- Visitors & Friends - About the University Why is India
developing solar power so slowly? 3 December 2009 With all eyes
on India's geopolitical strategy for Copenhagen, Oxford
University researchers argue that India should be developing its
'apparently appropriate' solar energy technology and asks why,
despite the Indian Prime Minister's recent commitment to a solar
vision, it is favouring coal - the dirtiest option - instead.
The lead author of the Special Article for Economic and Politics
Weekly, Professor Barbara Harriss-White from Oxford University's
Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme, writes that issues
like intellectual property rights are distracting the attention
of the international community from the real problem. Professor
Harriss-White and co-authors Sunali Rohra and Nigel Singh argue
that 'institutional complexity, low status [of solar power] and
lack of finance' are where the real problems lie. ' The first
step is to understand the institutions, from the outcomes of
which negotiations a