 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Over the past few years, think tanks have begun to exert an increasing amount of influence on various aspects of policy and decision making in India. From the Observer Research Foundation to the Carnegie Endowment and Brookings India, these institutions are often at the centre of a vast network involving the bureaucracy, the media, as well as various officials. To talk more about this, we are joined today by Urvashi Sakar, an independent journalist who has extensively chronicled the work and influence of these institutions. Thank you for joining us Urvashi. Could you first talk about what exactly is this network of think tanks and the role in a very general sense? They play in the Indian context specifically. We know that they are very important in various other countries, but how exactly do they function in the Indian context? I think we could understand think tanks as a system of elite networks. And think tanks have been around in India for many, many years and especially, you know, started out with the government think tanks and more and more privately funded think tanks have, you know, come into the picture and in fact, one or two years ago, India was the country with the third or fourth largest number of think tanks in the world. In the Indian context, they operate a little differently from the US context and I mentioned the United States because that is where think tanks are really the most influential and most powerful and, you know, have a saying decision making. Indian think tanks, I think, would like to go the same way. They are not yet as influential as American think tanks, but, you know, they are slowly becoming, you know, very visible, very prominent. And are they influential on the Indian government? Well, maybe not as much as they would like to be influential because I think it works more like, you know, the Indian government might say, or a certain ministry, like say the Ministry of External Affairs might tell a certain think tank that I want a report done on this or that and that would be done. It's more rare that an idea formulated by think tank would be accepted by the government. That hasn't really happened extensively, you know. It's still like a very, it's still a field like the think tank, feel in India is not as mature as, you know, in the US or in the UK. It's still growing, but they are definitely and steadily becoming more influential. You can see it, you know, by the amount of space they occupy in the media, in op-ed columns, and they also hire, you know, high-profile retired bureaucrats, very well-known academics and, you know, well-known journalists. So it's definitely an emerging sphere of influence. Right. And to talk a bit more about the private think tanks and the kind of funding that is involved here. So how does it, why is it that, for instance, so many corporates which actually may not have, say, so much to do with policy or writing are actually necessarily involved in the think tank sectors, so to speak. So I think we need to, you know, make a distinction of government, the government funded think tanks. And these are openly government funded and like, you know, the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis is funded by the Ministry of Defense. And then there is RIS, which is funded by MAA, there is ICWA. So there are these government funded think tanks, but we increasingly see the private sector being involved in these think tanks because policy has to be influenced by various means. And the level, the ways in which policymaking is influenced are also growing increasingly sophisticated. So while you have, you know, your industrial bodies like Fiki and ASOCHAM, which clearly work for industry, but think tanks have their uses because they are perceived to be independent. And you have, you know, a mix of people working for them. So it's not always easy to pinpoint, you know, or link a certain corporation's interests with a think tank. But I think for a corporation, if they want to make themselves heard in a certain policy debate, in a certain field that they want to get into, so doing that via the think tank route is a very acceptable way of doing it. It gives them legitimacy, more openness. And many of these think tank events are open to the public. So, you know, anybody can go and kind of attend these events. So it's a safer way, I think, for, you know, corporations to also accept the influence. And coming to the most significant, one of the most significant think tanks in India, the Observer Research Foundation. And you've written extensively on it. So to ask a very basic question, why does India switch its man-need-a-think tank? Why does why is Mukesh Ambani and Reliance so invested in the Observer Research Foundation? It's a very interesting question and something that, you know, I also kind of grappled with while working on the piece for Caravan. The thing is that, like going back to what I just said, that corporations need to influence policy by different means. Yes, you know, the chairman of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani, is a very rich, very powerful man, India is richest and has unparalleled, you know, levels of influence. But that is the future to think about. And they are in it for the long term, the businesses for the long term. And so if you see the work trajectory of ORF, so, you know, in the first decade of the 2000s, they were working extensively on oil, on gas, on petrochemicals. That was a core, you know, area of work for them. They were also looking at Iran and Central Asia, which were sources of energy. And then around the time that, you know, Geo comes into the play, just coinciding a little before that or during that, you see ORF, you know, starting to work in the field of data, in the field of, you know, internet governance. And now more recently, they're all about, you know, increasingly writing about, you know, the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And this exactly coincides with Reliance's own work profile. So like I said, that policy needs to also be subtly influenced. And for that, you can have, you know, your, you know, researchers do that for you. But it's important to say that, you know, a think tank researcher, for example, even an ORF or any of the think tanks, they don't experience interference in their day-to-day work. You know, most of them will tell you, we do our work, we have our defined areas. But I think if you even look at their output, you may see on a certain issue two conflicting viewpoints. But if you look at their larger body of work on a certain issue or on a set of issues, you'll see they point to a certain direction. And as for the think tank researcher being completely independent, you know, there are certain red lines which they won't cross. And they know it. I don't even think they need to be told, because it's very clear where the funding comes from, yeah. So what you're saying is what they do is to create an, shall we say, an intellectual ecosystem, which actually in some senses coincides with Reliance's interests considerably. It's not just Reliance's interests. It's about the larger direction that policy must take. It's about, you know, government should open up the economy more, should ask for more, should allow more private sector participation, should have more of a free market thing. You know, that's like, you know, the crux of where they're going. And this benefits, you know, the corporate sector as a whole and not just Reliance. So, and like I said, it's subtly done. You know, it won't be very clear in many areas. But when you see the larger picture, you see they're going in a specific direction, where output is being produced in a certain way. And it's not just output. It's also, you know, the events that they convene, where a certain think tank becomes the preferred partner of the government to, like, say, host the Reissina Dialogue. So, in fact, Ministry of External Affairs should be asked on what basis did they allow ORF, a privately funded think tank, to, you know, organize Reissina Dialogue, which is the country's flagship foreign policy conference. So these are the questions that need to be asked. Right. And to delve more into the Reissina Dialogue, as you were talking about. So we, some parts are clear, like what you mentioned earlier, for instance, that Reliance had interest in oil. Now it is interest in data. And the ORF, for instance, also, much of the research coincides with that. But how do we, say, look at something like the Reissina Dialogue, which is basically something connected to the government and the Ministry of External Affairs. And there's this big corporate and research foundation funded by them, and their role in it. So how exactly does that come into play here? So what is the, to put it very straightforward, in a very straightforward way, what's the gain exactly as far as Reliance is concerned? Yeah. Or the larger corporate ecosystem is concerned? So I think it's a big win. I think for anything tank to convene something like the Reissina Dialogue, it's very prestigious. And one of the main things that think tanks also do are events. That's how they get noticed and, you know, they gain traction. So if you look at Reliance's profile, its interests are increasingly global. It's one of largest MNCs, and correct me if I'm wrong, possibly India's largest exporter. So the interests are not just in India. They're in Africa. They're in the United States. They're in Europe. They're in Singapore. They're everywhere. So, and so you increasingly see ORF is also, you know, trying to expand its profile abroad, doing events in Africa, in the US, forming these international partnerships. And so far, you know, ORF to get something like the Reissina Dialogue is, it's obviously a boost in Reliance's profile. It's India's richest and, you know, most visible think tank at the moment, and it does work to Reliance's favor. And Reissina Dialogue is where you'll have the heads of governments, you know, foreign ministers, and also, you know, companies, corporations being represented there in full measure. So this is also like a networking event where, you know, maybe deals are struck or, you know, that kind of thing also may be happening. Right, right. And to look at some of the other institutions, especially you've also written about Brookings and Carnegie and these are very well known institutions in the United States. And now both of them have their establishments in India as well. And they're also funded by a vast network of both Indian and foreign corporates. So what exactly is the intent behind, say, bringing for instance or supporting for instance some of these institutions in India right now? It's very interesting, you know, that's the basic premise which I also started out with, why are Indian corporates funding American origin institutions? So Brookings and Carnegie, I think now in India, they're incorporated as Indian entities. So, but the origins are definitely in the West. So one has to also see where Indian corporates are investing in and increasingly, their investments are abroad. They're in the United States and it's become even profitable to be there and they want to be heard in the US. You know, they want to be visible. They want a foothold there. So what better way than to, you know, help these so-called venerable institutions, you know, set up their offices in India. So it also works to the benefit of the Indian corporates. There's a convergence of interests, American and Indian interests. Yeah, these interests also, you know, they diverge in many points. Indian and American business interests don't always coincide, you know, they're also diverging. So also, I guess a lot of your writing also indicates that this is not purely, only a commercial thing. It's also, there's a lot of business, of course, but there's also a lot of geo-strategies and politics involved in it. For instance, I think the Quad initiative that happened in the Raisina dialogues last year. So it's also a sign of corporates increasingly having a say in the larger geo-strategic policy of India as a whole as well. The thing is that, as far as think tanks are concerned, like something like Raisina dialogue, it's not that ORF would be able to completely determine, you know, what kind of, let's say who the speakers are, who the events, it's done in consultation with the government. So for something like Raisina or even like, you know, the Gateway House Conference that's the other dialogue sponsored by Ministry of External Affairs, they will closely tow the ministry line. So if in a certain year, you see, you know, government of India's kind of, and China have hostilities, you'll see the think tank echo that position. So obviously, you know, there are interests and you know, like reliance industries would be in competition with, you know, maybe Chinese companies and that angle is there, but I think we need to, it's more important here to see that think tanks are not actually being independent, but you know, probably echoing government position. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching this click.