Think India Research Foundation

India Supports a Toothless IPCC

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed support for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its leader, Rajendra Pachauri, at a local energy conference in New Delhi Friday. The move has surprised many observers, but it may prove to be politically astute.

The IPCC's credibility is in tatters. From climategate to glaciergate, Amazongate, natural-disaster gate, and now Chinagate, the revelations of bad science keep coming. Given all that, plus the much-publicized flap between Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Mr. Pachauri over the science behind "melting" Himalayan glaciers weeks before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, superficially one might have expected the Indian government to jettison Mr. Pachauri as soon as possible.

But Delhi isn't just offering him and the organization rhetorical backing. At Friday's annual flagship event of the Energy and Resources Institute—which Mr. Pachauri has headed for almost 30 years—the prime minister offered to provide technical assistance through a newly established glacier research center. The government has also formed a network of scientific institutions to develop domestic science and research capacities on climate issues.

The explanation for this support is simple: It is in the Indian government's interest to perpetuate a weak IPCC and a toothless Mr. Pachauri at its helm. Given the recent scandals, the IPCC is hardly in a position to lobby India for carbon concessions. No one from the IPCC can again cavalierly dismiss their critics as promoting "voodoo" science or "vested interests," as was Mr. Pachauri's wont. By offering scientific support to the IPCC, the Indian government is actually confirming its lack of confidence in the U.N. body's scientific credentials. Read More

India Strives To Enhance Cooperation With Slovenia, Greece And Norway

India wants to enhance economic cooperation with Slovenia, Norway, Finland and Greece. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with key leaders from these countries last week and asserted that India was committed to create a conducive atmosphere to enhance cooperation between the countries in the areas of infrastructure and communication.

Last Friday, Singh held separate discussions with Danilo Turk, president of Slovenia, Matti Vanhanen, prime minister of Finland and George Papandreou, Greece's premier. The leaders were in New Delhi to attend the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit.

The leaders discussed bilateral, regional and international issues.

Singh offered to explore shipping links and strengthen Indian participation in the International Center for Promotion of Enterprises (ICPE) with Slovenia.

In his meeting with the Greek PM, Singh suggested increasing bilateral trade and proposed further cooperation in areas such as shipping, renewable energy, IT and tourism. Read more

India: Education Deficit Hinders Climate Mitigation

Pollution is undeniable problem in many of India’s metropolitan centers. In the capital of New Delhi, smog has been known to reduce visibility to less than 600 yards. But the connection to between air pollution and climate change is not on the minds of most Indians.

One of the greatest challenges to global climate change action may be a lack of education about greenhouse gasses and their affect on the environment. According to a 2007-2008 Gallup survey, awareness of climate change is strikingly low in China and India – two of the world’s top greenhouse emitters.

emitters.

India is an especially egregious case; only 5% of poll respondents considered climate change to be a ‘major threat.’ Awareness is especially low in rural areas, where education is infamously poor. Read More

UAE, India urged to exploit trade opportunities

MOFT urges expanded joint UAE-India investments

The Ministry of Foreign Trade (MOFT) has urged the private sectors in the UAE and India to tap investment opportunities generated by reforms in both countries.

In a study released Sunday, the ministry said there was a host of potential opportunities for stronger economic cooperation and joint projects between the two countries.

Cooperation

Each sector can expand cooperation due to the availability of expertise, modern technologies, energy and funds.

The study was released to mark the start of an official visit by Shaikha Lubna Al Qasimi, UAE Foreign Trade Minister, to India. Read More

She is leading a delegation of 43 members representing ministries and federal organisations as well as local and foreign companies operating in the UAE.

Turkish President Gul arrives in India

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has arrived in India on February 7 with a group of ministers, mayors and business people to take up improvement of bilateral relations, focusing on economic ties, TRT World reported.

The President held a press conference ahead of his departure at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport, emphasizing that the visit is of vital importance in terms of being the first presidential visit to India in the last 15 years.

Mr. Gül and the delegation were welcomed at the Indira Gandhi Airport by Turkey's Ambassador to New Delhi Levent Bilman and senior officials from the Indian Foreign Ministry.

Soon after arrival on Sunday, the President comes together with Turkish business people.

The President's agenda in India comprises tete a tete meeting with Indian President Pratihba Devisingh Patil, Vice-President Ansari, Prime Minister Singh, Foreign Minister Krishna, Chairman of the Congress Sonia Gandhi, and Chairman of the Main Opposition Party Swaraj. Read More

On India-Pakistan thaw and the changing Afghan dynamics

There is a time and a place for everything and back in the days of the Obama election campaign the idea that progress on the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan could help turn around the flagging military campaign in Afghanistan looked plausible. The argument, much touted by Washington think-tankers, was that Pakistan would not turn against Afghan Taliban militants on its western border as long as it believed it might need to use them to counter India’s growing influence in Afghanistan, and as long as it felt the need to keep the bulk of its army on its eastern border with India.

Even in the middle of last year, when Pakistan and India made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to revive peace talks which had been frozen since the attack on Mumbai at the end of 2008, the possibility of a “grand bargain” from Kashmir to Kabul still carried some resonance.

But time has moved on, so it is a little bit strange to see these arguments resurfacing now after India proposed to resume talks with Pakistan. (See Newsweek’s “Kashmir is the key to peace in Afghanistan” or the op-ed by David Ignatius in the Washington Post)

As I wrote in this analysis, a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan would be too little, too late to achieve results in time for Washington’s 2011 deadline for drawing down troops in Afghanistan. Real progress on Kashmir would require them to get back to a roadmap for peace sketched out between India and Pakistan in 2007 under former president Pervez Musharraf. But Pakistan, whose vulnerability to attacks by Islamist militants has been demonstrated in a spate of gun and bomb attacks over the past year, probably no longer has the political space to offer the kind of concessions Musharraf made to get there without risking a backlash at home. And while the roadmap provided a framework for further negotiations on Kashmir, a lot of ground had yet to be covered to translate that into a real agreement; even if indeed it would ever have worked. Read More   

India, China have major role in revival of global economy: IMF

The International Monetary Fund has said India and China are playing a significant role in the revival of the global economy.

“When you have two relatively large economies growing at 7 and 10 per cent, respectively, India and China, they are contributing quite a lot to global growth,” IMF Deputy Director, Asia and Pacific Department, Kalpana Kochhar said during a teleconference here.

“Our forecast for global growth for next year is close to 4 per cent. I think it’s 3.9 per cent, of which advanced countries are only contributing less than two per cent. So the rest of it is in fact coming from emerging markets, and from within emerging markets, a large part from China and India,” Ms. Kochhar said.

“So it’s a significant contribution that’s coming from these two countries,” the IMF official said in response to a question.

In response to a question, Ms. Kochhar said the Indian rupee is broadly in line with fundamentals. Read More

Solar energy expo seeks lighting solution to rural India

A four-day solar energy expo has been running since Thursday in the Indian capital, highlighting the "dark" situation especially in rural India and proposing " light'solution through solar energy.

Held on the sidelines of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, about 34 participants at the expo were displaying a wide range of solar-based energy appliances, including lanterns of various shapes and sizes.

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) of India which took upon itself to light up one billion lives around the globe, including India, Indonesia, Cambodia and Africa.

About 1.5 billion population of the world is without electricity, according to an estimate. And a quarter of it resides in India. They either use wood or kerosene oil to light their houses and for cooking purposes -- affecting their health, environment and the climate adversely.

With more than half of its territory located in tropical or semi-tropical zones, India is endowed with abundant solar energy which can be fully tapped for sustainable future.

Therefore, TERI has been involved in providing solar lanterns and setting up solar recharge stations in inaccessible and least developed areas. Read More

Recycling human waste in India to improve sanitation

India needs to build hundreds of thousands of toilets every month over the next five years, if it is to come close to meeting United Nations global development targets by 2015.

Even as the country's economy continues to boom - and technology is transforming many lives - more than half a billion Indians still lack access to basic sanitation.

Chris Morris has been to one of Delhi's more unusual museums to find out what is being done to improve the situation. Read More

India to increase partnership with countries in Africa: Puri

India will increase partnership with developing nations other than its immediate neighbours to boost South-South cooperation, even as it has extended over USD 3 billion concessional lines of credit to countries in Africa.

At a high level Summit on South-South cooperation at the United Nations, Indian envoy to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri said: “We are happy that today we are also able to extend our partnership in a significant manner financially.”

“Our annual outlay on concessional lending and grants is over USD 1 billion, covering countries in our region, in Africa and beyond. In addition, USD 5 billion has been extended as lines of credit since 2003,” he added.

The Indian envoy stressed that New Delhi was taking is cooperation beyond its immediate neighbourhood to other regions especially Africa.

“The Government of India has extended over USD 3 billion concessional lines of credit to countries in Africa,” Puri said, noting that in the 2008 New Delhi announced additional lines of credit of USD 5.4 billion for the next five years. Read More

Ups, Downs and Ups in Obama’s Approach towards India

Predictability in India-US relations ended with the demise of the Soviet Union. Periodic ebb and flow largely underlined the nature of bilateral interactions during the eight years of the Clinton administration. The first eight years of the 21st century, on the other hand, witnessed the flowering of an entirely new kind of strategic partnership between the United States and India under the Bush Administration. The steady growth of bilateral ties between the two countries once again came to oscillate when Barack Obama entered the White House as the 44th President of the United States.

While it is premature to draw conclusions on Obama’s policy towards India, his first year in office certainly did not carry forward his predecessor’s initiatives towards India. During the early months of his administration, India rarely figured in the priority list of President Obama. The underlying logic was rather palpable. India posed no threat to US interests. It was a victim and not a perpetrator of terrorism. India was not a signatory to NPT and CTBT, but had in no way indulged in proliferation of WMD. The Indian economy was not large enough to positively or negatively affect the US economy during the recession. Lastly, India contributed little towards US strategy in Iraq or Afghanistan in terms of military cooperation. Consequently, the Obama Administration did not show any hurry in appointing its new Ambassador to New Delhi.

Worse still for bilateral relations were unsought advice from President Obama on how to resolve the Kashmir issue and airing of views by his officials on the need for India to sign the NPT, CTBT and the future FMCT. The worst came when an attempt was made to bracket India along with Afghanistan and Pakistan in a new strategy to combat al Qaeda and Taliban extremists—the so-called Af-Pak strategy. What annoyed unofficial India was the Obama Administration’s announcement of a new policy to penalize American companies outsourcing jobs to India and President Obama’s warning to American children to be aware of Indian and Chinese students performing better than them. Read More