Both India and the U.S. have a large internal market; neither has, therefore, been as effective in exports as it could have been. Recent problems have been in quality control of Indian shrimp exports and in stamping the name of the country of manufacture on Indian rivets, nuts and bolts. "We would meet the problem," says Orville Freeman, "by ensuring on the one hand that the shipment of marine products met the highest standards of quality, and on the other hand that the application of quality standards was evenhanded and was not an expression of internal protectionist pressures." The U.S. sick reviewed, during this year's meeting" the significant steps the U.S. has recently taken to reduce trade barriers ~ith India as well as worldwide: • U.S. Congress has ratified the M ultilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN); • U.S. Government agencies responsible for U.S. import/export policies have been extensively reorganized; • An Indo-U.S. tropical products agreement has been signed; the eligible products list has been expanded; and the "competitive need criteria" under the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences have been eased. The Indian side recognizes these steps but feels that exports from developing countries should be treated on a different basis from those from developed countries. Orville Freeman made the personal judgment: The effective implementation and enforcement of the results of the Multilateral Trade Negotiations, which were, in the overall, extremely favorable in terms of maintainifl~ a reasonably open world for trade, is more important to developing countries than Special Preferences .... I don't deprecate the pec1alPfeTerences, and we seek to expand 'and strengthen them and apply them evenhandedly, but because all the Special Preferences might not have been forthcoming, or because safeguards might not have been successfully negotiated is not a good reason for failing to support the overall results of the trade negotiations. The failure to implement the agreement could be a serious retrogression and would be harmful in the context of the resurging protectionism which is hard enough to contain.
Richard M. Bliss, vice-chairman of JBC, has suggested that to increase India's exports to the United States, trading companies might be organized as consortia. These would be comprised of a number of Indian companies and would be backed by strong government
support and partIcIpation, offering them the kind of power that Japan and South Korea have employed with great success. "Interestingly enough," he comments, "the United States is quite deficient in its export practices, and a good deal of thought is being given to something along those lines. Both India and the United States have a large internal market, and the result is that neither country has been as effective and dynamic in exports as it could have been. The Koreans and the Japanese make us look pretty slow." Bliss, a prominent international banker, (he is president of American Express International Banking Corporation) makes the point that since, with all the encouragement, foreign investment is still not of the scale that India needs, one way for India to supplement its foreign equity might be to. borrow abroad for large projects to develop agriculture, irrigation, fertilizers, etc. The climate in the international markets right now for India's borrowings is very good, he declares. However, the note of optimism, evident in the pronouncements of JBC this year, cautious as it was, did not go unchallenged. Susanne Green of United Press International asked a key question: "Could you say specifically which of the factors that led to the decline of U.S. investment in India have reversed themselves so that now there is more optimism than there has been in recent years?" Orvi!le Freeman's answer: "There is a new administration. There is the prospect for stability and continuity of government. There are early indications that the policies and practices on investment, capital, and technology will be more pragmatic, and that the reception to them will be warmer and more effective than in the past." Five years of deliberation in the Joint Business Council, which has consistently brought together some of the top business people of the two countries, has undoubtedly given both sides valuable insights into each other's strengths, weaknesses and constraints, and helped more practical notions of collaboration to emerge. Its most concrete outcome may turn out to be joint ventures in third countries-especially in West Asia. 0
Open Learning in Mid-America
The University of Mid-America's specially prepared multimedia packages offer top-caliber higher education to those who cannot go to a campus. The classes are held in the student's living room-using television, radio, video-audio cassettes and local newspapers.
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our years ago Nina Magill, a Fremont, Nebraska, housewife, noticed a newspaper advertisement about the new University of Mid-America (UMA), where anyone could study, just by tuning in to the television programs. "I always wanted. to goto college but wasn't sure I was college material," she says. "It looked like my chance to prove to myself that I could handle higher education." Today Nina Magill has completed courses in psychology, computer science, consumerism, local history, and economics-all by TV, all in her own living room. Donald Lauts too had an itch for higher education, but a lack of mobility rather than confidence impeded him. A disabled veteran confined to a wheelchair, Lauts lives with his wifeand two teen-age sons in the tiny ranch town of Stapleton (population 311) in the Nebraska Sandhills. The local press has lauded him for his leadership in community affairs as president of the Community Playhouse and as "a can-do guy with a contagious zest for life and learning." Lauts was the very first student to enroll when UMA started six years ago. Now 45, he's taken introductory psychology, computer science, and a poetry course called" Anyone for Tennyson?" ''I'm thrilled to be
educating myself this way. It beats sitting around, feeling sorry for myself," he says. Six other Nebraskans took introductory psychology together. They all worked in the county sheriff's office, four of them as jailers, the other two as secretaries. Said Dan Stockton, then chief jailer, "We're working with personalities here, sometimes scary ones. There's more to it than locking somebody in a room. We all felt we needed to kqow more about dealing with people, learning what makes them tick. When a crisis comes up, the inmate's needs have to be handled immediately; there's no time then to sit around and analyze the problem. If we know why a person is acting in a certain way, we can respond intelligently." And whenever a student had to miss a lesson, he or she could catch up at a nearby regional learning center by viewing a video cassette of the missed program. Providing these kinds of educational opportunities is the mission of the University of Mid-America, the most notable "open learning" system in the United States. UMA has grown from a four-state, five-school venture into one involving II state universities-Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State,