Anirudh Suri '06 won a Carnegie Endowment Junior Fellowship this year, and will be going to Washington, D.C., to work with Ashley Tellis, a Senior Assistant in the Carnegie Institute South Asia program.
Anirudh Suri '06 won a Carnegie Endowment Junior Fellowship this year, and will be going to Washington, D.C., to work with Ashley Tellis, a Senior Assistant in the Carnegie Institute South Asia program. Suri, from New Delhi, India, was a double major in economics and political science at Haverford, with an international relations focus, and a peace and conflict studies concentration. He aspires to be a Foreign Service Officer for his home country, and in the past has won the prestigious Singapore Airlines Youth Scholarship, and the Starr Foundation and Pannini scholarships. Tellis, a key advisor to Condoleezza Rice and Nicholas Burns, helped broker the United States/India nuclear deal, and worked on U.S./India relations.
Suri will be a research assistant on strategic relations projects involving China and Pakistan, contribute research to reports for House and Senate committees, contribute to drafts of Op-Eds, speeches, and editorials, and have chances to co-author monographs, etc. He'll also be part of a team organizing conferences involving the Foreign Minister and Defense Minister of India. He'll do that for a year, and also split his time in another job as an assistant with the McKinsey management counseling firm, a specialist in merger management, international finance and global economic strategies.
"For example," Suri explains, " let's say GE faces losses in certain world areas, they call in McKinsey to look at the issues and make recommendations for change, and for government strategies as well...or New Jersey has a deficit problem—this is just a for-instance—we suggest alternatives..."
He is fascinated by the interplay of global finance, politics, and social forces. Discussing his own country, he explains how India has been able to progress so quickly as a democracy, because of its "inclusive" society, as opposed to authoritarian societies like China. "It is more responsive to the needs of its people, although they encompass different groups. I mean the freedoms of entrepreneurship on a grassroots basis...lots of room for individual technologies." He also jokes that Indians' familiarity with English didn't hurt either when it came to outsourcing communications jobs like computer and cell phone technical information for American, English, Canadian, and Australian markets. "[India] is better in the ID services sector and the knowledge economy as well, because of these factors..."
Anirudh's successful application to the Carnegie think tank came after his nomination by Haverford (his advisor was Linda Bell, chair of the economics deptartment). He made what he calls a "personal statement" on U.S./ China relations on the subject: "China is Not Necessarily a Threat, if Managed Properly." "We should not push China on the Taiwan question," he smiles. "Not at this time, certainly. The U.S, should not be putting military bases in the Asian Pacific. Or increasing our naval presence...fairly obvious stuff," he says.
