India revisited

I write this on the plane from New Delhi to Kabul. It has been an interesting week in Delhi. The main event of the week, an IDSA-PRIO conference on climate change, was unfortunately cancelled, due to new visa regulations in the wake of the revelation that the US citizen David Headley had been conducting surveillance in preparation for the 2008 Mumbai attack. Most of the international participants would have been unable to attend, and the event has been postponed till November.

The cornerstone of our India engagement is the collaboration with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), which runs back to 2006. This week, we signed a new MoU with IDSA, and we discussed the plans for the coming three years. Beyond the focus on research (climate change; governance and development), we will step up on the capacity-building side. Workshops are planned on database management/quantitative analysis, academic writing/publishing and library management; all areas where PRIO has superb expertise. These are issues we discussed when director Sisodia visited Oslo late 2009, and the initiative is very warmly welcomed at IDSA.

We have also moved on to sign an MoU with the Malaviya Centre for Peace Research (MCPR) at Banaras Hindu University (BHU). This is one of India’s strongest peace research milieus. With MCPR we will do collaborative work on non-violence and on coexistence. The head of the centre, Prof. Priyankar Upadhyaya, spent some two months at PRIO last summer, and the vice-chancellor, Prof. D. P. Singh visited Oslo late last year.

Priyankar joined us in Delhi for a meeting with the Norwegian embassy, who are funding both of these collaborations. Jason, at the same meeting, gave a very good presentation of his work on federalism and conflict management in India (also done with MCPR). It proved that Delhi had just had a visit by Kalle Moene, Halvor Mehlum and a group of international academics, conducting a conference on conflict at the Delhi School of Economics, which the ambassador had enjoyed greatly. PRIO’s work has a very good standing, not the least thanks to the great job that Åshild and Jason are making in cultivating the relationship to IDSA, MCPR and a range of other environments.

This week, the embassy also hosted a meeting for Norwegian diplomats from the region. IDSA and PRIO offered a half-day roundtable on ‘Afghanistan, Pakistan and India’s Role’, which was very well received. With Shahrbanou Tadjbaksh, I am conducting a project on Afghanistan and the neighbourhood. We both gave presentations, and we had a number of interesting interviews with Indian observers and policy-makers (using the time freed up by the cancelled conference productively).

Meanwhile, many at PRIO have been working hard on finalizing project proposals for the RCN INDNOR call, which was postponed today. This call, as it was formulated for the 21 April deadline, was for short-term funding only and, as such, was a disappointment to us. Nonetheless, I am glad to see so many of you preparing proposals for this call, since funding of pilot projects could lead the way for bigger research projects next year. We have a very strong platform through the work that has been done. PRIO’s long term serious engagement has been noticed by Indian and Norwegian stakeholders alike, and we shall expect – and work hard to ensure – that our India portfolio grows further in the years ahead.