“India’s Research and Information System for Developing Countries” (RIS) is a major initiative in the area of South-South Cooperation. Discuss. (2018, 15 Marks)
South-South Cooperation (SSC), codified in the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (1978), is horizontal exchange of knowledge, skills and resources among developing countries, resting on national ownership, non-conditionality and mutual benefit. The Research and Information System for Developing Countries, known as RIS and set up in New Delhi in May 1983 as an autonomous institute, supplies the intellectual side of India’s SSC. Its claim to be a “major initiative” is strong on ideas and networks, weaker on independence.
Mandate and design
- Created to study international economic relations, trade, investment and technology, the fields where the North–South gap is fought over, and to advise the Government of India on multilateral and regional economic questions.
- Its Governing Council includes the External Affairs, Finance, Commerce and Science and Technology ministries, so its research feeds directly into policy.
- Its work is organised under global economic governance, trade and investment cooperation, connectivity and trade facilitation, and new technologies for development.
How it advances South-South Cooperation
- Concepts: RIS gave India’s SSC its own grammar. Sachin Chaturvedi’s The Logic of Sharing (2016) set out the Development Compact, a package of capacity building, trade, technology, concessional finance and grants offered on demand and without conditions. Narendra Modi announced a Global Development Compact at the third Voice of the Global South Summit (17 August 2024).
- Institutions: it houses DAKSHIN, the Global South Centre of Excellence (announced January 2023, inaugurated November 2023), the ASEAN-India Centre (2013), the Forum for Indian Development Cooperation and a maritime-economy centre.
- Networks: the Network of Southern Think Tanks (NeST) builds Southern evidence; the Delhi Process conferences convene practitioners of South-South and triangular cooperation; RIS also anchors India’s role in the IBSA Academic Forum, BRICS and BIMSTEC think-tank networks and the T20.
- Negotiating support: analysis for India’s trade agreements, Track II work on regional initiatives and joint studies with developing countries strengthen policy coherence across the South.
Why it matters
In Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink’s terms (1998), RIS is a norm entrepreneur. By describing Indian assistance in its own categories rather than the OECD-DAC donor–recipient vocabulary, it gives the South epistemic autonomy at a fraction of a project’s cost. In a knowledge economy, influence over ideas is itself a form of cooperation.
Limits
- Independence: funded by and close to the MEA, it rarely publishes findings the ministry would dislike.
- Evaluation gap: India reports approvals rather than disbursements and has no systematic impact evaluation; a government-linked institute is poorly placed to press for either.
- Reach: its output reaches officials and scholars more than publics, and it cannot match China’s state-backed research and training networks.
Conclusion
RIS is a major initiative in the sense that matters most for a resource-constrained provider: it authors the vocabulary in which India’s SSC is understood and hosts the institutions through which it runs. It would become a fuller one by adding independent evaluation to concept-building.