The 'world's best' think tank pegs tent. 'It's about time'

An oilman for over two decades, the suave Vikram Mehta (pictured), former chairman of the Shell Group of Companies, and a director on the boards of Colgate-Palmolive, Vodafone and Larsen & Toubro, is on a pioneering mandate: to steer Brookings Institution, the venerated US think tank, into enormous relevance in India.

The Oxonian has had the perfect start: Ratan Tata, Nita & Mukesh Ambani, Rahul Bajaj, Rajan Bharti Mittal, Kris Gopalakrishnan — as many as 21 India Inc stalwarts – have contributed money to help set up Brookings India.

The honchos of two US private equity funds – General Atlantic and New Vernon Partners, along with Antoine van Agtmael, senior adviser at Washington think tank Garten Rothkopf – he coined the term ‘emerging markets’ when an economist at the World Bank in the 1980s — have also pitched in.

If that weren’t enough, Subir Gokarn, former deputy governor, Reserve Bank of India, joined forces on Thursday. Mehta spoke about the road ahead for Brookings in India in an interview on Friday:

You just hired your chief wonk…
Yes, Subir Gokarn will be the director of research at Brookings India. He will be responsible for the research agenda, for recruitment of scholars, supervising their work, and, along with me and whoever we hire for the public policy engagement vertical, will be responsible for disseminating the research. It’s a very critical role.

Did you personally invite Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata to fund the Brookings bandwagon?
I had a role to play, but it didn’t have anything to do with me. What’s very encouraging is that they recognised the importance of supporting an organisation like Brookings in India because they feel it’s about time the government had access to the sort of research we do. They also see a need for the governance structure in India to be more porous, more interdisciplinary, synergistic…

More fungible?
More fungible. This is a great example of how businesses are also thinking differently today. They are not going to get anything specific for their support. They haven’t asked for anything either. Their support is simply from a national standpoint — not a narrow corporate standpoint — of actually creating centres of excellence in India that can help the government deliver in a more effective way in a highly competitive, globalised and inter-dependent world.

So where does it all start?
It’ll start in Delhi, and has a national remit. We have to define the research agenda. Then we have to define the profile of the scholars we wish to recruit. That will then determine the basis on which we set up the centres.

How long will this process take before you are ready?
The first step was to hire a director of research.

Will Gokarn have an overarching role across verticals?
He will be the overarching head, but there will be people who run the verticals.

You expect to encounter political pressure?
Nope.

Even if you call a spade a bloody spade?
Absolutely. That goes without saying. We have worked in the government and in the private sector. There’s no reason for anyone to put pressure on us. I think the opposite is what’s going to happen. People will be waiting for us to produce papers that they can rely on, because the papers won’t be driven by narrow partisan views or agenda.

And they’ll be actionable?
Well, that’s the difference between somebody sitting in academia for the sake of scholarship and a think tank where the scholarship must also correlate with the policy environment. If Subir Gokarn wanted to be professor, I am sure he would have been welcome in any university. The difference will be, he’ll have the opportunity to do implementable research, and so will I.

What is the think tank model all about?
Think tanks sit at the intersection of research and policy. We have a lot of illustrious ones in India but most of them are uni-focus — such as NCAER on applied economic research, Icrier on economic policy, etc. Some do more, like the Centre for Policy Research. But all of them have the same agenda, which is to provide good scholarly research that will impact and aid policy.

Brookings is the oldest — and regarded by many as the most trusted — think tank in the world. It’s a 95-year-old, US-based entity focused on multiple verticals —economics, foreign policy, energy, environment and social issues like urbanisation.
Brookings has a reputation for excellence and is trusted for three reasons: 1) it’s non-partisan. It’s not funded by any group, or advocacy…

There are no lobby-group angles?
It’s not a lobby group at all. The second reason is the quality of research. Brookings has always produced stuff that’s of the most exacting standards, backed by solid empirical data, and agnostic. And the third reason for reputation is the impact on policy. For the third straight time, Brookings was ranked the Think Tank Of The Year after a University of Pennsylvania survey of more than 6,500 institutions worldwide. Brookings has two international centres, and now a third in India…

Which are the other two…
The John L Thornton China Center in Beijing, and the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. Much of their work is focused on foreign policy. Sure that would cover energy and economics, but within the broad purview of foreign policy. The difference between those two and the India centre is that here it is a standalone company. It has been registered under Section 25 of the Indian Companies Act as a not-for-profit entity. It’s led by Indians, and will focus on issues relevant to India. The second difference is that it will cover the full waterfront of issues.
 

Which are?
We are yet to define the research agenda. It’s more than likely we will be working on international affairs, economics, energy, environment, urbanisation, governance, legal and social like health and education.

Brookings India is funded by Indians predominantly…
Yes, we have 24 corporates and individuals in the founders’ circle of which 21 are Indians.

Have they sponsored in their individual capacities?
I won’t be able to divulge that.

Each one stumped up the cash…
Yes, they have contributed the same amount of money.

How much was that?
Again, can’t tell you that. The objective really is to have created this diverse group of supporters, but in a way that allows Brookings to draw not just on their finance, which is secondary. More important is that we have the support of their intellect, their, their…

Experience?
Experience, yes. That’s the right word. Exactly. It’s very important to note that we are not dominated by one group. All of them sit on the same roundtable and have the same role to play. So we retain our independence. Now the objective really is to replicate the success that Brookings has had worldwide. We want to create an organisation that will do cutting-edge research. It would be such that we will be able to make an impact on policy.

You are a non-profit, but there must a revenue model?
If you look at Brookings in the US, 80-85% of its projects get funded by outside sources. It’s not funded by the American government, or by anyone with a particular point of view. It’s funded because the issues are relevant to the society.

Is it just about altruistic persuasions?
Altruistic in a different sense. One of the major projects that Brookings is working on today has to do with global cities. And the effort is to understand what is it that makes for a sustainable urban habitat. It’s a very important issue, important to business, citizens, government. Another is energy. Brookings was among the first entities to establish that the terms of energy in the US are going to change because of the emergence of shale gas. We have a lot of people -- about 200 scholars -- working on issues relevant to the community. Businessmen are interested in funding because this becomes a basis of their own information, to determine their own course of action. So it’s altruistic to that extent.

But is the government ecosystem in India open to external inputs?
Things are evolving here. In America, the government system allows for lateral movement – people from academia can join the government and then they go back. In that kind of environment, a think tank like Brookings has a major role to play. People are in a think tank under one administration and then they are called by the next one to join the government. The president of Brookings, Strobe Talbott, was the US deputy secretary of state under US President Bill Clinton. The head of the foreign policy group is Martin Indyk. He was the US ambassador to Israel. The head of the economics group is Kemal Dervis, who was the finance minister of Turkey. There is an illustrious list of people with solid policy experience.

But that’s not the case in India…
Here we still grow our own timber. The government hires people through the civil services exams, they climb the ladder and eventually retire as secretaries to the government, so on and so forth. But this silo system is now changing, becoming more porous. Sure, not in the same league as America, but you can now see many examples of government soliciting outside expert opinion. For example, Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council is staffed by people from multiple fields. The minister of petroleum has just set up a committee which will be chaired by Vijay Kelkar to define the roadmap for oil exploration in the coming years. The committee is made up of outsiders; I am a member, Deepak Parekh and Ashok Ganguly are members. So it’s all evolving. One reason why I am excited about Brookings is that I can see that think tanks are going to play an increasingly important role in India. The challenge for them is not just to provide solid research, but also to address questions in a practical way.

By delivering actionable theses?
Yes, so that governments can act on it. You won’t make an impact if your suggestions are not feasible or implementable. There’s a challenge, but the opportunity has come for people working in think tanks to make a difference within the context of the economic and social realities.

Are you saying think tanks can be a force multiplier in the developmental process?
I think what’s very clear and recognised is that governance is complex. People in government don’t have the time to study every issue in the depth that is required. They need to draw on outside support. The world is moving rapidly, and it’s asking too much of a secretary or additional secretary to have expertise on a full range of issues that land on his desk. It’s against this backdrop that the role of organisations like Brookings in supporting governance becomes very important.

You have interacted extensively with governments over years. How has their approach changed? Are there examples where external inputs have been beneficial to the government?
Oh there are many. You can go back 20 years in my own field. The entire reforms process of the oil and gas sector was triggered by the establishment of the Reforms Committee or the ‘R’ Committee. It was a group comprising very senior members of the industry: Reliance, led by Mukesh Ambani, A V Birla, Essar… it had senior private and public sector sitting side by side. The mandate was, what should we do to make the Indian petroleum industry more competitive? The recommendations of the committee were approved by the Cabinet and implemented through a gazette notification in April 2002. Sure, some of those were put on the backburner because of politics. But over the last 20 years since liberalisation started and the world globalised and became subject to its attendant forces, the governing elite in India has recognised the importance of bringing outsiders into the process of policymaking.

There must have been many lessons learnt from the vicious oil politics?
That’s what I am saying … that if you just look at the petroleum industry, you can use that as the example to ascertain what might be the evolution of the process of governance in the coming years. The petroleum industry was highly regulated, totally dominated by the public sector. Decisions were made in the ministry. Today, it remains a regulated industry, the ministry remains the dominant determinant of policy, but there’s much greater receptivity to the private sector when making policy than before.