HBS faculty cited interest in India for a variety of reasons.

“India has important manufacturing, important finance, important outsourcing, important hi-tech. It also has an important government,” Vietor said.

Palepu also stressed the role of IT, entrepreneurs, and democracy as factors particular to India.

“India is one of the few emerging markets where entrepreneurs are building global companies,” he said.

India’s multiparty democracy, according to Palepu, makes their economic reform process more complex than in other emerging economies, such as China.

South Asian Society co-president Vinod E. Nambudiri ’05 said that HBS’ interest in India is representative of a general campus-wide interest in the country.

“There has definitely been a rising interest in India and the entire South Asian subcontinent in recent years at Harvard from a variety of perspectives,” he said. “With the recent rise of South Asian culture making its way into the West…there seems to have been a rise in interest in understanding the basis of these influences.”

Nambudiri said that the American business world has been trying to capitalize upon the IT success of Bangalore.

“From a political [and] economic standpoint, cities like Bangalore have thrived in the age of Information Technology, and the business world has been actively pursuing outsourcing strategies in recent years toward all sorts of industries in the subcontinent,” he said.

He added that India’s political climate is also being carefully studied.

“As India is the world’s largest democracy, a lot of international attention is focused on understanding the complexities that shape—or impede—the government’s functioning,” he said.

—Staff writer Joseph T. Scarry can be reached at scarry@fas.harvard.edu.