GOI approval for research in India

[Harold F. Schiffman]

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Forwarded from Linguist-List,

From: Richard Sproat <rws at uiuc.edu>
Subject: Approval Required for Research with Colleagues in India


Anyone who is contemplating applying for funds for doing research
involving collaboration with colleagues in India, especially research
involving human subjects (broadly construed) should pay attention to the
following message. It is the general policy of the Government of India
that projects where funds come into India from the outside, need approval
from one or more Indian Government organizations.

At:

http://compling.ai.uiuc.edu/rws/newindex/guidance.doc

I have posted some guidelines that specifically focus on biomedical
research, which includes anything involving human subjects --- including
non-invasive psycholinguistic research. Some of the contact information at
the end is out of date, but the process is as described there, and the
Health and Human Services contact, Dr. Vaneet Arora (stationed at the US
Embassy in New Delhi) is still the right person to contact about these
issues.

The reason I am posting this information is that our funding agencies,
such as NIH or NSF seem to be largely ignorant of these requirements. The
reason this is an issue is that it can take six months or more to obtain
Government of India approval. I found all this out the hard way after
being notified that an NIH grant I had applied for (for collaborative work
on psycholinguistic issues in processing Indian scripts -- not a study
that involves any invasive procedures) was approved by the NIH. It then
developed (over a matter of a couple of months) that before the award
could be made, GoI approval had to be obtained.

It is thereforely strongly recommended that you have your Indian
colleague(s) start the process at their end as soon as you apply for US
Government funds, and that you not wait until your project has been
awarded funding. According to the HHS attache's at the US Embassy in New
Delhi (with whom I met a couple of weeks ago), they have tried repeatedly
to get the NIH to make this information available to applicants, but that
their suggestions have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

So be forewarned.

--Richard Sproat