularly in the coastal districts. Most of these institutions were established by caste-based trusts, which created the ‘educational societies’ that came to dominate the technical education sector during the 1980s (2004: 10).15 Many of these colleges even today are identified with the caste groups that established them. For example, institutions such as VR and PVP Siddhartha Engineering Colleges, Vijayawada, and Vignan University and KL University in Guntur district, are commonly referred to as ‘Kamma colleges’.16

Although private educational institutions set up during the 1970s and 1980s were often inspired by the ideals of social progress, public welfare, and philanthropy, a close link between business

14 The authors connect the surge in the number of ‘donation paying colleges’ in the mid-1970s with the rise of the middle class following the breakdown of the national coalition at the centre and the consequent resurgence of regional and caste politics (Kamat, Mir and Mathew 2004: 10).

15 An example is Koneru Lakshmaiah Charities, a trust set up in Vijayawada in 1980, which started the KL College of Engineering in Guntur District in 1981. In 1996 the trust was converted into a society, the Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation. The college recently achieved ‘deemed university’ status, making KL University one of three private universities in the state. The other two – Vignan and GITAM Universities – have similar histories.

16 These institutions are listed as ‘Kammavari’ on caste-based websites. ‘Kamma’ medical colleges include NTR Health University, Vijayawada, Dr. Pinnamaneni Siddartha Institute of Medical Sciences & Research, Gannavaram, and NRI Institute of Medical Sciences, Visakhapatnam. See: http://kammasworld.blogspot.in/2011/01/kammavari-medical-collges-in-ap-and.html. Accessed September 27, 2013. ‘Kammavari’ engineering colleges include Gudlavalleru Engineering College and NRI Institute of Technology in Krishna District, and Bapatla Engineering College and Tenali Engineering College in Guntur District, among others. http://www.kammavelugu.org/industry/educatation-institutations/andhra-pradesh/. Accessed September 27, 2013.



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interests and education was forged even at this stage. Most of the older colleges have grown into large groups of institutions, or ‘education empires’, which include everything from nursery and primary schools to intermediate colleges and engineering and other professional institutes. Most of these groups expanded organically over several decades, usually starting out as an engineering college funded by a family trust which then branched out into other kinds of institutions.17 While most such groups were started as trusts several decades ago, several prominent institutions were founded more recently by successful businessmen (or politicians) who converted their wealth into symbolic capital by building educational institutions. An example is GITAM University in Visakhapatnam, which began life as an engineering college established by a prominent local entrepreneur and politician, M.V.V.S. Murthy. A third type of education entrepreneur started out running coaching centres. An example is Dr. L. Rathaiah, head of the Vignan Foundation for Science, Technology and Research, who transformed his coaching centres into intermediate colleges and later expanded his enterprise into a diversified education group. The Vignan group, with 40,000 students, includes fifteen schools, nine junior colleges, one undergraduate/ postgraduate college, an education college, three pharmacy colleges, and eight engineering colleges, located in towns across Coastal Andhra as well as in Hyderabad.18

The convergence of education with regional capital has meant that owners and managements of educational institutions have become powerful forces in the state, and a tight nexus has been forged between politicians, government agencies, and education entrepreneurs. With the

uncontrolled growth of private institutions and the revelation of various malpractices by the media in recent years, the state government began to regulate private colleges by imposing rules governing admissions, fee structures, facilities, course content, and so on. Consequently, the recent history of private education has been one of contestation between the state and private educational institutions, whose managements have banded together into associations such as the AP Private Engineering Colleges Management Association that represent their interests vis-a-vis regulatory bodies.

Another s ignif icant development in the education sector has been the mushrooming of what are referred to as ‘corporate colleges’ and private schools at the Intermediate level (11th and 12th class), whose main purpose is to train students to succeed in the common entrance tests that control admission to most professional courses in India – especially the EAMCET.19 The most successful of these corporate chains are the Sri Chaitanya and Narayana groups. These colleges are popular with middle class parents, despite their high fees and punishing study regimens, because they yield good results in the EAMCET and other competitive exams such as the JEE (Joint Entrance Exam for the IITs, the Indian Institutes of Technology). On its website, Sri Chaitanya is explicit about its mission:

Sri Chaitanya makes lives of students better by integrating preparatory coaching with regular Board Syllabus. Students are prepared to study in the best institutions across the country – IIT, AFMC, NIT, AIIMS etc. in the fields of Engineering and Medicine [...] Students

17 For example, Gudlavalleru Engineering College, a rural college in Krishna District, was set up by the Adusumilli Aswardha Narayana Murthy & Vallurupalli Venkata Rama Seshadri Rao Educational Society, established in Gudlavalleru village in 1981. The Society first started a polytechnic institute, then an English medium ‘public school’, followed by the engineering college in 1998. The group also includes a pharmacy institute. http://gecgudlavalleru.ac.in/content/view/507/565/. Accessed September 15, 2013.

18 Vignan’s motto is ‘Building Young India’. See: http://www.vignanuniversity.org/aboutus/vignangroup.html. Accessed September 21, 2013.19 EAMCET is the Engineering, Agricultural and Medical Common Entrance Test, conducted annually in Andhra Pradesh to regulate

admissions to private colleges. According to one source, the coaching industry for the EAMCET alone is worth an estimated Rs. 5,000 crore (about $110 million) a year. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/127552/content/213841/F. Accessed September 15, 2013.



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who step out of Sri Chaitanya learn to chase careers and not jobs.20

Such branded corporate colleges – most originating in coastal towns – have become highly visible across the state and beyond, sprouting up even in small towns and displacing government-run and other traditional intermediate colleges. These institutions promote the idea that the sole aim of education is to obtain a high rank in competitive exams, which in turn is supposed to lead to successful careers in the corporate sector, the professions, or government. Although many parents recognise the drawbacks of this approach to education, institutions such as Sri Chaitanya and Narayana remain the most common choices at least for the middle class.21 An informal discussion with first-year students of a middle-ranked rural engineering college in Krishna district revealed that two-thirds of the class had completed their intermediate degrees from a Sri Chaitanya or Narayana institute. The corporate college route also facilitates migration: when I spoke to a group of students at an education consultancy who were applying to universities abroad, almost all said that they had studied intermediate at a Sri Chaitanya or Narayana school, followed by engineering or other technical courses in private colleges.

Following the Sri Chaitanya style of education, most schools and intermediate colleges in the state have re-oriented their teaching to cater to a single-point agenda of preparing students to ‘crack’ these exams, rather than simply getting their high school certificates or good scores in 12th standard exams. This instrumental, exam-oriented approach, together with the widespread aspirations for professional degrees, has spurred the restructuring of education all the way down to the primary level. The region has witnessed the mushrooming of private English-

medium schools, from expensive ‘public schools’ offering ‘international education’ to the many small ‘English-medium’ schools that have sprouted up everywhere, feeding off the mobility aspirations of ordinary families. As elsewhere in India, government schools have seen declining enrolment and have become the domain of dalits and the very poor; most families that can afford the fees send their children to private schools. At the other end of the private education spectrum, a new breed of expensive primary and high schools are marketed to affluent urban families by emphasising their ‘global yet Indian’ orientation. Elite schools run by new groups such as the NRI Educational Society based in Guntur, and by established national franchise chains such as Delhi Public School (DPS), have appeared in regional towns. Similarly, the Vignan group has started a chain of ‘Global Gen’ schools,22 while the Sri Chaitanya group has a string of ‘Techno Schools’.23

The formation of a distinctive ‘educational regime’ (Jeffery 2005) partially accounts for the high density of engineering colleges in the region. It also provides the backdrop to the most recent development – the explosion in the number of engineering colleges and a consequent over-supply of seats.

the engIneerIng explosIon And degree devAluAtIon

In 1980, there were only 157 engineering and technology institutions in India; the number grew to 5,194 by 2012.24 Most of this growth is accounted for by private engineering colleges, a phenomenon that has been especially pronounced in south India. In Andhra Pradesh, the number of engineering colleges rose from 107 in 2001 to 238 in 2004-05, but by 2013 there were over 700 colleges

20 http://srichaitanya.net/vision.html. Accessed September 21, 2013.21 Significantly, these chains include institutions with varying facilities and fees, to cater to different class segments.22 From their website: ‘At Vignan along with the pursuit of academic excellence, our thrust is on education based on values. Our endeavour is

to foster the best of Indian values and cultivate a global outlook’; http://vignanschools.org/. Accessed September 27, 2013.23 http://srichaitanyaschool.net/. Accessed September 21, 2013.24 http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Time-to-end-proliferation-of-engineering-colleges/2013/05/05/article1575110.ece. Accessed

October 1, 2013.



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in the state, of which only ten are government institutions. The four districts of Coastal Andhra alone host nearly 200 engineering colleges offering 101,000 seats.25

In Andhra Pradesh, as elsewhere in south India, the expansion in the number of private engineering colleges was stimulated partly by the IT boom, which provided lucrative employment to many engineering graduates and so enhanced the demand for engineering seats. But the growth curve took a sharp upward turn after the introduction of the ‘fee reimbursement scheme’ in 2008-09 by the Congress government led by Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy (who was popularly known as ‘YSR’). The fee reimbursement scheme was meant to help students from poor families and marginalised communities – who earlier could not dream of an engineering degree due to stiff competition for entry and high fees – to access higher education. Under this scheme, the state government covers the full tuition fees of students belonging to ‘below poverty line’ (BPL), ‘backward caste’ (BC) and Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe (SC/ ST) families, for most professional courses, including engineering, medical, dentistry, pharmacy, management, and education.26 The promulgation of this policy encouraged the establishment of many new colleges by businessmen and politicians, who saw it as a lucrative business opportunity. Education entrepreneurs believed that their colleges would enjoy full student intake because many more students would be able to join engineering courses. Besides the mushrooming of new colleges, existing ones increased their student intakes. These developments led to the rapid ballooning in the number of engineering seats to the current level of over 300,000 in the undivided state.

More than 600,000 students availed of the scheme in 2012, of which 150,000 were engineering students. According to several principals interviewed, 80 to 90 per cent of the convenor’s (government allotted) quota of seats in their colleges is filled by students covered by the reimbursement scheme.27 However, the programme has been the subject of much debate and criticism in Andhra. It is widely seen as a populist scheme floated by YSR for electoral gains, or, more cynically, as a direct state subsidy to the colleges that represents collusion between politicians and business interests. Few of the professors and principals of engineering colleges with whom I spoke lauded the policy as a social welfare tool, and most doubted whether it has actually helped the under-privileged to gain skills. Many people are also sceptical about the programme because of alleged widespread fraud in the issue of ration cards or ‘white cards’, which are used as proof of income. Thus, the expansion in engineering seats does not necessarily mean that more students have entered the path of upward mobility through higher education.

Leaving aside the question of whether the fee reimbursement scheme has actually expanded educational opportunities for the poor (on which we have no concrete data), the point I wish to highlight here that the state government has introduced a ‘populist’ programme whose scope is limited to a small fraction of the population. In contrast to earlier welfare programmes pioneered in the state, such as the Rs 2 per kilo rice scheme of former Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao, this policy stems from, and reproduces, the cultural logic as well as the political economy of education in Andhra, discussed above. The popularity of this scheme reflects the central symbolic position that

25 Engineering colleges are scattered across the state, with the largest concentration around the capital city of Hyderabad (especially in Ranga Reddy District), followed by Coastal Andhra. Guntur District has 68 engineering colleges; Krishna District, 45; West Godavari District, 37 colleges; and East Godavari, 46. http://apecet.nic.in/institute_profile.aspx. Accessed September 18, 2013.

26 When the fee reimbursement scheme was introduced in 2008, it partially covered the fees of students in professional colleges belonging to the backward castes (OBCs, SCs, and STs). In 2009 the scheme was extended to Below Poverty Line (BPL) families, defined as those who have ‘white cards’ (ration cards issued to families with incomes of less than Rs. 1100 per month), and was expanded to cover the entire tui-tion fee at the lowest fee level set by the government (Rs. 35,000 per year in 2012-13).

27 The state government regulates admissions to private colleges. Seventy per cent of the seats in private colleges (the ‘convener’s’ or govern-ment quota) are allocated by a centralised system, for which the fees are set by the government, while 30 per cent of the seats are in the ‘management quota’, for which colleges may select students directly and charge higher fees.



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engineering degrees occupy in public culture in this region and beyond. In addition, by extending access to students from lower castes and social classes, it has helped to disseminate the dominant social imaginary – of economic and social mobility through the acquisition of particular degrees –across a wider cross-section of society.

However, according to many observers and several official reports, the rapid growth in this sector has led to a sharp decline in the quality of education and, by extension, in the calibre of engineers produced by this system. Indeed, many institutions are functioning with inadequate facilities and under-qualified faculty. Due to the much-discussed ‘crisis’ of quality as well as the sudden rise in the number of seats available, it is now a buyer’s market for engineering degrees. In contrast to the earlier period when many applicants had to compete for limited places, during the last two years (2012 and 2013) many colleges in the state were unable to fill their seats, despite the incentive provided by the fee reimbursement scheme. In the 2013-14 academic year, around 300,000 seats were available in 720 engineering colleges in the state, of which 108,000 seats remained vacant, largely due to the widespread perception that many colleges offer sub-standard education.28 With declining employment opportunities in IT and widely circulating stories about the poor quality of many engineering colleges, families are now wary of investing resources in this kind of education.29

Thus, although the fee reimbursement scheme is supposed to provide wider access to engineering education, it has also led to a devaluation of the degree – undercutting the aspirations that made it popular in the first place.

Another important point to note here is that the popular view about the decline in ‘quality’ in engineering education largely flows from the IT industry. As engineering colleges have been retooled as factories for the production of software engineers (Upadhya and Vasavi 2006), colleges cater mainly to the industry’s requirements. They also market themselves based on their ‘placement’ statistics rather than the quality of their faculty, examination results, or other such measures. The placement data showcased on college websites show that most campus recruitment is by IT companies.30 The IT industry has made several efforts to help colleges re-orient their curricula and teaching methods to produce ‘industry-ready’ engineers, through tie-ups between individual companies and colleges as well as the efforts of the main industry body, NASSCOM.31 However, official studies have repeatedly found that only about 20 per cent of graduates are ‘employable’. This discourse about the ‘unemployability’ of most graduate engineers actually refers to the needs of the IT industry rather than to their training in fundamental engineering subjects and analytical skills. This trend has been criticised by many teachers and academics, especially the older generation of engineering professors who have witnessed the

28 http://education.oneindia.in/news/2013/09/18/andhra-pradesh-completes-first-round-of-engineering-admissions-006596.html. Accessed November 05, 2013. Only 290,000 candidates appeared for engineering in the 2013 EAMCET, although there were over 300,000 seats available; (http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130918/news-current-affairs/article/one-lakh-engineering-seats-go-vacant-0. Accessed November 05, 2013). Over 200,000 students qualified in the exam (http://www.myengg.com/engg/info/26095/2-lakh-engineering-students-qualified-in-eamcet-2013/. Accessed September 15, 2013). These figures suggest that engineering continues to be the most popular educational choice, despite the crisis in this sector. More recently, however, students are looking at other career options such as chartered accountancy (CA) and the IAS (government services).

29 A number of engineering colleges are slated for closure because they have not been able to recruit sufficient numbers of students. According to a report by the All India Institute of Technical Education (AICTE, a regulatory body), of the 143 technical institutes in India that had applied for permission to close in 2012, 56 were in Andhra Pradesh. See A. Srinivasa Rao, ‘Engineering colleges in AP prepare to shut down as students stay away’, India Today, Hyderabad, May 1, 2012. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/andhra-pradesh-engineering-colleges-students/1/186862.html. Accessed September 12, 2013.

30 College websites usually list only students who receive offers from companies during campus recruitment drives; most do not collect data on the employment status of their other graduates.

31 In several colleges in Krishna and Guntur districts, I observed computer labs sponsored by large software companies; for example KL University has labs set up by IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, etc; http://www.kluniversity.in/speclabs.aspx. Accessed July 29, 2014. Companies also sponsor special training programmes, such as Infosys’ ‘Campus Connect’; see http://www.pvpsiddhartha.ac.in/index.sit?service=TP_HOMEPAGE. Accessed July 29, 2014.



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transformation of education wrought by the rise of the IT industry. According to a professor who retired from a government engineering college and now teaches in a private college in Vijayawada:

The IT industry repeatedly makes the point that only 10-20 per cent of engineering graduates are employable. But we want to teach for the 100 per cent, not for this 20 per cent... Why is there so much discussion in the newspapers about poor quality? It is because the voice of the software companies is heard more than our voice. From their point of view these graduates are useless, but the needs of IT and ours are different. We want our students to get absorbed in all kinds of industries. In reality, the people who get IT jobs are those who can talk nicely – that is what they want, people who can sell their products. But I want to train students who can produce products.

Thus, the popular narrative about the decline in quality draws a distinction between the cream of students who have the educational and cultural capital to get job offers from IT companies (those who can ‘talk nicely’), and the majority who are thrown into the job market without the requisite skills or knowledge to succeed in a global industry. That this narrative has become the ‘common sense’ view of educationists, the middle class, and the English media reveals the extent to which the ‘IT dream’ has colonised not only the aspirations of youth in Andhra (and many other places) but also the field of higher education.

There is no space here to explore further the effects of these developments in higher education on marginalised groups, except to suggest that the new educational regime inflects the mobility strategies of students and their families in diverse social locations. As noted above, private educational and training institutions have mushroomed across Coastal Andhra to cater to aspirations for engineering degrees and IT jobs, which have filtered much beyond the regional elite and middle

classes, influencing the educational choices of even poor rural students. Yet the education system that has been crafted by Andhra provincial capital, with substantial help from the state and the political class, has engendered new axes of social differentiation even as it promises mobility and equality of access. For example, students from middle class or affluent urban families are better placed to gain entry to top-ranked colleges because they can afford the high fees of ‘corporate colleges’ and coaching classes, or they get seats in the ‘management quota’. These are the students who are also more likely to go abroad for higher studies, thereby reproducing the power of the regional elite through enhanced transnationalisation. On the other side, thousands of students have been funnelled into poor quality colleges via the fee reimbursement scheme, only to acquire ‘useless’ degrees (Jeffrey 2010; Jeffrey, Jeffery and Jeffery 2008) that leave them ‘unemployable’, at least in the IT industry to which many aspire. These ‘educated’ youth are likely to experience a very different kind of ‘mobility’ from that promised by the dominant social imaginary of the region.

educAtIonAl restructurIng And mobIlIty

In this paper I have argued that the history and political economy of education in Coastal Andhra positioned the region as a key source of IT labour for the global economy. The out-migration of many educated youth in search of IT jobs, in turn, fostered a culture of migration that is reshaping the ‘educational regime’ of the region. Although the desire to migrate to America is certainly not the only reason for the rapid expansion of private engineering education – the fee reimbursement scheme being a major recent factor – the popular imaginary that connects migration with social mobility, success, and prestige has underwritten the intense desire for engineering degrees as well as the fee reimbursement scheme itself.

I have focused on indirect linkages between a regional political economy and culture of education



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and a particular pattern of out-migration. The privatisation and commercialisation of higher education, promoted and sustained by state policies, is an outcome of Coastal Andhra’s historical development into a distinctive regional social and cultural configuration, in which provincial capital and the regional elite have long been ‘invested’ in education, in both senses of the term – as an opportunity for capital accumulation as well as a very desirable form of cultural capital. From this perspective, it becomes clear that both kinds of investment – families in the education of children and business entrepreneurs in educational institutions – flow from the same cultural logic. This concatenation of diverse impulses and

developments may be understood as a ‘regional-global’ assemblage (Ong and Collier 2005), in which contingent elements are loosely stitched together: the fetishisation of engineering degrees; the iconisisation of the figures of the software engineer and the NRI; the creation of an aspirational culture of migration; and the emergence of education as a lucrative business. Here I have tried to map only a few of the connections among these diverse elements and processes in order to unravel the ways in which aspirations for engineering degrees and IT jobs (often code for the desire for migration) have contributed to the restructuring and corporatisation of education, and to new modes and modalities of social mobility and immobility.



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Provincial Globalisation WorkinG PaPer series

• WP 1: Measuring International Remittances in India: Concepts and Empirics, by Puja Guha (July, 2011)

• WP 2: Diaspora Philanthropy from a Homeland Perspective: Reciprocity and Contestation over Donations in Central Gujarat, India, by Natascha Dekkers and Mario Rutten (August, 2011)

• WP 3: Economics of Migration and Remittances: A Review Article, by Puja Guha (August, 2011)

• WP 4: Provincial Globalisation: Transnational Flows and Regional Development, by Carol Upadhya and Mario Rutten (January, 2012)

• WP 5: Middling Migration: Contradictory Mobility Experiences of Indian Youth in London, by Mario Rutten and Sanderien Verstappen (January, 2012)

• WP 6: Migrants’ Private Giving and Development: Diasporic Influences on Development in Central Gujarat, India, by Puja Guha (August, 2013)

about the Provincial Globalisation ProGramme

The Provincial Globalisation research programme (‘ProGlo’) explores transnational connections between Overseas Indians and their home regions, especially the ‘reverse flows’ of resources into India and their effects. The research is documenting a broad range of resource transfers by migrants, including economic resources (such as household remittances, investments in land and philanthropy), social remit-tances (including flows of ideas, support for NGOs), and cultural flows (such as religious donations), and their influences on regional level development. The programme consists of several independent but interlinked research projects located in three Indian regions – coastal Andhra Pradesh, coastal Karnataka and central Gujarat.

‘ProGlo’ is a collaborative research programme of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, India, funded by the WOTRO Science for Global Development programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the Netherlands, initiated in 2010.

Programme directors:

Prof. Mario Rutten (AISSR)Prof. Carol Upadhya (NIAS) www.provglo.org

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