At 192, India has 5th most think tanks in the world

MUMBAI: India has the fifth most number of thinktanks in the world at 192, with six of them among the global top 150. The US tops the list with 1,830 such bodies, followed by China (429), the UK (287) and Germany (194), the recently released Global Go To thinktank Index Report (GGTTI) 2014 has said.

The six Indian thinktanks in the global top 150 list are the Centre for Civil Society (CCS, rank 50), Institute For Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA, 100), Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (105), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI, 107), Observer Research Foundation (ORF, 114) and Development Alternatives (129).

Seven Indian organizations made it to the list of top 80 thinktanks to watch out for. These are ORF (rank 14), IDSA (20), CCS (26), Vivekananda Institute of Technology (32), Centre for Policy Research (41), Gateway House (53) and Council on Energy, Environment and Water (71).

The annual rankings are compiled under the auspices of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) at the University of Pennsylvania.

The report highlights the valuable role of thinktanks in society: "Today, many politicians choose to focus on short-term issues and crises, rather than addressing the large looming crises that are just ahead... like aging or declining populations, climate change, and sovereign debt... (Politicians) put their nations at risk because they would rather dodge and defer the issue in order to ensure their re-elections.

"Thinktanks can alter their tendency for short-termism by determining realistic measurable targets for combating long-term transnational problems. In conjunction with NGOs, they can also function as watchdogs and apply more pressure to governments to act in the long term by producing reports that discuss the grave consequences of inaction."