Diplomatist Magazine Diplomatist October 2019 | Page 28

Prospects for India-Russia Scientific and
Technological Cooperation
Aleksei Zakharov*
O
ne of the most promising and at the same time
challenging areas of India-Russia relationship
is cooperation in science and technology
(S&T). The outcomes of the bilateral summit in
Vladivostok demonstrate that both sides are determined
to develop bilateral ties in this sphere, though there are
still not so many success stories that could drive the
cooperation further.
Heritage of the Past
The history of bilateral ties proves that Moscow and
New Delhi managed to build successful collaboration
on this track. The legacy of interaction in this sphere
traces back to 1980s when Integrated Long-term
Programme for Cooperation in the fi eld of Science,
Technology and Innovations (ILTP) was launched.
There have been considerable achievements of
mutual cooperation in the framework of ILTP, especially
in biotechnology, laser technologies, computing
systems, geophysical industry, Earth sciences. For
a long time, the whole cooperation in science and
technology had hinged on ILTP, which remained in
place even in 1990s when the technological cooperation
between the two countries morphed into uncertain state.
The programme was updated twice – in 2000 and 2010.
Although being operational on paper, ILTP gradually
lost its momentum during the last decade. The India-
Russia joint statement issued after the bilateral summit
in October 2018 in Delhi contained intention to revive
the ILTP programme as it apparently needed new energy
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and its duration was about to expire in 2020.
The existing high level of trust and interaction
at a government-to-government level facilitates
the joint projects between the two countries’
institutions, laboratories and individual scientists.
The bilateral partnership in the sphere of S&T is
well-institutionalized. Apart from ILTP, there have
been two other pillars – the working group on science
and technology functioning under Inter-Governmental
Commission on Technical and Economic Cooperation
as well as Basic Science Cooperation Programme. On
the positive side, following Department of Science
and Technology of India (DST) partnerships with
Russian Foundation for Basic Research and Russian
Science Foundation (RSF), there have been funding
opportunities for joint research projects. The fl ipside
of the institutionalization is overregulation resulting
in excessive bureaucratic hurdles to the interaction
between scientists and specialists. Ideally, the experts’
meetings should be held on a much more regular basis
than the meetings of the Indo-Russian joint working
group for science and technology.
Major Challenges
As of now, S&T cooperation between India and
Russia faces at least two challenges such as insuffi cient
number of exchanges between the scientists and
low level of information on existing collaborative
projects and their outputs. Since the Inter-Academy
Exchange Programme faded away, there has been little