The India Experience: Understanding Commerce By DEEPANJALI KAKATI
Tina Thomas added to her knowledge of trade and commerce during an internship with the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service in New Delhi.
What can a student hoping to someday work in the field of U.S.-India affairs do to gain some work experience? One option is to do an internship in India, a route chosen by New York-born Tina Thomas.
A student of political science and international studies at Yale University in Connecticut, Thomas worked on market reports during her summer internship with the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service in New Delhi. These reports analyze business sectors or industries and are given to U.S. firms, to inform them about what is available in India. She also researched and helped put together a report on clean energy.
Thomas, whose parents moved to the United States from Kerala in the 1980s, feels U.S. companies now need to look for different, innovative ways to come to India, besides the more common avenues of IT companies, fast food restaurants and clothing chains.
As examples, she mentions online education and clean energy, two areas she worked on during her month-long internship. “Online education is a phenomenal thing. You can help people who are poor, who are in rural areas, to receive a great education. Those are also things that U.S. universities, companies or colleges should consider investing in because there’s a huge market in India. There are people who want to learn all over India but just don’t have the resources…to go to university,” she says.
Sometimes, she says, small businesses are a little timid about stepping into the huge market that is India, but if U.S. firms really want to do business in India, they need to come “and push for their ideas and plans.” It is also important, she adds, to understand how the two countries do business differently.
Thomas chose an internship because it is crucial to understand commerce and trade for her subjects at Yale. “I don’t think I’ve had much exposure to trade or commerce or economics. This will definitely help me in that,” she says. With plans to go to law school and also do a masters in public policy, Thomas used her time in India to practice Hindi because “it’s such a useful and important skill to have. It allows you to connect with so many different people.” Adding that there was also a professional aspect to her decision, Thomas, who is fluent in Malayalam, says that she wants to work some day in the field of U.S.-India affairs and “having a little bit of Hindi under my belt is crucial.”
She stays close to her Indian roots through visits to family here every two to three years and through cultural connections such as Bharatanatyam lessons, which she took for 10 years.
Thomas, who will graduate next year, has focused her studies at Yale on the regions of South America and India. “I’ve studied, researched, and worked in South America already, and so, I wanted to come to India.…I don’t think my studies in South Asia would have been legitimate or acceptable if I hadn’t come to the region itself to work.”
Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov
Courtesy: SPAN Magazine