The state-owned company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) is India's largest company devoted to exploration and production (E&P). This paper attempts to unpack the dynamic of the government-ONGC relationship. Focusing specifically on how government ownership and control has influenced ONGC's performance and strategy, this paper makes four main arguments.

First, ONGC exists, just as with national oil companies in many other countries, because of a legacy of suspicion about outsiders.  It performed well when it was tasked with things that were not that difficult and when it had help for the more difficult ventures, such as frontier E&P and development.

Second, ONGC has run into trouble as it matured, and the roots of its troubles are mainly in its interactions with the GoI and secondarily in its management.

Third, a slew of reforms instituted since the mid 1990s have fundamentally changed the landscape of the E&P sector in India and the dynamic of government-ONGC relationship. Targeted at improving corporate governance, enhancing competition in E&P, and eliminating price controls, those reforms have had a mixed impact on ONGC's performance and strategy. They also highlight the difficulties the government has had in encouraging higher efficiencies in ONGC and the oil and gas sector.

Fourth, given the deep interconnects of the oil and gas sector with India's political economy, fixing the oil and gas sector essentially entails fixing the larger political economy within which the sector is embedded.

This WSJ article by Peter Beck originally appeared as Shorenstein APARC Dispatch in April 2010

North Korea is usually described as the "most isolated country on earth," its people effectively cut off from the outside world. My research tells a different story-that perhaps one million North Koreans are secretly listening to foreign radio broadcasts. The number of listeners is believed to be growing, which is all the more amazing when one considers that North Korean authorities only distribute radios with fixed dials, assiduously jam foreign broadcasts, and send citizens caught listening to foreign radio to the country's notorious gulags for as long as ten years.

Over a dozen radio stations from the United States, South Korea, and Japan currently broadcast to North Korea. Voice of America (VOA), one of the most popular stations, has been broadcasting to the North since 1942, while the equally popular Radio Free Asia (RFA) began its Korean broadcasts soon after being created by Congress in 1997. VOA focuses on news of the United States and the world, while RFA concentrates on the two Koreas. RFA also carries commentaries by two Korean speakers who grew up in the former Soviet Union and Romania. RFA serves as a substitute for the lack of a "free" station in North Korea, but unlike a typical "surrogate station"-which would be staffed largely by émigrés-RFA only employs one North Korean defector.

South Korea's "Global Korean Network" has been declining in popularity since it ceased to focus on North Korea and adopted a decidedly soft approach after the election of Kim Dae-jung as president in 1997. However, three stations run by North Korean defectors have sprouted up over the past few years, led by Free North Korea Radio (FRNK). These stations employ stringers in North Korea who can communicate by cell phone or smuggle out interviews through China. As a result, information is flowing in and out of the North more rapidly than ever. For example, when major economic reforms were undertaken in 2002, it was months before the rest of the world knew. In contrast, when the regime launched a disastrous currency reform on November 30, 2009, FNKR filed a report within hours.

How do we know that North Koreans are actually listening to foreign broadcasts? First, on dozens of occasions, authorities in Pyongyang have used their own media to attack foreign broadcasters. The North reserves the insult "reptile" exclusively to describe foreign broadcasters. In late March 2010, the regime likened defector broadcasters to "human trash." Ironically, this diatribe also contained the first official mention of the currency revaluation, so broadcasters have clearly struck a nerve. If they were in fact irrelevant, the regime would ignore them instead of lavishing them with free publicity.

Broadcasters to North Korea frequently receive heartbreaking messages from North Koreans in China, thanking them for their efforts. One listener described RFA as "our one ray of hope." More importantly, over the past several years, thousands of North Korean defectors, refugees, and visitors to China have been interviewed about their listening habits. An unpublished 2009 survey of North Koreans in China found that over 20 percent had listened to the banned broadcasts, and almost all of them had shared the information with family members and friends. Several other surveys confirm these findings. While we cannot generalize the listening habits of a self-selected group to the general population, it is not unreasonable to conclude that there are more than a million surreptitious listeners. The North Korean regime is not only losing its monopoly on the control of information; defectors also cite foreign radio listening as one of the leading motivations to defect.

Despite valiant efforts and growing impact, much more could be done to improve broadcasting to North Korea. VOA and RFA only broadcast five hours a day, and the defector stations limp along with shoestring budgets, due to a pervasive indifference within South Korea.

President Obama's human rights envoy for North Korea, Robert King, has pledged to expand funding for Korean broadcasting. For its part, Pyongyang claims that foreign broadcasts are part of the Obama administration's "hostile policy" toward the North. Only time will tell if these efforts will lead to change we can believe in-both in Washington and Pyongyang.

WASHINGTON - The National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars welcome the first class of Research Associates and Fellows of the National Asia Research Program (NARP). Thirty-nine outstanding scholars of Asia were chosen through a competitive, nationwide selection process based on their research into issues of importance to U.S. interests in Asia. The NARP will support the research of 27 Research Associates and 12 Research Fellows during their two-year terms and bring it to the attention of policymakers.

"Our goal in this new program is to highlight and reward scholars who have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy," said NBR President and NARP co-director Richard Ellings. "America's future security, prosperity, and well-being will be deeply linked with Asia's future, and thus America needs some of its best and brightest to understand our interests in Asia -- and the history, nations, peoples, and issues of Asia. In short the NARP is responding to the needs for information and assessment arising from the shift in locus in world power from the Atlantic to the Pacific."

Robert Hathaway, Asia Program Director at the Wilson Center and co-director of the NARP, underscored the role the Associates and Fellows will play in bridging the gap between the academic and policy communities. "The selection of these top scholars from across the United States marks the beginning of a new national association for U.S. experts who care about policy issues related to Asia. The enthusiastic response we've seen to the NARP is a good indication of the potential we have to achieve our goal of strengthening and reinvigorating the policy-relevant study of Asia."

The heads of universities and research organizations in the United States were invited to nominate outstanding scholars from their faculty and staff for consideration as Research Associates and Fellows. More than 140 experts were considered during the selection process, which concluded last month and was followed by private notifications to all of the candidates.

The National Asia Research Program (NARP) is a new research and conference program designed to reinvigorate and promote the policy-relevant study of Asia, particularly by highlighting the research of NARP Associates and Fellows, who will present their work at the inaugural Asia Policy Assembly in Washington, D.C., on June 17-18, 2010.

Mankind has regularly witnessed the immense destruction wrought by natural disasters. Similarly destructive to human life are man-made atrocities, like war and genocide. Those who are lucky enough to have survived either type of cataclysmic event must then begin the process of confronting and reconciling the memories of the catastrophe that befell them.  Public commemorations of these events have run the gamut from poetry and works of art to government sponsored “truth commissions” and institutional reform.

The ways in which people chose to memorialize hardship, whether organized by a group or expressed by an individual, offer illuminating insights into the human psyche and post-conflict justice and also provide valuable information about a society, government or culture.

Several Stanford groups are sponsoring a series of events and research projects designed to explore the many facets of the human phenomena called ‘memory’. Scholars participating in the endeavor, entitled “Contemporary History and the Future of Memory,” represent a broad spectrum of disciplines, but share a common objective: to analyze the range of ways that people have coped with adversity in the past so that future communities may benefit their experience. Attention to the role that memory plays in helping people move beyond tragedy is especially pertinent now as citizens of Chile and Haiti transition from survival to recovery after the devastating earthquakes that took place in each country.

“Contemporary History and the Future of Memory” began in the spring of 2008 with the launch of a multi-year research and public policy program sponsored by Stanford’s Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) and the Division of Literature, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL.) The aim of that program, as described on the DLCL website, is to investigate “how communities that have undergone deep and violent political transformations try to confront their past.”

In the fall of 2009 the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law joined the initiative, bringing with them expertise in reconciliation, a fundamental phase in the cycle of memory.  The series title was amended to “History, Memory & Reconciliation” in recognition of their contribution. This year’s events featured a visit by Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, the internationally renowned scholar of comparative literature from Columbia University, who addressed the subject of cultural and linguistic memory. During the spring quarter human rights and memory will be addressed in separate events by two guest scholars. Cambridge Anthropologist Harri Englund gave a talk on April 6th and University of Chile Law professor José Zalaquett will take part in several events on April 22nd and 23rd, including a lecture on Post-Conflict International Human Rights: Bright Spots, Shadows, Dilemmas.

Four Stanford scholars co-chair “History, Memory & Reconciliation.” They are French Professor Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, Assistant Professor of English Saikat Majumdar, Law School lecturer and FSI fellow Helen Stacy, and Roland Hsu, Assistant Director of FSI’s Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Professors Majumdar and Boyi answered a few questions about the value of delving into memory and how humanities research informs the broader dialogue. Read the full interview here.

Twenty years have passed since the Berlin Wall fell and Angela Merkel – then a budding politician who grew up in communist East Germany – first saw the potential and promise of a free world.

Now the chancellor of Germany, Merkel says freedom can only flourish with international cooperation aimed at making the world safer, cleaner and more economically stable.

"Freedom and solidarity and partnership belong together," Merkel told a capacity crowd at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Thursday after being introduced by President Emeritus Gerhard Casper. "They must be indivisible for us to be able to master the challenges ahead."

But Merkel's speech – the only one she delivered during a four-day trip to the United States – showed that those alliances often come at a cost. Speaking hours after four German troops were killed in fighting in Afghanistan, Merkel expressed her condolences while calling the war a "mission that guarantees our freedom and security."

"It is a sad experience for us in Germany," she said. "It is an experience we share with you in the United States."

With polls showing the war becoming increasingly unpopular in Germany, Merkel said she accepts and respects "doubts" about whether the conflict is necessary or right. But her commitment to fighting the war is unwavering.

She told the audience at Dinkelspiel that the fallout of the international financial crisis "will be with us for a long time to come." But strengthening global trade agreements, steering away from protectionism and bolstering innovation will put financial markets back on the right course, she said.

European financial woes are a volatile topic in Germany right now. The country has offered to pitch in about $11 billion for a Greek economic rescue package, a move that has sparked criticism of Merkel's government.
The bailout poses a serious political risk, as Merkel’s political party faces regional elections in Germany's biggest state on May 9. The party of Christian Democrats must win in order to maintain its majority in the Bundesrat, parliament's upper house.

Merkel did not directly address the Greek economic situation during her speech, but she did stress the need for countries to work together and share responsibility for strengthening the world's financial future.
"We need a new global financial architecture," she said. "We need rules that prevent a whole community of nations from being damaged because individuals have made mistakes."

She said the players behind the world's largest markets have to take an interest in emerging economies and "sit down and reflect together with them" how to establish a strong and prosperous global economy.

A scientist by training, Merkel earned a doctorate in physics and worked as a chemist at a scientific academy in East Berlin. While she was a student, Stanford "was just a far, far-away scientific paradise unreachable from behind the Iron Curtain." And when the Berlin Wall came down, she found herself pulled to a life of politics.

But first, she and her husband celebrated their newfound freedom by doing what they had long dreamed of. They visited California. The chancellor reminisced about the trip as she concluded her speech at Dinkelspiel, standing in front of a backdrop displaying Stanford's German motto: Die Luft der Freiheit weht.

The wind of freedom blows.

Jonathan Rabinovitz contributed to this report.