For Summers, A Passage to India

India is touted as “a land for all seasons,” but next week the country will play host to University President Lawrence H. Summers.

The trip will not exactly be spring break for the president, who will represent the University abroad in meetings with academic, business, and government leaders, along with alumni.

The purpose of the trip is to bolster the University’s ties with the world’s second most populous country, and forge new ones, according to the president’s spokesman, John D. Longbrake.

Summers will jet off to India, one of the fastest growing developing nations, this weekend and arrive on Monday to start his busy week.

India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, will kick off one of the week’s highlights, an academic symposium hosted by the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) in New Delhi. Graduates of all of Harvard’s schools, from 24 countries, will convene there on March 25 and 26—the first such gathering to take place in India, according to Longbrake.

Summers will be part of a sizable delegation of University administrators, including deans of Harvard’s various faculties.

An assortment of Harvard professors will participate in discussions at the symposium, including Lamont University Professor Amartya K. Sen and Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature Homi K. Bhabha.

Some of the Harvard alumni visiting India for the events will have the opportunity to see some of the rest of the country during guided tours offered before and after the symposium, offered through the HAA Alumni Education Office.

Summers’ busy schedule will include speeches at the All India Institute for Medical Sciences as well as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

The president will also cut the ribbon on two new University outposts in Mumbai, India; Harvard Business School’s newest research center and the Harvard South Asia Initiative Office. In addition, the president will speak at the Reserve Bank of India, which maintains its head office in Mumbai.

India has been on Summers’ mind for some time. As a deputy secretary of the Treasury in 1997, Summers told attendees at a Washington conference that India had “not come close to fulfilling its potential” for development, according to remarks posted on the Treasury’s website.

Today, Summers’–– trip takes place at a time of rising economic integration between rich and poor regions of the world. The shift “has the potential to be one of the three most important economic events in the last millennium, alongside the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution,” Summers said last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

—Javier C. Hernandez contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Nicholas M. Ciarelli can be reached at ciarelli@fas.harvard.edu.