I consider myself a Delhiwala, I am myself a product of India: President of Malawi

[TATA]

I consider myself a Delhiwala, I am myself a product of India: President of Malawi

NEW DELHI: After Gordon Brown and Hillary Clinton, president of Malawi is likely to visit Delhi University on November 4. What is more special for Delhi University this time is that the guest from the southeast African country was one of its own students nearly 50 years ago.

Malawian president Bingu wa Mutharika graduated in BCom (H) from Shri Ram College of Commerce in 1961, after which he pursued his masters degree in the Delhi School of Economics for two years. DU is now planning to confer an honorary degree of literature on him when he comes visiting on Thursday. ''We have called an emergency session of the EC to approve the proposal. He is important for us and honouring him will be in national interest as he was also a student of our university,'' said vice-chancellor, professor Dinesh Singh.

Malawi is a democratic country located towards the south of the African continent. The economy mostly relies on agriculture. Increasing agricultural output, improving education and basic health facility, rooting out corruption and dealing with the spread of HIV/AIDS are some of the biggest challenges faced by Mutharika's government.

When in India, he has also expressed a desire to meet his batchmates who graduated with him in 1961. His alma mater has arranged for an alumni meet on Tuesday where the Malawian president will get together with his old classmates over lunch.

SRCC principal P C Jain said, ''We contacted his office last week. That's when we were told he wanted to see his old batchmates. Though they graduated half a century ago, we managed to trace 75 of them.''

It may have been long since he left India, Mutharika hasn't really been able to take Delhi out of him. When vice-president Hamid Ansari went on a state visit to Malawi in January this year, Mutharika was quoted as saying, ''I consider myself a Delhiwala. I am myself a product of India.''

Read more: DU to honour SRCC alumnus Malawi president - The Times of India DU to honour SRCC alumnus Malawi president - The Times of India

 

[TATA]

Malawi President Mutharika visits India

New Delhi, November 2, 2010

Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika will be on a week-long State Visit to India from today during which the two countries will hold talks on ways of stepping up economic cooperation between them.

This will be Prof Mutharika's fist visit to India as President of his country. He had studied at the University of Delhi in the 1960s.

He will be accompanied by the first lady and a team that will include six ministers of his cabint as well as a large business delegation.

Prof Mutharika will call on President Pratibha Patil, who will host a banquet in his honour tomorrow evening.

He will also meet Vice-President M Hamid Ansari and hold delegation level talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj will call on the visiting dignitary.

According to an official press release, at the delegation level talks, the two sides are expected to discuss a wide range of subjects of bilateral interest covering economic cooperation, trade and investment, infrastructure, mining, coal, agriculture, micro, small and medium enterprises, and human resource development.

The release said India’s relations with Malawi have been close and friendly and the visit is expected to further strengthen them.

As part of the efforts to revitalise the bilateral relations, Mr Ansari had visited Malawi in January this year.

President Mutharika as the chairperson of the African Union in the current year has played a positive role in strengthening the ties between India and the African Union, the release said.

It said his visit would provide an opportunity to enhance not only India's engagement bilaterally with Malawi but to reiterate its commitment to work with Africa as a whole.

"We see in Malawi a valuable democratic partner in Africa. It has played an energetic role in COMESA, SADC and provided leadership to the African Union," it said.

The release said the Pan-African e-Network Project, initiated by India, had been implemented in Malawi and was an important aspect of capacity building and support to the education and health sectors. Malawi is also a beneficiary of the new scholarship schemes offered to the African countries in the areas of agricultural sciences and scientific research.

India provided a line of credit of $ 30 million to Malawi in 2008 which was used for irrigation, grain storage, tobacco threshing and the one village, one product projects. A line of credit of $ 50 million was announced during the visit of the Vice President. in Malawi has sent proposals for utilisation of the line of credit for projects dealing with setting up of cotton ginning & spinning facilities; green belt initiative; and the one village one product programme.

Bilateral trade is $ 185 million and is increasing by the utilization of Malawi of greater opportunities in the Indian market. Efforts to find complementarities for increasing bilateral trade between India and Malawi will be made. Malawi has joined the Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme announced during the first India Africa Forum Summit in April 2008 and it has had a positive impact on the increase of Malawi’s exports to India.

Prof Mutharika and his delegation will meet Indian business leaders during a luncheon meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and ASSOCHAM. He is also due to visit Agra and Goa, the release added.

Malawi President Mutharika to visit India from Nov 2-7 | NetIndian | India News | Latest News from India | Breaking News from India | Latest Headlines

 

[jha]

SRCC..Hmm..

Anyways good for us and MALAWI ( Did not know there was a country of this name..)..

 

[third eye]

SRCC..Hmm..

Anyways good for us and MALAWI ( Did not know there was a country of this name..)..

Surprising..

Anyway delhi Univ is great. have super memories of the law faculty coffee house which used to the center point of most sessions to begin the day.

The winter fests too were great.

 

[jha]

Surprising..



The winter fests too were great.

Actually embarrassing....

 

[Tshering22]

This just increased the possibility of greater and closer possible ties for India with another African nation. Since anyway the entire Africa is a race between Chinese and us, I think this small opportunity takes us one step ahead of what we were.

Surely Mutharika ji hasn't come to India just to meet his friends but also sign some critical economic deals. If not yet, it is still on the cards and since southern Africa is rich in radioactive fuels (Namibia is an example), I might speculate a possible mining rights agreement.

 

[TATA]

"President Mutharika as the chairperson of the African Union in the current year has played a positive role in strengthening the ties between India and the African Union."

That's great.

Don't go by contrary's size etc. Look at pakistan and north korea but china aid and donate them because..................

So everything have its uses, now its for us how we uses it for betterment of both the nations.