SASNET: Contact Journey Delhi, more meetings

Here we met Mr. T.J. Geevarghese, Programme Officer, in charge of scholarships given by the Indian government. At present two scholarships are supposed to be given to Swedish students every year. It is handled by the Indian Embassy in Stockholm. Currently, though, only one Swedish student is now in India on such a scholarship, studying at JNU.
Visa for other students ging to India is handled by the Student Cell, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Indian students studying abroad are handled by the External Scholarship Division, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Shastri Bhawan.

European Union, Delegation of the European Commission to India, Nepal and Bhutan. (Nepal and Bhutan will soon have separate offices under Delhi)

Meeting with Mr. Francois Massoulie, first secretary, stationed at New Delhi since 18 months.
The EU-India Think Tank programme will be developed into a full-fledged network next year with an annual budget of 3 million Euro. In the meantime there will now, ca 15 April, be an announcement on the Internet, of the official report from the Think Tank meeting in Brussels in October last year (see the SASNET report on the meeting). In order to build momentum, the European Commission will support projects on an ad hoc basis with a funding ranging from 20 000–120 000 Euro. The projects should be in the four areas discussed in Brussels – as was also pointed out in the SASNET report mentioned above:

This will be funded through the small project facility at the Delegation. The projects should be oriented towards policy advice and reforms, economic policy, etc. The focal point is in Delhi with Mr. Massoulie. 75 % will be funded by EC, the rest by the participating instutions – two institutions in two different EU countries, and one institution in India. The funding is only intended for 24 months duration, and only for research projects – not curriculum development as in the larger Asia Link programme.

Participants in the Brussels meeting should not see this as an exclusive funding, but involve other researchers and NGOs (the civil society!) in it. As a possible candidate he mentioned the Asia Peace network, run by Ishtiaq Ahmed from the Dept of Political Science at Stockholm University.

Meeting with Dr. Evelin Hust, Representative, South Asia Institute (SAI), University of Heidelberg, at Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi

Dr. Evelin Hust had just completed here PhD thesis on Women and Panchayati Raj in Orissa (comparing one advanced and one backward region, both basically non-tribal). She is a political scientist, and now wanted to do some research on urban governance, maybe in a satellite town near Delhi, like Gurgaon.
SAI in New Delhi (established already in the 1960s) only employs her as a representative full time. There is a small Indian staff as well. SAI has offices in Colombo and Kathmandu as well, manned by PhD candidates who work part time there.
SAI’s office in Delhi share location with the German Cultural Institute Max Mueller Bhavan, but is an independent University Institute, financed by the State of Baden-Württemberg.
The main tasks of the South Asia Institute in India is to:

The SAI also organises collaborative seminars and lectures; procures books, journals, and research materials for the library in Heidelberg; and offers South Asian and German scholars assistance in dealing with bureaucratic procedures.

Besides the SAI informs students concerning study possibilities, places where they can learn Indian languages and culture, apart from helping to organise internships.
A good part of the representative's activities also consists in networking and keeping contact with former visiting fellows to the South Asia Institute, like former DAAD students, Alexander von Humboldt Fellows and Baden-Würrtemberg Fellows (The Baden-Württemberg-Fellowship is granted by the State of Baden-Württemberg to finance one Indian scholar each year to work at the
SAI for three months. The candidates are selected by the Indian University Grants Commission, UGC.

Heidelberg has a memorandum of understanding. MOU, with the University of Delhi, which means that there are exchange students, two going to Heidelberg every year, and two going to Delhi University. The SAI has also an MoU with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA).
Collaboration is taking place with Indian as well as German Institutions and
individuals, and stronger collaboration is envisaged with the French Centre
and also with the proposed Nordic Centre.

There is a separate German Academic Exchange Service, which organises exchange of researchers. Germany pays for scholars´ travel expenses and staying in Germany, and India is paying for German scholars going to India. This works well for the natural sciences, but not very well for the social sciences, since the Indian institution, ICSSR, has less money to spend on acticities like these.

Meeting with Dr. Frederic Grare, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi

The centre is located in the French Embassy compound and operates directly under the French Ministry of External Affairs. It has two separate buildings and there are about 15 people working there, French as well as Indian. It has small but well organised library. They do not give scholarships. Jacques Pouchepadas is chairman of the centre.
According to Frederic Grare, the institute tries to avoid the traps prevalent in Indology and Anthropology, namely ending up studying marginal phenomena. The centre concentrates on Political science, International relations, Geography, and Economics. They see India as a major political actor, in which regional development, democratisation and gender issues are now important. Their research is not so much basic, but rather on a think-tank level, as well as applied research – relevant to social actors. The centre has no direct academic links, but tries to relate to ongoing French research.

The director Frederic Grare suggested an agreement with SASMENT that Swedish researchers can come and work in the centre. The centre needs six months notice, but can in that case even arrange accommodation (for Rs. 300 per night). They only demand that people work hard and that they afterwards acknowledge that they have done their work at the centre. The centre can not help with visas, though (which means that one has to be affiliated to some other institute as well). Foreign scholars can also get manuscripts published in their occasional papers series, though the centre reserve the right to refuse. They can think of joint projects.

Meeting with Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, Economics, Centre for the Study of Regional Development (JNU) and his wife, Dr. Vimal Thorat, assist. Professor of Hindi, at Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi

Prof Sukhadeo Thorat is specialised on Dalit studies and Buddhism. He has longstanding contacts with Gail Omvedt, Irfan Habib and Peter B. Andersen.
Both he and his wife went to the Durban conference in 2001, but did not attend the Bhopal conference.
They are invited to Stockholm 15–19 March, to give lectures and seminars on Dalits at Etnografiska museet. Eva-Maria Hardtmann is in touch with them on this. Beppe Karlsson has invited them to Uppsala also.
Sukhadeo Thorat has worked as a consultant on food policy to the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington. He is interested in rural development, water policies, poverty, and slums. His main interest is caste and labour market, and discrimination in the rural markets.
He has written books on Ambedkar and on slums. Another book is on the economic development – “Technological Change and Regional Development”.
Vimal Thorat informed about the Indira Gandhi National Open University, which has 700 study centres all over India, and satellites with 17 regional centres.
There is a co-operation with JNU (Center for the study of Regional Development), and the University of Kaiserslautern to develop a Masters of Business administration. They have problems, though, with how to award comparable credits in Delhi and in Kaiserslautern.

Meeting with the professors of Political science at the University of Delhi, and members of the DCRC – Developing Countries Research Centre at the University of Delhi

Present at the meeting: Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty
Prof. Neera Chandhoke
Dr. Ashish Ghosh, researcher on child labour; theatre as social interaction; and conscious expressions of needs and wants as human agency
Dr. Manindra N. Thakur, interested in religion and social change; homeless people, etc.

The DCRC group already has co-operation with Institute of Development Studies at London School of Economics, and with an Australian network through the University of Wollengong. They informed about the coming 13th annual Grassroots Politics Colloquium on 15-16 March.
They are interested in getting more contacts with Pakistani scholars. Now they always meet the same persons when going to international conferences. So if SASNET could help in locating scholars in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc. it would be fine.
The research priorities of the DCRC are:

A request was made that a number of Scandinavian researchers (e g Olle Törnquist, Björn Beckman and Staffan Lindberg) should initiate a new network on the theme:
“Social movements, State and Democracy in the context of Globalisation”, and bring together scholars from South Asia, Latin America, Europé, etc. – including e g Mahmood Mamdani, Professor of Government and Anthropology at Columbia University, USA – in a workshop in India. Swedish funding would be needed to cover the international travelling expenses, whereas DCRC could manage the local hospitality.

Meeting with Dr. Arun Bali, Director, International Relations, Indian Council of Social Science Research

ICSSR is currently funding 27 centres or institutions all over India. Dr. Bali is a sociologist, PhD from Delhi School of Economics, studied under André Beteille. His research interest includes rural development, professionals, and most of all ageing.
He was in Amsterdam on the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development (IDPAD) a few years ago to study ageing in the Netherlands.
Between 1999 and now he has published five books, three on ageing, one on professionals, and one on the economic development in Karnataka under globalisation. He is also involved with the publication “Indian Social Science Review, A multidisciplinary Journal”.

ICSSR would be very interested in developing a programme with Sweden along the lines of IDPAD. IDPAD should be the model for future co-operation. So far there has been four phases of IDPAD, the fifth is now with the Ministry for decision making.

Another programme they want to promote is the André Malraux Programme on International Understanding. Discussions are also under way with a Canadian researcher, Meyer Burstein, who wants to create a Research Forum for a project called Metropolitan, which wants to study origin countries for migration, and not just destinations.

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Last updated 2007-02-02

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