Sh. Shashank & Sh. A.P. Gandhi on "India- Korea Relations"

A panel discussion on “India- South Korea Relations” was organized by Centre for East Asian Studies on January 27, 2010 at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The meeting discussed and reviewed the developments in India-Korea relations on the occasion of the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's visit to India during January 24-27. The meeting was chaired by Prof. Srikanth Kondapalli; Chairman, Centre for East Asian Studies. The speakers were Ambassador Shashank; former Foreign Secretary of India and former Indian Ambassador to South Korea, Mr. A.P Gandhi; Founder and CEO Hyundai Motors India and Dr. Jitendra Uttam; Assistant Professor, Centre for East Asian Studies.

Professor Kodapalli in his introductory address has laid down the significance of Korean President’s visit and the importance of India-Korea relation in the current international political milieu. Dr. Jitendra Uttam gave a presentation on the historical background of India-Korea relation and has focused on the current economic relations between India and South Korea. Dr. Uttam has argued that India-South Korea relation is entering in to new era with the induction of India-Korea Free Trade agreement and has observed that the Indian government’s invitation of South Korean President as the Chief Guest on the occasion of Republic Day as the symbolic depiction of this future partnership. Ambassador Shashank has shared his expertise on improvising India-Korea relations as the Indian ambassador to Korea in the mid 1990s and has focused on current strategic importance of India-Korea relations in the context of the rising Chinese influence in Asia. He appraised the potential for India and South Korea to cooperate in areas of mutual interest such as nuclear technology, space technology, maritime security, defense and anti-terrorism. Mr. Gandhi has shared his rich experience of working with Hyundai India by focusing on the challenges faced and strategies adopted by the Korean companies to flourish in the Indian market. Mr. Gandhi has dealt in length on the management and social responsibility practices of Korean companies in India and has observed that the Korean companies in India are instrumental actors in India-Korea relation.

Panelists and the participants discussed various facets of India- Korea relation including economic, political, cultural and strategic, both at bilateral and multilateral level. The meeting observed the significant role of academic research and academic institutions in the India-Korea relation and has called for further advancement of academic engagement towards understanding Korea.

Rapporteur:

Jojin V John

Research Scholar

Centre for East Asian Studies

Zhang Shulan, an Associate Professor at School of Political Science and Public Administration, Shandong University on "Environmental NGOs in China"

Rajiv Ranjan, an M Phil Candidate in Chinese Studies at the Centre, recapitulates the findings of the Zhang Shulan.

Environment protection in China is rather a new happening, initiated by Premier Zhou Enlai at National Conference on Environment in 1973. There are various reasons including ‘environment degradation’, ‘recourses scarcity’ and ‘identity crisis ’. Zhang, in very lucid way, presented broader perspective of environmental NGOs in China. Beginning with review of literature on China’s NGO, her focus was on the very notion of NGOs and ENGOs in Chinese perspective. She countered the ideas of western scholar on the impression of NGOs and GNGOs and justifies her as “this reflects the prejudice of scholars from the developed world in their observations on Chinese NGOs”. Moreover, she termed all social organizations as NGOs, ignoring the fact that GNGOs are created by government, by saying “Though all GONGOs are created by the state for particular purposes, the evolution in their organizational ideologies, the scope of their activities, and the recognition they have obtained from both insiders and outsiders have gone far beyond what the state ever intended”.

She traces the history of development of ENGOs in China and confirms that in 1978, the “China Society for Environmental Science”, set up in Beijing, was first ENGO. Nonetheless, it was created by government. Ironically, many Chinese scholars believe that the first environmental NGO in China was formally registered on March 31, 1994 as the Academy for Green Culture, now called Friends of Nature (FON). Moreover, Shulan also factorized the causes of these developments in China and made globalization, reform policy of China, 1978 and changing attitude towards protecting environment, responsible for that matter. Interestingly, China however, has opened the political space for popular participation in environment protection and permitted the establishment of ENGOs on one hand but on the other hand kept a tight vigilance on the registering and functioning of NGOs through “Regulation for registration and Management of Social Organizations, 1998”.

Overall, the specialty of China's ENGOs consists in the following: firstly, they are single-issued, seldom care about other social problems which are unconcerned with environmental problem. Secondly, majority of China's ENGOs cooperate with the government, although there was an upsurge of environmental movements in China from 2002 to 2003. Thirdly, compared with other kinds of NGOs, China's ENGOs has powerful impacts. They influence the government's public policies on environmental protection.

Comments and Questions:

1. By very definition NGO signifies its meaning. China has government controlled NGOs known as GNGOs. Don’t you think that there is greater need of autonomy for these NGOs to get desired result?

2. Do NGOs have any role of crisis evolving in China, like flood etc?

3. What is role of the NGOs in Tibet and Xinjiang and how they operate in these areas?

4. What is the idea of environment relocation on dams and what role NGOs play in this regard?

5. Are NGOs based on single issue like environment or they also operate on multiple issues?

6. Why there are no NGOs in Chengdu and is there any transformation process of GNGOs to independent NGOs?