SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Meeting at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi
Monday 5 November 2007

Web page: http://www.teriin.org/

Participants:                     
• Dr. Alok Adholeya. Director, Biotechnology & Management of Bioresources
• Dr. Ibrahim Hafeezur Rehman. Director, Action Programmes
• Dr. Jyotsna Bapat. Fellow
• Dr. P P Bhojvald. Senior Fellow

On our fifth day in Delhi, we visited the renowned TERI, established in 1974 as Tata Energy and Resources Institute, but since some years standing for The Energy and Resources Institute. Located within the beautifully built India Habitat Centre at Lodhi Road (in the Darbari Seth Block), TERI is an institute committed to every aspect of sustainable development, from providing environment-friendly solutions to rural energy problems to global climate change issues.
The Director-General is Dr. Rajendra K Pachauri (photo to the left), Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change. More information.

TERI has established regional centres in a large number of Indian cities such as Bangalore and Guwahati, an office in Mumbai and a presence in Japan, Malaysia, the UAE and Africa. It has also set up affiliate institutes – TERI North America in Washington, and TERI Europe in London, and hosts the annual so-called Delhi Sustainable Development Summits every year. In 2008, the summit will be held on 6 February in Delhi.

Since a number of years, TERI has also established a university with a main campus at Vasant Kunj, 8 km from the main TERI building. TERI University was proclaimed a full university in November 2006, with studies from MBA to PhD. Three Masters programmes (MSc) are run, in Environmental Studies, Natural Resource Management, and Water Resource Management. The university has entered into memoranda of understanding with several foreign institutions, primarily in USA, Canada and Australia. Go to the TERI University website.

Meeting at TERI, from left to tight: Ibrahim Hafeezur Rehman, Anna Lindberg, Alok Adholeya, Jyotsna Bapat and Lars Eklund.

Dr. Adholeya, with an old connection to Sweden, welcomed us to TERI. He has been a visiting professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Dept. of Forest Mycology and Pathology). He has also been in charge for a training programme in collaboration with Lund University.

After our presentation of SASNET, Dr. P P Bhojvald (photo to the left), Dean of Life Sciences at TERI, informed us about the several foreign collaboration projects that TERI is involved in, also with the neighbouring countries. The relation to Yale University in USA seems to be economically stronger than others, with a student exchange programme giving the possibility every year for five TERI students to go to Yale for one semester. TERI is also open for collaboration on PhD level, providing a regular internship programme (lasting for 1-6 months, without any fees).

Besides SLU and Lund University, also other Swedish departments have been involved in collaboration projects with TERI, such as the Dept. of Meteorology, Stockholm University, and the Dept. of Government, Uppsala University. Given the extremely high research standard of TERI, it should be of great interest for many Swedish researchers to associate with TERI. The interest from TERI’s side (more exactly from the representatives we met) was also high towards SASNET being a facilitator to promote more such Indo-Swedish collaboration. The possibilities of receiving SASNET planning grants for new collaboration projects, and for organising interdisciplinary conferences, could be a good option.