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1,800 students affected by US varsity fraud
More than 1800 Indian students were affected by the immigration fraud by the Tri-Valley University
(TVU) in the US which was shut down in January last year, the Government said today. "More than 1800
Indian students were affected by this (immigration) fraud perpetrated by the TVU. As per statistics
furnished by the US authorities, 766 cases of Indian students of the TUV were approved for transfer to
other universities, while 480 cases are pending for scrutiny and 281 were denied transfer," Minister of
State for HRD D Purandeswari said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
The Minister also noted that the government has taken up the issue very seriously with the US in order
to protect the interests of the Indian students there.
"The government has strongly conveyed to the US agencies that the students, themselves a victim of
fraud, should not be penalized and help responsible for the violations committed by the University,"
Purandeswari said.
"India has also requested that there should not be mass termination of visas of the affected students so
that they do not go out of status and the affected students should be given adequate time for transfer
to other universities or voluntarily return to India without prejudice," she said. The Minister also
informed the House that the Embassy of India at Washington is keeping in touch with the US
Department of Homeland Security to ensure that the pending transfer cases of Indian students of the
San Francisco-based University are considered in a sympathetic manner.
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Hollywood studios should join hands with Indian companies to succeed here: Experts
The debate on whether homegrown Bollywood production houses and independent studios can
compete with Hollywood studios successfully keeps surfacing from time to time. But it took a new turn
at the screen big picture on saturday when a panel of distinguished people from the field — reliance big
pictures CEO sanjeev lamba, rose movies head shrishti arya, balaji motion pictures president swati
shetty, UTV motion pictures CEO siddharth roy kapur, motion pictures association India md uday singh
—discussed this topic keenly.
Lamba kickstarted the debate by saying that the homegrown studios do have a chance of competing
with Hollywood studios. “The reason is that the comparative advantages that Hollywood enjoys around
the rest of the world are not necessarily available in india. We are the only country in the world where
Hollywood makes 5-7% of the box-office income for their products. In almost every other country, be it
England, France, Germany, Russia, japan, Mexico, the Hollywood share is over 40%. The Indian
consumer is a fiercely domestic consumer,” said lamba.
Roy kapur, too agreed with the observation. “Hollywood has realized that they are up against a glass
ceiling because Indians want to watch homegrown content. They’ve realized that Hollywood studios
need local support to make local content and grow in India. One way of going about it is doing what
Disney has done with utv. Join hands with a company that is already developing content locally and has
a successful track record,” said roy kapur. The involvement of Hollywood in India isn’t new. It has been
dominating Indian television for nearly two decades now, said lamba, citing the examples of star, Sony,
colors, ESPN, cartoon network and others.
Singh, however, maintained that the television business too took time to figure out. “We dubbed serials
in local languages initially, but that didn’t work. We learnt along the way that we need to have content
that will be locally relevant.” Singh also pointed out that despite the Hollywood studios coming to India,
one must bear in mind that the Indian studios like yash raj films excel entertainment and vinod chopra
films have not stopped making the movies they want to produce. “This is a great time to collaborate and