The word “think tank” owes its origins to John F. Kennedy, who collected a gro-up of top intellectuals in White House, people like McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, John Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger and Ted Sorenson among others to give him counsel on issues from time to time. He described it as having them on tap; on the turn of the spigot, good advice was on hand. He called them his “think tank”. Kennedy described the first dinner meeting as the White House never had so much brilliance and brainpower in its dining room since Thomas Jefferson had dinner alone in it.
The US always had a tradition of academics and policy wonks flitting in and out of government for short periods. Most of these academics came from top institutions like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. But very few academics would trade in a tenured professorship for a White House or top administration job. Universities would give leave of absence of up to two years, after which the job was lost. Academics in America still prize a tenured professorship to even a Cabinet post. In fact, they often see a job in government as a kind of public service.
When I entered the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard as a Edward S. Mason Fellow in 1981, the Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling introduced Edward Mason to my class by saying: “When I joined the Harvard faculty, Ed Mason was already a big man. We used to hear that he would one day become secretary of state. But Ed Mason went one better. He became Dean of the School of Government!” This only underscores how much a top job in academia is prized in the US. John Kennedy himself wanted to join the Harvard faculty after completing his second term and hence, his family endowed the Institute of Politics and the Presi-dential Library to be a part of Harvard. That didn’t happen, but the School of Government was renamed the Kennedy School.
In India, think tanks are not really places where thinking is done. They are mostly talk shops where retired bureaucrats and generals shoot the breeze. Discussions are usually full of the “I think”, and “I believe” stuff New Delhi is already so full of. Few research. Even fewer can write. Frankly, I am surprised that three of our think tanks actually figure in the top 100.
Most of India’s think tanks are in Delhi, not surprisingly, as the natio-nal capital region (NCR) has the most number of retired officials still anxious to serve the nation. And this service often pays off with jobs in govern-ment on a rehire basis. The top think tanks in Delhi are government supported and funded. The security think tanks like Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), National Maritime Foundation (NMF) and Institute for Defence Studies and Analy-ses (IDSA) are adjuncts of the Services and the ministry of defence. Most of the time they function as lobbyists for the Service headquarters that funds them.
The government appoints the head of IDSA. The United Service Institution of India (USI) is not a think tank, but from time to time fancies itself as one. The economics area think tanks such as Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), ICAER, etc. derive their funding largely from the govern-ment and multilateral bodies. The prestigious Centre for Policy Research (CPR) located in New Delhi’s posh Chanakya-puri, was originally funded by the Ford Foundation but now largely self-supports itself doing mostly govern-ment projects.
In the recent years, we have seen the emergence of privately funded think tanks.
The Observer Research Foundation (ORF) initially funded by Reliance Indus-tries Limited, has in recent years shown a degree of entrepreneurism that Dhirubhai Ambani would have approved of. It now raises a good part of its funding from the govern-ment and foreign institu-tions.
Late last year, the Brookings Institution — the US’ biggest and most prominent think tank — made its entry into India, with Brookings India, lavishly and slavishly funded by a galaxy of Indian industrialists.
The Vivekananda Inter-national Foundation (VIF) is a Rashtriya Swayam-sevak Sangh funded think tank and the stable currently in favour.
It too has a very small body of seriously cerebral work to show. It too was mostly a talk shop and a pamphleteer for the Hindutva cause. I see nothing wrong in the RSS having a think tank of its own. One day I hope the VIF puts out a study that nuclear weapons and even aircraft are of relatively recent origin and not technologies forgotten with the Vedic period.
Many think tanks have, of late, found a new line of activity and sustenance as event managers for various ministries. The ministry of external affairs is very short-staffed and is also seriously lacking in intellect.
So it has to farm out workshops and lecture events for visiting delegations and dignitaries to the think tanks.
Many foreign arms companies also sponsor seminars, which subtly push a certain line or weapons system. Some years ago, the CAPS organised a lavishly mounted “seminar” at the Oberoi Hotel mostly focused on the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) and other pending modernisation projects. Companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon sponsored the event. No guessing on why they were interested.
I am very concerned by the emergence of Brookings so close to the policy-making centre in India. Already we have the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Fede-ration of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), which serve the interests of its member companies, Indian and foreign, cloaking their lobbying as common good policy suggestions.
The CII in the Manmohan/Montek heydays played a major role in shaping India-US relations. It actively lobbied for a closer engagement with the US. In fact, the head honcho of the CII those days, a man called Tarun Das, made it his life mission to make India a US ally. Post-CII, and a teary farewell on TV after being outed in the Radia tapes, he now runs something called the Aspen Institute, devoted to closer Indo-US ties. Aspen now being the counterpart of the now defunct Indo-Soviet Council on Under-standing (ISCUS) where people like Inder Gujral and H.N. Bahuguna cut their teeth.
Having said this, I still believe that it is a good thing that think tanks are mushrooming in Delhi. They provide a platform for discussion, even if they shed more heat than light. With Parliament almost incapable of serious deba-te, informed discussion and civilised discourse, where does this nation get its intellectual churn?
Thank God for think tanks. As that famous man said: “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.”
The writer held senior positions in government and industry, and is a policy analyst studying economic and security issues.
He also specialises in the Chinese economy.
