A GW student founded a national organization focused on U.S.-India relations and launched a chapter at the University this fall, aiming to better understand the political, cultural and economic ties between the two countries.
Senior Aditya Goswamy created the Washington Forum on India in January as a national organization with chapters at four universities, including GW, to create a space focused on U.S.-India economic and political affairs and give students opportunities to engage with leading voices on the relationship, like ambassadors. Students involved in both the GW chapter — dubbed WFI Foggy Bottom — and the national organization said the forum offers pro-bono research and consulting opportunities to Indian companies and professional development through speaker events and networking.
Goswamy, who is majoring in international affairs and serves as the founder and CEO of the national WFI organization, said he brought WFI to its inaugural four schools — GW, Brown, Harvard and Georgetown universities — after reaching out to students he knew at the respective institutions about starting a chapter on their campus.
He said WFI is a completely new organization that started this year, adding that three of its four chapters are officially registered at their universities — except at GW due to the freeze on student organization approvals. He said the student organization pause has not significantly affected the chapter’s operations, but they still plan to apply for official status once officials lift the pause.
Goswamy said he was inspired to start WFI after taking a leave of absence during his sophomore year in fall 2023 to work for the Election Commission of India in India, where he noticed Indian college students of “disadvantaged backgrounds” had an interest in international affairs but didn’t have the resources to explore it.
He said he believed that the same passion in international affairs existed at universities like GW and wanted to build an organization that would help tie together international affairs and India specifically to American institutions of higher education. He added that being in D.C., especially, could allow for partnerships with people and organizations directly involved in U.S.-India affairs, like holding events with think tanks.
“The fact that there was so much passion coming in from inside the country was an indicator that I need to explore this further,” Goswamy said.
Goswamy said WFI seeks to involve students interested in gaining serious professional work, like at think tanks centered around foreign affairs and policy making specifically focused on U.S.-India relations, which he said have hardly any representation from younger generations.
“The heart of this mission is let’s get students involved in something serious and professional,” Goswamy said.
Goswamy said students in WFI do pro-bono consulting for Indian start-up businesses, like Shingora Textiles Limited, informing these businesses about the market, regulatory landscapes and political and policy risks of trade between the two nations. He said this allows students to get professional experience in the private sector of U.S.-India relations.
“It’s an honor for us to help these businesses figure out the right strategy, and for them, it’s a matter of convenience that we have these young folks that are willing to put in the time for free,” Goswamy said.
He said on the national level, WFI has a governing body of students at different schools that presides over all chapters to ensure each chapter’s research output is frequent and of high quality, while also developing strategies on how to reach companies with their services.
“No one’s getting paid to do this, and so ensuring that people have a set of institutional standards and processes to follow is what we rely on,” Goswamy said.
Siddharth Kwatra, a sophomore majoring in finance and international affairs and the president of WFI Foggy Bottom, said he joined the chapter’s executive board at the start of the fall semester after hearing about the national organization, which offered participants an opportunity to focus specifically on Indian affairs and policy in a student organization — something he said GW didn’t have before.
“That’s why I wanted to join because I see a huge potential and a huge opportunity for myself,” Kwatra said.
Kwatra said WFI is made up of student teams focused on research, outreach and marketing to obtain clients for WFI’s consulting and to maintain up-to-date information on the state of U.S.-India diplomacy and relations between the two countries to help inform these clients when they make business decisions.
Kwatra said the research work done at WFI Foggy Bottom prepares students for future careers in U.S.-India policy and in other fields, as it covers international geopolitics and financial markets, and the lessons learned from participating in this research can be applied beyond U.S.-India relations. He said the diversity of research students engage with is a strong incentive for students with different interests.
“There is no limit what they can choose,” Kwatra said. “If they want to choose something in AI technology in the U.S.-India corridor, if they want to focus on something like psychological they can. They can do that, anything they want.”
Dia Makhecha, a sophomore international student from Mumbai, India and co-director of communications for WFI Foggy Bottom, said WFI has given her the opportunity to connect the two fields she’s studying at GW — business and political science — to understand the economic foreign relations of the United States and India.
She said WFI is looking to increase membership with a diverse body of students from all majors and academic backgrounds, also adding that she hopes the organization can gain traction by hosting more events throughout the year, which will attract students who are primarily interested in joining the research teams, as well as consistently posting on social media.
“There’s no limit to who we partner with,” Makhecha said. “We want our reach to expand across the university to people that are not international affairs majors.”
Makhecha said the group is planning to host more events in the coming year both on campus and off campus, like a simulated debate with a think tank in D.C. She said several collaborations with organizations on campus are in the works, however she declined to expand on specific partnerships because they are still in development.
“Let me tell you, we’re not stopping anytime soon,” Makhecha said. “There’s so much coming.”
