CSDS Saga Part 1

"Self-Governance" Leftist Style

CSDS Claims all Government Benefits but Defies all Systems of Accountability

On 1^st May 2016, I had published the text of my legal notice to CSDS challenging their brazen act of discrimination in denying me affiliation to the organization in order to avail of the prestigious Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship awarded to me by the Indian Council for Social science Research (ICSSR). The ostensible reason provided by the CSDS for denying/indefinitely deferring my affiliation for the two-year duration of the Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship is that a special committee of CSDS faculty is still in the process of drafting “rules for self governance.”  Therefore, in the absence of “norms” the institution is unable to offer me affiliation.

Had this been even half honest explanation, I would not have picked up cudgels with CSDS. (See Link: CSDS: A Citadel of "Academic Freedom" Unmasked").

It is noteworthy that today CSDS is the only one among the 32 research institutions funded by the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) which gets 100 percent of its grant-in-aid towards staff salaries and building fund from the ICSSR – an organization created by the ministry of HRD to fund social science research in India. As a government funded institution, CSDS is expected to follow rules and norms applicable to public funded institutions.[1] That includes well-established procedures of accountability, transparency, fair play, non-discrimination, and rules that are applicable to all without fear or favour.  However, CSDS has been functioning in the most lawless fashion, as the following account will show.

The malafide intent behind denying me affiliation on the specious plea that rules of "self governance" had not yet been finalised is evident from the fact that absence of "norms for self-governance" never came in the way of:

1. Over 200 scholars, including ICSSR fellowship holders, being granted affiliation to CSDS under various heads in the last 15 years, 
2. Recruiting several new faculty members;
3. Starting of new programmes, projects and even a whole new “Institute” without as much as a formal permission of the Board of Governors(of this more in another part of this series);
4. A faculty member negotiating collaboration with the Gottingen University for setting up an International Centre for Advanced Study in CSDS.
5. Inviting Visiting Fellows from abroad for short and long periods, involving huge expense to the Centre;
6. Faculty members going out for lucrative assignments abroad involving frequent long absences from CSDS;
7. Faculty members applying for funding for this or that Project or Program from international donor agencies, including those agencies that are under investigation by the Government of India.

In short, no other decision was put on hold during the last many years, including those involving massive financial commitments. My affiliation is the one and only instance, when “absence of norms of self governance” has been cited to indefinitely defer any decision, in effect amounting to denial because the National Fellowship awarded by the ICSSR could well lapse if I cannot avail of it within a stipulated time.

More importantly, had this been the first and only case of discrimination against me, I would have swallowed it quietly and moved on especially since I can easily get affiliation in any number of university departments both in and outside Delhi.

The Real Face behind Mask of Self-Governance

The pious sounding rhetoric of “self-governance” flaunted by the Ruling Coterie at CSDS gives the impression as though the institution is a living role model of Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of “Swaraj”.  Unfortunately, this term masks a totally different reality.  Gandhi’s Swaraj requires a community to be economically self sufficient, as were the once famed “village republics” of pre-colonial India.  It also requires such communities to observe a high level of self-discipline through inner motivation and peer pressure.

But CSDS is haplessly dependent on government funds and yet is not willing to observe the most elementary rules of discipline expected of public funded institutions.  Its model of “self-governance” in effect means unquestioned domination of a small ideologically driven leftist Coterie whose main agenda is compulsive BJP and Modi bashing inspired by psychopathic hatred which brooks no discussion and has no respect for facts. Therefore, their hatred is not even backed by serious academic study. Anyone who challenges this hate soaked narrative is treated as an enemy to be vanquished by means fair or foul. For the first three decades, the CSDS was perceived as a “liberal” institution which did not kowtow to the Left orthodoxy. Therefore it was target of systematic defamation by the left academics. However, in the last 20 years or so, for reasons hard to understand, the old guard began recruiting typical JNU style leftists with a vengeance. Today, the institution has become one of the leading citadels of Left politics. Of this more in another part of this series.

For the moment let me provide a glimpse of what kind of standards of probity this Left academic citadel follows. They want all the benefits that come from being a public funded institution but no accountability to any overseeing authority so that the institution can be used for serving partisan ends.

CSDS began in 1963 as a small well-knit community of scholars whose life revolved around the institution.  Therefore, they chose not to have very formal rules of attendance or systems for monitoring the academic performance of faculty members.  Each one was free to choose the area of his interest and work at his own pace.  This unique system of academic freedom worked reasonably well so long as CSDS faculty remained a small and close-knit group. The likes of Rajni Kothari, Ashis Nandy, Giri Deshingkar and D L Sheth rightly believed they did not require any external monitoring since they were self driven and remained productive of their own initiative.

However, as the institution began expanding and bringing in new recruits, the CSDS was neither able to retain the spirit of intimate collegiality and inner motivation to nurture the institution, nor was it able to establish effective norms for administering the institution in a manner that maintained a healthy balance between academic freedom and accountability. Therefore, it began degenerating into a totally lawless state of affairs.  The lack of clear cut rules applicable to all without fear or favour allowed a small Coterie to dominate the place with a vice like grip.  Self-governance in effect came to mean total lack of accountability.  Salient examples of this are:  

• There is no system or requirement to mark daily attendance by the faculty. Though the official working hours are from 9.30 am to 6 pm, and the “Service Rules” adopted by the Board of Governors in 2011 mandate an 8 hour working day, none of the faculty members feel obliged to adhere to these hours.  They come and go as and when it suits them; some just show up for a couple of hours nearing lunch time, have a cozy chat over lunch and disappear;
• Though CSDS is supposed to work five days a week, this has never been enforced.  Faculty members show up as often or as infrequently as they please.  Nobody has ever been called to account or sent a ‘show-cause’ notice for absenting themselves for days, weeks or even for months on end without informing the office;
•  There is no requirement for prior approval for taking long or short leave by faculty members.  The most that is expected of faculty members is that they send an SMS to the Administrative Officer or fill a leave application form.  This is adhered to only erratically and therefore the issue gets raised in faculty meetings time and again, because of pressure from the Board of Governors.  When there is no system of marking daily attendance, a common practice in public funded as well as private sector intuitions, how do you assess whether the official leave record is accurate?
• No requirement to take prior permission for accepting outside consultancies, teaching assignments abroad, remuneration for lectures abroad and striking other financial deals etc;
• No need to declare the extra income faculty members earn by consultancies and other foreign assignments despite the Board of Governors having stated in the “Rules” they adopted in 2011 that the extra income earned at the cost of CSDS should be declared and a certain percentage be shared with the institution;[2]
• There is virtually no limit to the amount of time faculty members can spend globetrotting on one pretext or the other – lecture tours, teaching assignments abroad, attending conferences, and seminars or for consultancies.  In short, a job at CSDS is a convenient launching pad for taking on additional remunerative assignments;
• Ironically, even though there is no system of recording how many days in a year and for how many hours in a day a particular faculty member attends the Centre, yet CSDS follows the leave encashment provision applicable in Central and other universities.  Thus, even those who attend the Centre only fitfully can get lakhs of rupees at the time of retirement by way of leave encashment for up to 300 days simply because there is no system to check how often a faculty member absented without applying for leave. 
• Most important of all, there is total absence of academic audit of individual faculty members.  Nobody is ever called to account even if their academic output is zero for years on end; nor is there any system of evaluating the quality of the work done by individual faculty members.

It is important to remember that the CSDS faculty are hired for full time research and writing.  There is no requirement for any faculty member to take classes or guide Ph.D. students.  Of their own volition, some of the faculty members do take on teaching assignments outside the CSDS but they come with extra income.  A few also guide Ph.D. students in collaboration with the primary guide of the university to which the student is officially affiliated.  But this is neither mandatory nor very common.  Unfortunately ICSSR has never cared to establish a proper system to audit the quantity or quality of academic output being produced by these full time researchers. Nor has it insisted that CSDS follow the Rules & Regulations applicable to public funded institutions. As a result, the institution functions in the most arbitrary manner, accountable to none. It gets away by using glib talk and the star status of a few to mask the fact that for many it has become a centre for political pamphleteering

See Link: CSDS: A Citadel of "Academic Freedom" Unmasked".

...To be continued

FOOTNOTE

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[1] In addition to government funding, the CSDS faculty are free to solicit funds from other agencies and it has made more than adequate use of this freedom by vigorously wooing western donor agencies for huge grants for various new Programmes, Projects and Institutes within the CSDS.  (of this more in another Part of this series)

The normal procedure for an ICSSR funded institution is that they have to get 50 percent of their grant-in-aid from the respective state governments.  However, during the tenure of Prof J.P. Naik as Member Secretary of ICSSR, the CSDS founders were able to negotiate a special status that 100 per cent of faculty and staff salaries plus the building maintenance fund would come from ICSSR.  In fact, even the money to buy the current building came from the ICSSR.  In addition, ICSSR has given additional funds to CSDS for conferences, workshops, instituting fellowships, special research projects, lecture series and much else.

[2] It is pertinent to mention here that I am one of the few who has never accepted any consultancies or long-term foreign assignments.  Even though I could easily have wrangled long teaching assignments abroad, I chose only short duration lecture assignments and the money earned from those lectures was mostly donated to MANUSHI.