Still no luck for foreign scholars: Visa delay makes Chinese give up

When The Indian Express highlighted the plight of Fulbright scholars being subjected to unexplained delays by visa issuing authorities...

When The Indian Express highlighted the plight of Fulbright scholars being subjected to unexplained delays by visa issuing authorities, the Government claimed it had addressed the issue by forming a high-powered inter-ministerial committee that meets every month to clear applications without delay. None of this, however, has helped Chinese scientist Mingmin Zhao.

Mingmin had won a fellowship to do research under the aegis of the India chapter of International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology — nothing politically sensitive about it. He was to have started his work in the 2006-07 academic calendar, but after desperate attempts he gave up on February 9.

“I have made a decision to give up this fellowship. I know the delays in the visa issue is beyond our control… the key reason is I have to do some more important things at out university in 2007,” he wrote to the ICGEB headquarters at Trieste, Italy.

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ICGEB’s Director-General Prof F E Baralle apologised on February 22 to the scholar over the difficulty in obtaining the entry visa. “We regret very much that it is so difficult to obtain the entry visa to India, this is not compatible with ICGEB’s international status.”

As an international research organisation with member states from across the developing world, ICGEB funds research in areas important to these countries, like health and agriculture. The Centre in India is a key component of this network and has gained wide acceptability for the quality of material it produces. But while there is a growing number of foreigners showing interest in working in India, the programme has encountered visa problems.

Virander Singh Chauhan, ICGEB New Delhi’s director, says: “All I can say is that the cooperation between the Home Ministry and the Ministry of External Affairs could have been better.”

Mingmin’s visa application had been pending for several months and despite help from ICGEB, it failed to go through. And if there is any doubt on where the problem lay, Baralle’s reply clarifies it. “I take note of your decision to renounce the postdoctoral fellowship awarded to you because of the delay of the Indian Embassy in granting you a visa.”

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Chauhan says his centre’s main task is to create technology that can be passed on to member states at a cheap cost. At anytime there are 35 students in his institute. Amid all efforts to keep this going, he spends considerable time writing letters to the MEA to extend time limits for ICGEB’s foreign researchers who get only one-year entry permits.