Indo-French Forum Urges Closer Middle Business Ties

A bigger thrust for cooperation between Indian and French middle-size businesses, an Indo-French water week, more scientific collaboration and a resolve to work jointly to develop information technology and food processing, were endorsed by the Indo-French Initiative Forum which met here on February 14 and 15.

Briefing the press, the French co-president of the Forum, Jean Francois Poncet, said that while large companies had the resources and could assess the size of the Indian market, middle-size businesses in France as well as India had little knowledge of each other.

The forum's proposition was that Indian business could benefit from technology and French business would get the chance to discover the potential of the large Indian market.

 

The forum, an influential body in both India and France, also announced there would be more exchanges between India and France in the area of higher education (100 scholarships to be set up in both countries).

Nasscom president Dewang Mehta did a presentation for the forum on possibilities for cooperation in information technology.

There seemed to be some difference of opinion, however, on the civilian use of nuclear energy. While recognising India as a nuclear state, France was noticeably gentler on India after the nuclear tests.

Accordingly, Poncet said that French physics Nobel laureate, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, who is a member of the forum, was asked to contact "someone in the Indian government" to discuss possibilities of cooperation on the civilian uses of nuclear energy.

Poncet pointed out that there were "problems" in cooperation on civilian uses of nuclear energy, because of the dual- use nature of nuclear energy.

However, the Indian co-president, Ramakrishna Hegde, quickly contradicted this and said that the matter was not discussed because it was a "political" issue and "the forum does not discuss political issues".