Column: Must climate research be outsourced?

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: The plea that private think tanks should be involved in energy futures is correct. The idea that only private think tanks should do it is wrong, as it takes a lot of in-house mindsets and skills to use a model for public policy. The critique that minister Jairam Ramesh should not set up a modelling unit at Isro, but give the money to private consultants is interesting. There is a long tradition in the Indian Planning Commission to use university and non-government specialists for energy modelling. Ram Prasad Sengupta was doing this work outside the Commission decades ago. In the mid-eighties, I remember the secretary of the Energy Policy Group under KC Pant, civil servant VB Easwaran coming to me in the Planning Commission to argue for import of wood to save our trees. On his behalf, the argument for OGL import of wood was made passionately by a young MIT-trained engineer who was consulting with the Energy Policy Group. He was so convincing that in the days of near-complete import licensing, we allowed import of wood on OGL with zero tariffs. His name was Jairam Ramesh.

A policy model is not just fun and games. It has to answer specific questions that the Cabinet may ask or that may arise in global negotiations. The other guy will have his answers and you have to push your interest. Again, you have to be consistent with the numbers and arguments you have used earlier, unless you are building up a new ball park, which is seldom the case. In theory, all of this can be given to an outsider. In practice, it becomes difficult. These difficulties arise for different reasons. All the data may not be available in the public domain. For example, you cannot, under the law, give out the numbers relating to a company or a person even if it is large. In fact, you can’t do so for two persons or companies, for then one of them can subtract his numbers from what you have released and arrive at his competitor’s numbers, and this is illegal in the Statistics Act.