Center for Policy Research), has recently commented that "the
social sciences have become an important element in problem and
policy analysis and are increasingly focussed on indigenous
problems. Economics and political science are strong, sociology and
the others are not. The ICSSR and its regional institutions by and
large have worked out. The Foundation's relatively small grants
were timely, crucial and catalytic..."
In more
recent years, the Foundation has given particular attention to
problems of natural resource economics and various aspects of
finance and fiscal policy. It was the first major outside supporter
of the National Institute for Public and Finance Policy, which has
become a highly respected research and training center. It has
funded a number of new training and research programs in
international economics as India becomes more deeply dependent on
exports and engaged in international trade, investment and
technology.
Dr. Manmohan
Singh, the Finance Minister and himself a world-famous economist,
commented in 1991 that the state of Indian economics is "generally
good," although it is not, he noted, "very empirical."
Management
As it
endeavoured to play a useful part in improving public
administration, the Foundation, starting in the mid-1950s, also
became an important supporter of institution building in the
management field. The rapid growth of industrial and commercial
enterprises in the 1950s in both the public and private sectors
produced a demand for more and better trained managers. Public
sector enterprises were being run by civil servants (a pattern
persisting to this day). Most private sector industrial houses were
either family firms or subsidiaries of foreign companies with
usually expatriate managers.
The first
steps in what turned into a process of major institution building
took place in the late 1950s when the Foundation funded visits by
groups of industrialists and senior civil servants to business
schools and management training centers in Europe and the United
States. Consultants came to India to look at ways of improving
training. The Foundation made grants to strengthen the All-India
Management Association (AIMA) and underwrote a series of advanced
management programs in India organized by the AIMA with the
collaboration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Sloan School of Management.
During this
same period, the Foundation was asked by the government to arrange
a crash program for in-service training of Indian engineers who
were to help manage three new public sector steel plants being
built with assistance from the Soviet Union, the Federal Republic
of Germany and Great Britain. The