The Meeting of the Twain

Rarely can students play significant roles either in international relations or in the development of villages seven thousand miles away; yet it is precisely these opportunities, in the form of a Mutual Service Program between Harvard and Delhi University, India, that over twenty students have now endorsed. Representing many of the key College organizations, these students have taken the first step in what could become one of the most imaginative and constructive projects yet undertaken by undergraduates--a program that meets definite needs in this country, in India, and in relations between the two.

As presently planned, the initial program will entail financial support from Harvard students for village development to be undertaken by Indian students in Delhi. In return, Indians will not only raise an equivalent amount of money, but also send substantial cultural material to Cambridge. Possibilities of expanding the program from an exchange by students to an actual exchange of students is one of the long-range ideas that could be beneficial.

Even without an exchange of persons, which certainly could not be part of the first year of the five-year program, the plan would help to solve problems within India. Village development itself, of course, is already a chief part in the Indian government's plan for coming abreast of the twentieth century, but the university student has had a hard time fitting into programs of village health, irrigation, or literacy. All too often, traditional desire for a white-collar job and his own economic poverty have led him to lose contact with the soil and trouble of village life and to veer toward the political left. The proposed Mutual Service Program would put responsibility squarely on two hundred students at Delhi and provide them with enough money for manual service during vacations, as well as village surveys and seminars during the school year. This is hardly charity; it is not even "helping others to help themselves," in the language of Point Four; it is, rather, a new and more acceptable concept--helping others to help others.

While India needs the program for practical village work, Harvard needs it for less tangible, but just as real, reasons. A College-wide effort to support the plan would not only bring into closer cooperation U.S. students and Indians now here at the graduate level; it would not only bring to Cambridge outstanding speakers on foreign affairs who have already shown enthusiasm for the plan; it would, more importantly, give a shot in the arm to the international interest that recently has lost strength in the Harvard community.

Beyond meeting real needs both here and in India, the Mutual Service Program would help to fill a widening gap between the two nations. Without government aid or interference, a concern demonstrated by U.S. students for Indian students could go a long way toward developing a person-to-person bond between America and Asia's largest democracy. When organizations next fall consider whether to support the Mutual Service Program, they should remember that real mutuality and real service are the keystones both of this project and of international understanding.