Fulbright-Nehru Fellowships, 2014-15

A slightly-edited e-mail from Adam Grotsky, Executive Director, USEIF:

Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship opportunities for U.S. citizens in India for Academic Year 2014-15

India has the largest U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program in the world. You may not know that more than 80 U.S. scholarships are awarded each year.

These are a few things that may also be news to you:

• USIEF has introduced Postdoctoral Fellowships, for candidates who have earned a doctorate degree in the last five years.
• Grants for teaching, teaching/research, and research have been combined under Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence award category, which is open to faculty and professionals in all disciplines.
• “Serial grants” will allow faculty the opportunity to conduct research in India, during shorter in-country stays, over the course of two years. The Distinguished Chair award, designed for eminent scholars with substantial teaching experience, offers the opportunity to travel to prominent institutions in India to deliver guest lectures and participate in conferences and workshop.
• USIEF provides a dependent education allowance up to $10,000.

For more information on these grant options and benefits, visit CIESwebsite. The application deadline is August 1, 2013.

For details regarding benefits and application procedures for student grants, visit the FulbrightU.S. Student Program page.

Recently, many U.S. institutions have sent delegations to India on fact finding missions to engage strategically with their counterparts in India. A Fulbright-Nehru grant is an excellent way to seed potential long-standing partnerships with Indian institutions. In fact, each year we have grantees whose research collaborations and other joint efforts lead to active engagement at an institutional level. Help us identify worthy recipients! Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about our fellowship opportunities. We hope to welcome you and your colleagues to India someday soon.

Renewing your Research Visa.

Good luck with that.

No, seriously, it can be done, but it is going to take more patience than you probably have after 12 months in India.

First, the good news for all you Fulbright people: the USIEF office will write you a letter that should help smooth things over with FRRO. Yes, FRRO. I'm afraid you have to go back there. You should take with you:

• your own pen with black or blue ink
• passport photos (take 4, just in case, but refer to my previous FRRO post for instructions on how to find a photo place near FFRO itself)
• passport w/visa
• photocopies of your passport and visa
• FRRO registration book
• photocopies of the first and last page of your FRRO registration book
• Original letter from USIEF, recommending visa renewal
• Photocopy of letter from USIEF
• Letter from Indian university (JNU, DU, etc.) advisor recommending that your visa be renewed (THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL)
• Proof of residence (utility bill, C-Form, etc.)
• Flight arrival information (I know, who cares, you've been in India 12 months, but they still want it)
• 4000 INR

You know the drill. Compile all the copies into a pile to leave at FRRO. Get up early, try to be the first person in line at FRRO. I got there at 8:45 this time, and was about 12th in line, an almost perfect position. I was done by 10:30, so it was worth the early start. The paperwork you will be handed is similar to registration paperwork, and if you have all the proper items listed above, you should be golden. Take the USIEF phone number with you, though, just in case someone gives you trouble.

Okay, now the bad news for all you independent researchers, or people on something like a SSRC-IDRF. It's going to take you an extra day or two to renew your visa. Plan for a total of three days: 1 day to get letters from the U.S. Embassy and your advisor on campus; 1 day to visit the Ministry of Home Affairs; and 1 day for the FRRO.

This is what you need to do. Get a letter from the U.S. Embassy reconfirming your status as a researcher. Get a letter from your Indian university advisor recommending your visa renewal and noting your good research progress. Photocopy them. Then get up early and go to the Ministry of Home Affairs (Jaipur House on Mansingh Road, New Delhi) and take the following items:

• your own pen with black or blue ink
• passport photos (I honestly can't remember if I needed them, but it can't hurt to have them)
• Original letter from U.S. Embassy
• Photostat of letter from U.S. Embassy
• Original letter from university advisor
• Photostat of letter from university advisor
• Original letter from home (U.S.) institution praising your work
• Photostat of letter from home institution
• Passport with visa page
• Photostat of passport with visa page
• FRRO registration book
• Photostat of FRRO registration book
• Proof of residence (utility bill, C-Form, etc.)

Compile all the copies together, these are what you will attach to the forms given to at MHA. You also need the originals, though, because the interview (see below) will ask to see them. If you forget to make a photocopy, don't worry, there is a copy station at the bottom of the stairs, only 1 INR/page.

When you get out of the autorickshaw at Jaipur House, the reception desk is in the little building to your right. Go in there and show your passport. This room has AC, but don't think you have it made, because this is only the reception hall. They will give you a number and tell you to go to the visa room. Go out of reception and into the complex to the office building to the left (ask the guards where to go). Wander into the building, look for stairs. The visa room is on the first (upper) floor. The copy station is right at the bottom of these stairs.

Generally, this part is hot and chaotic, even though the visa people follow a clear procedure. You will be given some paperwork with a number. Fill it out, and bring it back to the same desk. Eventually, some officers will come out and sit at the long desk at the side of the room, and start calling out numbers. You'd think people would wait until they heard their number, but no, the moment one number is called, there is a stampede. For this reason, I recommend sitting in a chair in the side room so you will already be there when the stampede happens. You might be tempted to sit in the larger visa room, where there is a hint of AC, but I think you will regret it when the chaos starts.

What happens is this: your number is called, and you go sit at the long desk for an interview. I never said a word during my interview, so I'm not sure why they call it that. An officer looks over all your photocopies, asks to see the originals, writes some mysterious notes, then tells you to come back at 4:30. Here is the frustrating part. You will come back at 4:30 as directed, and be handed a sealed envelope. This envelope you take to FRRO the next morning, along with all the documents/money listed above. DON'T OPEN THE ENVELOPE. I know, it's hard, because in that sealed envelope it either says "give this person a visa extension" or it says "deny this person's visa extension," and it would be lovely to know which it is before you stand in line at FRRO. But if the seal is broken, you will be denied your visa extension for certain.

In my case, I was recommended for a visa extension, and the less than two hours I then spent at the FRRO a miracle. I hope this description of the process bears equally good results for you.

Getting to India

If have plans to do Ph.D. research in India, chances are you already know how to get there. Maybe you're being funded with a Fulbright-Hays DDRA--in that case, USEFI will probably be taking care of a lot of your details. Or perhaps you have an AIIS Junior Fellowship--in that case, you can rest assured that the people in charge of administration definitely know how to get you in and out of the country. However, I've met a few grad students who decided to do research in India at the last minute, so here's some hopefully helpful advice.

FIRST VISIT
I wouldn't recommend planning a lengthy research trip to India if you've never been there before, and in fact, Overseas Research: A Practical Guide recommends you take at least one reconnaissance trip to your area of research before committing to a long-term visit. An "easy" way to test out India is to participate in a language program. I myself did two Hindi language programs through AIIS in preparation for my doctoral research.* Of course, this meant I had to plan ahead, and spend two of my summers away from home. I recommend others take this route, though. If you study in India for a couple of summers, you will having something to put in the "previous preparation" section of fellowship applications, but more importantly, your stress levels will drop dramatically when you start thinking about long term research abroad. You'll have a better idea what you're getting into if you visit for awhile first. Even if you have to spend your own funds to take a quick, three-week vacation in Delhi or Mumbai, I'd recommend you do it, just to get your feet wet.

TOURIST VISA
Obviously, the best way to arrange for research in India is to land a Fulbright-Hays DDRA, Social Sciences Research Council-IDRF, or AIIS Junior Fellowship. Still, you should be able to manage a trip if you have department or university funding. India now outsources its visa processing to Travisa, and you should check those very helpful pages rather than believe what I say, but here's my bit of advice. If you're going to be staying only a few months in India, you can probably get by on a tourist visa. As the India Department of Education says, you can still conduct research while on a tourist visa. Tourist visas are typically only good for six months, so your trip would be limited in duration. If it's your first trip to India, that might be a good thing. To be quite honest, I wanted to come home at the 6.5 week mark on my first trip, and at the 8.5 week mark on my second. So, you might want to plan just a 1-2 month trip the first time, anyway.

RESEARCH VISA
If you want to stay longer than six months, the first thing you should do is check to see if your university is affiliated with AIIS. If your university is a member institution, AIIS can help you obtain a research visa! A lot of people don't seem to know this, or think they shouldn't bother the people at AIIS, but that's why your university joined this organization, to help out students like you. You should keep in mind that obtaining a research visa can take up to six months, so contact them in plenty of time. AIIS can help you arrange for a certificate of affiliation, a necessary piece of paper to get a research visa. My certificate of affiliation with Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi was arranged by USEFI, but I did a lot of emailing beforehand, making sure I had already introduced my research project to faculty in appropriate university departments. I think this is a crucial step: go ahead and e-mail these complete strangers and talk to them about your work. Really, you should do this. It can be a lot of work (I sent more emails that bounced back undelivered than I could even count), but it's good to have potential faculty contacts, and more importantly, some really interesting and helpful people.

$$$$
No matter what, the process is expensive (I paid a total of $397 in fees for photos/passport renewal/research visa processing). Since everything takes so long, you're going to want to budget for overnight mailing. You're going to do a lot of photocopying (the research visa requires seven copies of the "proforma," a data sheet stating who you are and what type of research you want to do).

IRB CLEARANCE
One thing I didn't know about until pretty late in the game is obtaining IRB clearance. As a historian, you probably won't be working with human subjects. Still, my fellowship required IRB clearance, so I had to apply for an exemption. I didn't even understand the questions on the form, actually--I presume they are clearer to people who regularly conduct ethnographic or sociological research, but I had to have several conversations with the IRB representative on campus before I had the form filled out properly. So, this might be something to get to work on right away.

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*There are many other options for language programs, of course. If you are interested in Bangla, you can go through AIIS, but you can also apply to go to Dhaka through the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies. UC-Santa Barbara runs a Panjabi studies program in the summer. You can seem some other choices at the University of Chicago Summer Language Resource Center.