The man in the queue in front of the bank may not have heard of Anil Bokil, but may have this economist to thank - or trash - for the ban on notes announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month. The idea had been mooted and spread by ArthaKranti, the Pune-based economic think tank of which Bokil is a member.
Bokil didn't feel any "great sense of elation" when he heard about the government's demonetisation volley. "But I felt happy that a central government for the first time had no complex in accepting a revolutionary proposal that didn't come from its own department. This is clearly a pro-thinker government," Bokil says.
If Manmohan Singh had the National Advisory Council (NAC) - a panel led by Sonia Gandhi and comprising civil society activists and academics who advised and pushed policy - the Modi regime is beginning to reveal a string of think tanks. It's clear Modi is willing to look beyond his bureaucracy for policies on defence, foreign relations and the economy.
"There is a clear shift in Delhi now, a tendency to listen to nationalist think tanks without any hint of hesitation," says Bal Desai, general secretary of the Mumbai-based Forum for Integrated National Secu-rity (FINS).
In October last year, the atmosphere at the FINS office in Dadar West was celebratory. FINS had just been informed that the government had convinced international maritime organisations to push back what's called the High Risk Area (HRA) from close to India's maritime boundary to its previous position. The HRA had been widened because of piracy risks after the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai.
The new step meant that Indian exporters and importers would save around Rs 1,500 crore per year in insurance premiums and increased freight costs. The extended HRA, according to FINS, was also a threat to maritime security as it allowed foreign navies to come close to Indian shores.
"We presented papers, held seminars with stakeholders and policymakers and gave them pointed arguments that they could make at the international level," Desai says. FINS now hopes to influence policy on subjects as diverse as Balochistan, Pakistan's restive province, and, controversially, revisiting India's nuclear doctrine of "no first use". Defence minister Manohar Parrikar has, in fact, already questioned "no first use", a position he later amended to a personal one.
ArthaKranti and FINS are not the only organisations that believe they have the government's ear. Delhi-based think tanks, many of them of recent origin, such as the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), India Foundation (IF), India Policy Foundation (IPF) and the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation (SPMRF) believe they influence policy. If the Sonia Gandhi-led NAC played a key role in drafting the Right to Information Act, Employee Guarantee Act and the Food Security Bill, the friendly think tanks of the Modi government have their own mission for an unabashedly ultra-nationalist India. For instance, if ArthaKranti's aim is to "rejuvenate" India's economy through disruption and drastic innovation, FINS hopes to devise policies for national security. On its website, IF says it seeks to "articulate the Indian nationalistic perspective" on domestic and international issues, while VIF's broad objective is to work for "nation building" by promoting "quality research and in-depth studies" on security, conflict resolution and other subjects. IPF says it wants to "consolidate the country's nationhood".
The bodies, however, insist that they do "dispassionate" analyses without any partisan agenda. Most are averse to being called Right wing or Conservative. While Bokil describes ArthaKranti as "holistic", VIF, FINS and IPF hold that they are "nationalist" in their outlook.
"We are not Leftists, and we definitely are not the JNU types," says Lt General R.K. Sawhney, dean of the Centre for Defence Studies, VIF. Though many stress that they have no links with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), RSS ideologues such as Ram Madhav and S. Gurumurthy are members of some of these organisations.
"On many occasions, the government has taken our suggestions," Sawhney asserts. "We give them small documents running into a few pages with bullet points and a bit of explanation on important points. We know how to get their attention."
Think tanks, of course, are not new to India. The Indian Council of World Affairs and the Research and Information System for Developing Countries, both funded by the ministry of external affairs (MEA), have been around for many years. They were set up to develop "informed opinion" on international matters and to promote relations between India and other countries through research.
Another established body is the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), which is seen as an extended arm of the defence ministry. The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) was established in 1973 and conducts research on economic po-licy, international relations and security; the Delhi Policy Group was founded in 1994. Some of the relatively new groups include the Observer Research Foundation, Gateway House: the Indian Council on Glo-bal Relations, Ananta Aspen Centre and Carnegie India.
That the Modi government takes the work of think tanks seriously can be gauged from the fact that the MEA has tasked a bench, currently headed by joint secretary Santosh Jha, to co-ordinate with the groups on dialogues and seminars. Sometimes, the MEA even sponsors events for handpicked think tanks.
IPF director Rakesh Sinha believes that the time has come for "nationalist" bodies to make their presence felt. "People with conservative, liberal and centrist viewpoints were accepted and co-opted in several institutions but the nationalists were kept away. It is their time now," Sinha says.
Of all the think tanks, it is perhaps the VIF which is the most influential. Its founder, A.K. Doval, is the national security advisor and its former executive council official, Nripendra Misra, is Prime Minister Modi's principal secretary.
"The government may have been influenced by think tanks such as the VIF to lean closer to America leaving the old tenet of friendship with Russia. My problem with this is that America is not a reliable partner," says CPR professor Bharat Karnad.
There is certainly a give and take between the institutes and the government. For instance, on the IF board are four ministers - Suresh Pra-bhu, Nirmala Sitharaman, M.J. Akbar and Jayant Sinha. The IF is headed by Doval's son, Shaurya.
The SPMRF, which is an in-house think tank of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says that it has successfully advocated the "Modi doctrine" on foreign policy in recent times. "Generating new ideas and shaping a narrative and perception of the people in general is the way forward," SPMRF director Anirban Ganguly says.
An MEA official doesn't see "anything negative" in that. "We get influenced by think tanks and we in turn influence them about government policies. We sometimes get to know our shortcomings through them and modify ourselves accordingly."
Do these think tanks unnerve the traditional sounding boards of the BJP? RSS front organisations such as the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) claim that they are as strong as ever. "We see ourselves as a think tank but we are also a mass organisation. We can take our issues to the people and pressure political parties. That's our advantage over these think tanks," SJM leader Ashwani Mahajan says.
Of course, not everybody is convinced that these think tanks, replete with former military officers and bureaucrats, have the answers to India's pressing problems. They are certainly not the "repositories of all the knowledge", maintains Shamika Ravi, senior fellow at Brookings India.
"There is a lot of institutional knowledge but not much of forward looking critical thinking or rigorous research in these organisations. Hence the government is reaching out to experts outside these circles," Ravi says.
She rattles off a list of ideas of Brookings India that the government has adopted in recent years - including its report on nutrition and opening up of India's universities to students of South Asia and the world.
"We need good brain banks. But I only see banks of retired civil servants and others," Karnad contends. He claims that in the CPR, a government-funded organisation, he and former journalist Brahma Chellaney have done "far more" in right-of-centre thinking than any other Right wing think tank. "Opinion mongering simply cannot do what research can," he says.
Rakesh Sinha, too, is not greatly impressed by the work of some of these bodies. "Most of them are happy acting as event management organisations and writing op-ed pieces in newspapers. We have a long way to go," he says. But clearly, they are on their way with Modi.
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The Sangh is in the lab too
Who is this middle-aged man often spotted sitting in meetings with government scientists? A. Jayakumar. And he is secretary-general of an outfit called Vijnana Bharati, a swadeshi science movement linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The outfit, making its presence felt since the new government was formed in May 2014, seeks to influence the research agenda of scientific agencies and ensure that RSS sympathisers get a role in scientific institutions, scientists complain.
Two key Vijnana Bharati functionaries and two management gurus ideologically close to the RSS were present at a meeting of directors of 38 labs under the aegis of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Dehradun last June. The declaration at the end of the meet recommended, among other things, that the 5,000-strong CSIR scientific staff work exclusively towards technologies that would push national missions launched by the government — such as Swachh Bharat, Digital India and Namami Gange.
The outfit is involved in many public outreach programmes, for which it is often given large sums of money. “There is no transparency in these dealings,” a senior CSIR scientist alleges.
Formerly called the Swadeshi Science Movement, Vijnana Bharati was formed in 1990. Among its patrons are former Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar and ex-Indian Space Research Organisation chief G. Madhavan Nair.
“It works mainly by putting compliant people in top positions,” says the president of a national science academy. “It is seriously compromising our scientific heritage.”
T.V. Jayan
