Sambandh: Driving Progress through Research - A chat with Dan Banik

Sambandh

In this episode of Sambandh, Arvind Gajal and Professor Dan Banik discuss the evolving relationship between Norway and India through the len

Key takeaways

• Professor Dan Banik advocates for 'evidence-based hope,' using data to show progress in life expectancy and poverty reduction despite global crises.
• India's 1991 economic liberalization, initiated under Dr. Manmohan Singh, transformed the nation from a closed economy into a global market powerhouse.

Main topics

• Norway-India bilateral relations
• Evidence-based hope in development

Notable quotes

I don't want to talk about being an optimist... What I'm thinking of is, look at the evidence, look at the data.

Conclusion

The episode demonstrates that the future of Norway-India relations lie

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) You are listening to Samban, the Royal Norwegian Embassy's podcast, where we unpack Norway-India relations. Speaker 2 (0:14) Hello everyone. So why does research matter in the relationship between Norway and India? And what can we do to deepen partnerships in science, innovation and higher education? My name is Arvind Gajal and I am the Deputy Chief of Mission here at the Embassy in Delhi. And in this episode, I am joined by my friend Professor Dan Banik from the University of Oslo. Professor Banik is an internationally renowned academic, educator and podcaster. Together, we will explore India's evolving higher education landscape and discuss the possibilities that stronger academic partnership can bring to our two countries. But I begin with a question that is posed in a recent episode of Dan's seminal podcast, In Pursuit of Development. And that question is, why is hope so essential in a world beset by complex global problems? I do hope you enjoy our Speaker 1 (1:15) conversation. Speaker 2 (1:21) I've been looking forward to this, Dan. It's wonderful to see you here in Delhi, in the embassy itself. Welcome. Thank Speaker 1 (1:27) you, Arvind. I've been looking forward to seeing you again. Speaker 2 (1:30) I have about a thousand things that I'd like to talk to you about. I think your vantage point in understanding the relationship between Norway and India is very special. It's very informed. It's based on a long career. I'm going to start with something else. I'm going to ask you about Speaker 1 (1:47) one of the most fascinating podcast episodes I've ever listened to. And Speaker 2 (1:51) that was the finale of your In Pursuit of Development season this time around, which was about hope. You have an insight in that episode, which I think is phenomenally important. And it's about the importance of hope for everyone. Can you just say a little bit about your motivation behind that focus and why you decided to spend an entire episode on it? Speaker 1 (2:11) Well, I'm glad you asked. And thanks for plugging my podcast. I do have listeners, a lot of them in India and in Norway. Actually, I've been, you know, I'm a professor and I've been teaching a lot of these kids, these young people for many, many years, for decades. And like 15 years ago, a lot of my students came up to me after a long semester in Oslo. This was a course in development studies saying, Professor, you've talked about everything that doesn't work. We want to work for the UN. We want to work for the Foreign Service, for NGOs. why are you just talking about things that don't work? Why are you guys academics so critical? Why don't you also talk about what actually works? And Arvind, I thought this was such a great comment from my students that I asked them to help me co-develop a course, an academic module called What Works. And this is something that I offered in 2014 for the first time, a massive open online course called MOOC. What works promising practices in international development? Fast track to last week when I had the season finale. And I've been thinking about this for a long time. A lot of my students, a lot of our kids, you know, they are often stuck in this doom and gloom mode. When you read the newspapers, if you look at social media, it is about climate, it is about wars, it's about disasters. And the impression we get, particularly young people, is that this is the worst time in history. to be alive. When it turns out, if you look at the evidence, this is the best time ever. We are living longer than ever. The average life expectancy at birth at the global level is over 70. We've eradicated many diseases. We don't have polio in many countries, including India has a huge success. A few years ago, people were worried about HIV AIDS infections in India. India has managed to do that really well. poverty reduction in this country, in China, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Now, if we don't appreciate that success, I think the picture would be half full. So I'm interested in, as you know, Aravind, evidence-based hope. I don't want to talk about being an optimist because there's a difference between being an optimist and being... hopeful. An optimist looks at some trends, some statistics, and concludes that the future will be better. A pessimist does the opposite, thinks that the world will end up in rupture. What I'm thinking of is, and what I've been advocating for, is look at the evidence, look at the data. There are Speaker 2 (4:43) huge Speaker 1 (4:43) challenges out there in India, in Norway, in the world, in the global south. climate, you know, conflict. We have financial problems. But there's also so much out there that actually works. And I think we should be balancing the picture rather than just focusing on the doom and gloom. And that's why I'm making strong case as much as I can for hope. Fantastic. You used the term evidence-based hope. Let's turn to India for a moment where Speaker 2 (5:10) we are right now. What are the causes in your mind? What are the reasons to be hopeful? What evidence is there to be hopeful? Speaker 1 (5:17) I was born in India a long time ago, right? And I've been in Norway for 35 years. I've begun to see, of course, India and appreciate India, what India does, the challenges as well as the successes from a different vantage point, from a Norwegian perspective. So the first thing I would say is the thing that fascinates me is the resilience of Indian democracy. The fact that since 1947, there's, apart from one brief period, there's just been... uninterrupted democratic rule. If you think about one of the definitions of democracy that I really like by Adam Przewski, democracy is a system where parties lose elections. If you use that criteria, you see this happening at the state levels in India, at the national level. So that is one thing. The second thing from an economic perspective, I left India in 1991. That was an era of power cuts. That was an era where one couldn't get access to foreign goods. You know, it was this era where the economy was closed. It was in 91 that liberalization started under Dr. Manmohan Singh and things opened up. And now India is the bastion of capitalism. If you think about 200 million people who've been lifted out of poverty, I should mention this. 35 years ago in Oslo, Aravind, people thought India was like, they associate India with Mother Teresa and elephants. And, you know, the British Raj, you know, the British serials that, you know, we would watch on Norwegian TV. And now that picture has changed. India is about fantastic authors. Arun Duttie Roy, you know, you have diplomats, there's yoga and there's Bollywood. Shah Rukh Khan is apparently quite well known in Oslo. I didn't know that either. I don't watch Bollywood as much, but there's a lot of that going on. And I think there's appreciation for Indian food. So a lot of the Indian soft power. that was always there, has now led to something else, the economic power. India as a market, India as perhaps a counterweight to China, as some see it, because India is a democracy. I was speaking with the late Joe Nye, the inventor, the father of the term soft power, soft power as in our ability to attract someone to do what we want without using force. Both India and Norway. actually are the soft power centers. So I think it's the economic growth might, but also this long civilizational culture, peace and conflict. I think Donald Trump said this just a few days ago. Well, you know. There's no wars. India's not fighting a war or something. It doesn't have that kind of thing. So