: Trust the
government and its bureaucrats to come up with a solution to make it easier for foreign scholars to do research
in India.Faced with increasing criticism for not only sitting on visa applications of Fulbright scholars but also rejecting their subjects or forcing scholars to change their subjects, the
government is working on institutionalising another blacklist.Top official sources have told The Indian Express that the “
research coordination committee,” a panel with representatives from the Union Home Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Human Resource Development, is scheduled to meet on February 15 to fine-tune a “green channel-red channel” system. The “green channel” will define “categories of research scholars” who will not need security clearance from the Union Home Ministry. Research scholars whose applications fall in this category will, therefore, not have to wait too long for a clearance, officials promise.The catch? There will be a “red channel” as well — a mechanism that is likely to cover key aspects like nationality, the location where the research will be carried out, the home institution, and, more significantly, the nature of the subject.Officials said the meeting will decide on the weightage to be assigned to each of these factors to determine whether a subject falls in the green channel or red. So is “Left politics in Maharashtra” or “Muslim women’s perceptions of their role” — two of the several subjects rejected by the Government — a red subject or a green subject? Or will it depend on whether the researcher is from the East Coast, West Coast, or the mid-West? That decision will still be taken by the research coordination committee.As an ongoing series in this website's newspaper has shown, over the past two years, the government has kept several Fulbright scholars from the US waiting for periods ranging from six to 21 months. In August 2006 (the time the scholars should normally have been in India), 93 of the 100 visa applications were pending. Eight of these are still pending today.The officers who will attend the February 15 meeting: Joint Secretary (Higher Education) in MHRD Sunil Kumar, Joint Secretary (Foreigners) in MHA Ashim Khurana and Joint Secretary (Americas) in the MEA, Gaitri Kumar. The committee itself is headed by the Secretary, Higher Education.Officials said the meeting will deliberate on the “weightage” to be assigned to key areas that will determine if a proposal falls in the green channel or red.The Fulbright Commission in India, popularly known as the United States Educational Foundation in India (USEFI), had written to the three ministries requesting for speeding up clearances. At the moment, visa applications from scholars are forwarded through USEFI to the nodal ministry, HRD.The files are then sent onwards to the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs, which has to give a security clearance