Students in the Naveen Jindal School of Management arrived early for a Friday morning in March, eagerly awaiting the entrance of D.C. Manjunath, consul general of India. It was his first official visit to The University of Texas at Dallas campus, and the students honored him by standing and applauding his arrival.
A smiling Manjunath said he was excited to be on campus. His agenda that day began with addressing the students and was followed with a faculty luncheon where he was the guest of honor.
“The first thing is to meet these energetic young men and ladies, that’s the first thing,” he said. “It’s always a pleasure to go to the educational institute. They are the temples.”
Because Manjunath represents a county with a significant student population at the Jindal School — Indian students currently account for 28 percent of its enrollment — his visit held special meaning. After accepting flowers of hospitality, the consul general congratulated the assembled students for choosing to further their education in a foreign country.
“They have taken this big step of seeking excellence and knowledge in a country that’s far away,” he said. “We come here, and everyone encounters the new atmosphere in their own way. It is important for you to be cognizant of the fact that you have helped yourself and each other.”
Senior administrators from UT Dallas and the Jindal School met with Manjunath. They included Dr. Richard C. Benson, UT Dallas President; Dr. Inga Musselman, UT Dallas provost and vice president for academic affairs; and Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Caruth Chair and Jindal School dean. Sunil Maini, BS’85, chairman emeritus of the U.S.-India Chamber of Commerce; and Ashok Kumar Mago, EMBA’99, a UT Dallas Distinguished Alumnus; were also in attendance.
As the consul overseeing Texas, Manjunath takes a significant role in providing services to Indian citizens and facilitating diplomatic activities. Facilitating relationships between a home country and a host country is a primary responsibility for a consular office.
To that effort, Manjunath encouraged students to contribute actively to the relationships between their home country and the United States. For Pratyush Prasad, an information technology and management graduate student from India, that was the most important part of the consul’s message.
“He said we always should remember that we represent our countries so each and everything we do should bend that way, so we represent our country in the best way,” Prasad said. “I look forward to doing that.”
Manjunath has lived the example of representing his country well. As India’s Consul General in Houston, he serves the states of Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. He speaks five languages and was educated in mechanical engineering at the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai, where he received the Distinguished Alumni Award.
Originally, Manjunath worked in gear manufacturing. Being accepted into the extremely competitive world of foreign service was not easy, but he persisted.
“I always had the passion of becoming a civil servant,” he said. “I once was aspiring to become a collector — a bill collector — but I ended up with a completely different journey.”
Mentioning that he changed his career over time was encouraging to Sandhya Maloth, an Indian native pursuing a master’s degree in business analytics.
“This is a very important meeting, and I wanted to see what important information I could get,” she said. “At this point, I’m confused about what to do in life, and this helped me.”
After his beginnings in private industry, Manjunath has enjoyed an impressive career in the Indian Foreign Service, which in joined in 2004. Prior to being named to his current position in 2023, Manjunath served as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, leading the Global Estate Management Division in New Delhi.
Earlier diplomatic assignments included Indian missions in Moscow, Astana and Columbo. He was installed at India’s permanent mission at the United Nations in New York where he oversaw political, commercial, development and multilateral diplomacy work. His time at the UN remains his favorite appointment over his two-decade career.
“Every country is there, and you get to interact with intellectuals who contribute to their own countries,” Manjunath said. “It was a very unique experience.”
Now Manjunath spends time in conversations with governments, and he sees opportunities expanding globally for Indian students. He also has witnessed rising respect worldwide for his country.
“When I joined, the India I represented was different,” he said. “Now we are able to take everyone along. It’s a huge diplomatic success for India. These are things that reverberate in everybody’s mind.”
Mihir Hirave, an India native and business analytics graduate student found the consul general’s talk inspiring. After listening to the ambassador for an hour, he was determined to connect with more Indians living abroad.
“This is a new experience for me to see how things are done,” Hirave said. “You have to keep talking to people in power. It’s interesting to express your opinion if there’s a change you want to see.”
Change is a major objective in India, according to Manjunath. The country’s governmental agencies are pointing toward a common goal of increasing India’s economic power.
“The ambitious plan of the government is to make India a developed nation,” he said. “The base is economic power. That is the plan. Every department of the government is working toward making India a developed nation by 2047.”
For young adults studying so far away from home, Manjunath’s presence reassured the students, especially considering recent tragedies involving Indian students at Purdue University. Graduate student Rishabh Dyagi, an India native studying finance, asked about resources for security and emergency services. The consul’s answers about the country establishing a government portal for such emergencies put Dyagi at ease.
“I feel very confident that I can share this with my family back at home,” he said.
Gaurav Shekhar, senior assistant dean for graduate programs at the Jindal School, said educational institutions have a significant role when it comes to strategic ties between countries.
“Such visits underscore the importance of institutions like ours at the diplomatic levels,” he said. “On the one hand, it helps reinforce leaders at various levels’ commitment to nurturing the future through members of academia. At the same time, especially to our international students, it helps foster a sense of care, that leaders at the highest possible levels are there to support their academic endeavors. The United States and India are natural allies and share a long history of partnerships that have shaped the world that we see today.”
Before ending his time spent with the students, the consul general encouraged them to be cultural ambassadors for their home country.
“We are flag bearers of a great country,” he said. “Get your non-Indian friends to visit the splendor of what India is.”
