The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : People-to-people contact need of the hour: expert

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 07, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

People-to-people contact need of the hour: expert

R.K. Radhakrishnan

"Indians and Americans were not as interactive as the two governments" "Indians, Americans need to be more interactive"

Akram Elias.

CHENNAI: People-to-people contact between Indians and Americans is very important at a time when the two governments are increasingly cooperating with each other in diverse fields, says Akram R.Elias, a United States-based consultant in cross-cultural training.

Mr. Elias, who is president, Capital Communications Group, said that while governments in India and the United States were talking to each other and even seeing each other's point of view, the citizens of both countries did not have the same level of interaction.

Mr. Elias, who has worked extensively for cultural exchange programmes sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the former United States Information Agency, said the citizens were forced to depend on the media and sometimes the media did not have the complete picture. Judgments were based on information they picked up from the media. It was only by "getting together" and "talking" to each could understand the other better.

"We are doing this to... find common ground. If I ignore who you are, I tend to fear that... You start acting based on the perception that the other person is going to harm you," he said and added that this happened because of lack of trust.

Global citizen

Promoting greater understanding was the need of the hour. In the era of global capital, global information and global village, one needed to be a global citizen and should relate to one another. "Because of globalisation, we need a global civil society," said Mr. Elias, who has 20 years of professional experience as a consultant/contractor in cross-cultural training, international trade and political relations between the United States and countries from around the world.

Last week, he spoke at the Centre for Security Analysis and the Observer Research Foundation. He said the discussions had covered a wide range of topics — American civil society structures, the importance of religion, the role of religion in government and how separation works, secularism and American democracy.

Asked if he encountered anti-American feelings during the visit, he said he could feel from some questions posed to him that people were angry or upset with some of its actions. He encountered questions such as "why is America doing this" and "why is the policy this way," he said. "I personally do not want to call it anti-Americanism."

Mr. Elias has also been involved in building a civil society in Cuba since 2001 and in the Philippines since 2004. He is a naturalised citizen of the United Sates of Lebanese origin and has travelled extensively overseas.

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