Collector, KV teacher among 31 Fulbright scholars

From Food Corporation of India’s depot manager to a Kendriya Vidyalaya english teacher, a district collector in northern Bengal to project coordinator...

From Food Corporation of India’s depot manager to a Kendriya Vidyalaya english teacher, a district collector in northern Bengal to project coordinator in Delhi Development Authority’s slum wing, this year’s Fulbright scholars from India are an eclectic mix of young talent from unconventional areas.

Set to fly off to the US next month, these scholars, selected after a thorough process of scrutiny by the United States Educational Foundation of India (USEFI), are from varied backgrounds pursuing different vocations and are headed for US universities for their Master’s and Doctoral programmes in subjects of their interest.

Says Rajesh Pandey, district collector of Darjeeling,”I joined IAS in 1995, and have been interested in public finance and development areas. I hope to gain exposure in these fields and get alternative perspectives.” Pandey will be studying public administration at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University.

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Pandey is not alone. Says Shobhana Boyle, a project coordinator with DDA’s slum wing who is headed for Cornell University, “I have worked in the rural development sector and have witnessed problems in the implementation of schemes at the grassroot level. I want to learn various aspects of scheme implementation in the US.”

While Pandey and Boyle are part of the Leadership development programme under the Fulbright scholarship, Shalini Singh Khare is an English teacher with Kendriya Vidyalaya at Delhi Cantonment while Vamsi Krishna is a Mathematics teacher with Kendriya Vidyalaya in Coimbatore.

Not only do the scholars vary, their choice of subjects is also varied.

The first batch of 31 scholars headed towards Chandigarh on Wednesday for an orientation programme, where they will be told about cross-cultural communication and other aspects of the programme, after a warm send-off by US ambassador David C Mulford in Roosevelt House on Wednesday.