State Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-42B, Eden Prairie) is will join Gov. Tim Pawlenty and other business representatives on a trade mission to India this October. Paulsen visited both India and China this summer as part of the Aspen Institute Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership (you can read his blog about the trip at http://paulsentravelogue.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html). Recently, Paulsen announced that will be exploring a run for Congress in Minnesota’s Third District. Eden Prairie News spoke with Paulsen about his plans for the upcoming trade trip.

Q. What are some of your goals for this trip?

It’s to make connections with people that can have eventual relationship building with the University of Minnesota, with developing opportunities for enhancing trade in the state. Not just trade in terms of exports and goods, but trade in terms of further connections where we can actually use workers there to help grow jobs here.

I know [there are] some companies here that are building relationships and growing jobs in both countries. And that’s very important in the global world, because you can’t ignore it, otherwise it’ll just pass us up. It’s really, I think, leveraging those opportunities over there. Part of that is making some educational connections.

Q.      How can Eden Prairie businesses benefit from these partnerships?

Well, I think it could eventually be similar to the partnerships that have been going on between the Eden Prairie School District and Loudi [China] and those types of relationships. It’s always good to get involved and have an understanding of other cultures in a global world.  I think [it’s important to expose our youth] to other cultures. We’re doing that with China. I think we should also do that with India just because they are now, and will continue to be, a major factor in the world economy.

Q. What are some challenges we face in terms of getting to the economic benefit of partnering with these countries?

Well, the biggest opportunity is that the size of the middle class in India is larger than the population of the United States.

So that’s where the opportunity is. The challenge, the greatest challenge is going to be that they are hungry to educate their youth.

… There’s a deep sense of pride in India I think knowing that their youth are now competing with us, competing with the United States. They’re very, very proud of that.

… India is turning out more college graduates than the U.S. and Europe combined. It’s just a large sheer mass of people who are educated, especially in the knowledge economy. That’s where the challenge is for us. And we just need to make sure that, again, that helps us focus on educating our youth to participate in that … otherwise they’re just going to run us over.

Q. What places will you be visiting on this trip?

There [are] three places we’re going to go. One is New Delhi which is kind of the government center.And then we’re also going to go to Bangalore which is where a lot of the high-tech campuses are that we read about.

We’re also going to Mumbai, which is more of the financial center. I think we’ll have opportunities to visit hospitals, to visit schools and to really mix, have mixing opportunities with the American Chambers of Commerce that are in India …

Q. Anything else you’d like to talk about?

I think that there are tremendous opportunities here to forge relationships here. And again India is also the world’s largest democracy. They hold a lot of same ideals as we do here in the United States with democratic elections and so, there are some natural synergies here that I think we can leverage and take advantage of in forming stronger ties.

– Compiled by Leah Shaffer