25 May 2014

NEW DELHI: As levers of power change hands next week, three thinktanks are going to play a crucial role in changing the narrative in favour of Modi government. Bharatiya Vichar Kendram in Kerala, Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini (RMP), Mumbai and India Policy Foundation, Delhi — all backed by RSS — would be at the helm of intellectual space providing government with valuable inputs and helping it keep its ear to the ground.

Deendayal Research Institute that started in 1973 to encourage research lost its focus once late Nanaji Deshmukh, who ran it for years, gravitated towards rural work. Late Pramod Mahajan played an important role in the formation of RMP in the late 1980s named after his mentor Rambhau Mhalgi a veteran Jana Sangh leader. IPF is the youngest and the most active and has top RSS leaders like Dattatreya Hosbole, Manmohan Vaidya, Suresh Soni and Bajrang Lal Gupta in the board of governors.

Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, director-general, RMP and director of Public Policy Research Centre says he is looking forward to a lot of work with the new central government. Sahasrabuddhe says, “Narendra Modi is among few politicians who talks of the importance of human resource development in government.” For the past many years, he says, RMP has been conducting training for Gujarat government employees and teachers. “We emphasize that government employees are not karamcharis but karamyogis. Modi was himself a student of RMP in 1989,” Sahasrabuddhe says. He says Modi’s idea of governance should be distilled to people. “In his style there is marginal scope for discretion. For everything there has to be rules and regulations,” he says.

IPF run by former JNU pro-VC Kapil Kapoor and Delhi University teacher Rakesh Sinha straddles multiple worlds. It intervenes on crucial legislations, monitors Urdu press, conducts research on issues like right to free health and other contemporary issues. Kapoor says IPF will maintain a distance from the government and concentrate on research and shaping opinion. Sinha says, “IPF initiated positive dialogues to break the sectarianism in the intellectual movement.” He says change in government means “nationalist think tanks like IPF will play role of forces of positive transformation and critical policy formulations.”

P Parmeshwaran of Bharatiya Vichar Kendram says, “Much needed historic change has taken place. These are opportunities for real India to express itself in social, cultural and political life.”

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/lok-sabha-elections-2014/news/RSS-backed-bodies-to-give-inputs-to-govt/articleshow/35530584.cms