MOSCOW: India and Russia have agreed to expand their bilateral cooperation in joint research in social sciences and exchange of scholars.
An agreement to this effect was signed earlier this week between New Delhi-based Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and Russian Academy of Sciences, within the framework of the Indo-Russian Cultural Exchanges pact signed during President Vladimir Putin's India visit in January.
"The Moscow memorandum provides a streamlined mechanism for the interaction of Indian and Russian scholars in various fields of humanities," ICSSR Chairman Andri Biteille said.
According to Biteille, the new agreement signed by him in Moscow with the Vice-President of Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Nekipelovm for the first time gives Indian scholars access to various research institutes involved in humanities studies, including ethnology and anthropology.
"Earlier, our academic interaction was limited to the Russian Indologists, the new agreements opens new vistas in bilateral cooperation in humanities research," he said.
"ICSSR has similar agreement with China and some other European countries. An agreement is in the pipeline with Great Britain," Biteille said.
As a first step, a joint Indo-Russian seminar was also organised in Moscow on the impact of pop and folk arts on the multi-ethnic societies like India and Russia, Director of Centre of Indian Studies of the Russian Science Academy, Tatiana Shaumyan, said.
"We have a long tradition of scholarly exchanges with India, but due to lack of a bilateral framework agreement on cultural exchanges for several years, the scholars' interaction was episodic and full scope of cooperation could not be utilised," Shaumyan observed.
