The Hindu : Front Page : India "needs" foreign liaisons in research

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 04, 2006
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India "needs" foreign liaisons in research

Staff Reporter

Vital for the country to do well in business: Prince Andrew

CHENNAI: India's ambitions to make it big on the global business stage cannot be fulfilled without more basic international liaisons in research and shared standards, says Prince Andrew, who is visiting Chennai in his role as the United Kingdom's Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.

"There's the flashy bit of trade you see in the newspapers. By that, I mean the Tata Steel bid for Corus. But what people don't see is the type of economic activity that will take place in this room today," he told the delegates of a technical seminar on Eurocodes, organised by the BSI, the UK's national standards body, and the Indian Concrete Institute. Without going through the "somewhat dry, academic" process of getting the basics of research in place and the liaison between standards, legislation and code-writers, Indian industry would find it hard to do global business, he warned.

Encouraging India's construction and infrastructure companies to adopt the "global benchmark" set by the BSI, Prince Andrew said this would facilitate "the economic relationship between not only the U.K. and India, but also Europe and India."

Later in the day, the Prince called for a similar global outlook while addressing a completely different audience. He awarded certificates to the 12 children whose pictures were short-listed in the British Council's "View from my Window" competition, which promotes greater international understanding of issues such as pollution, water scarcity, religious conflict and terrorism.

"So you're going to be world-renowned artists some day," he told the tiny painters before asking them, "So what did you see from your window?" The Prince got answers varying from "a garden" to "the Mumbai floods" and "a Chennai city traffic jam" before reminding his audience of the different points of view in the global village: "Remember, you might see something other people don't see."

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