The storied institution has made crucial contributions to social sciences research and policy. Now, faculty say, the government is choking its autonomy.
In 1936, a Parsi philanthropic organisation, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, established the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work in Mumbai. It was the first institution, not just in India but in Asia, dedicated to the study and practice of social work and the social sciences.
From the start, the institution, renamed the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 1944, was committed to rigorous work on the ground, current and former professors said. In one of its first projects, it dispatched relief teams of students and faculty to refugee camps in the aftermath of the Partition in 1948.
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Over the decades, the institute sent teams for both research and relief work to several places, including Ahmednagar in Maharashtra during a drought in 1972, Bhopal in the aftermath of the 1984 gas leak, Mumbai after riots in 1992, Gujarat after an earthquake in 2001, Nicobar Islands after the 2004 tsunami, and Uttarakhand after the 2013 cloudburst. It helped the government develop schemes and programmes, as well as audit and evaluate their performance.
For faculty members and staff, the institute’s socially-engaged work and contribution to national life have been a source of pride. “TISS has the ability, conviction, authenticity, competency and sincerity to tell the government if things are not going right. And over the years the government has accepted our analysis and findings,” a professor said.
But in recent years, this confidence has been unravelling, as the institute has come under tremendous financial strain, coupled with what current and former staff described as an erosion of autonomy.
The turbulence made headlines two months ago.
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On June 28, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences sent termination letters to more than 100 teachers and non-teaching staff. It stated that it had taken the decision because it was facing a shortage of funds from the Tata Trusts – while the Indian government has been the primary source of funds for the institute, the group has also been a significant funder over the years.
Two days later, the institution withdrew the termination letters, claiming that the group had released Rs 4.79 crore to it.
But rather than reinstate the staffers, the new letters that the institute sent out merely extended their terms for another six months.
Faculty from the women’s studies department have been particularly anxious – three teaching staff and one non-teaching staff were issued termination letters and are yet to receive extension letters. This was despite the fact that the department was not reliant on Tata funds – on July 30, a circular of the University Grants Commission noted that funding for the department would continue for 2024-’25.
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“We wonder why TISS is taking so long to withdraw the terminations,” one professor told Scroll. “Even our students are concerned and worried about the future of the department.”
In 1936, a Parsi philanthropic organisation, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, established the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work in Mumbai. In 1944, it was renamed the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Photo: Facebook
Despite the shock of these events, to many in TISS, and others familiar with the institution, they were part of a much longer pattern of decline.
To understand the build-up to the present crisis at TISS, Scroll spoke to several current and former professors and associate professors, all of whom asked to remain anonymous because they feared a backlash from the management. They said the erosion of autonomy at the institution has led to those on campus increasingly censoring themselves.
“We are terrified to talk to anybody about the situation here, especially to the media,” another professor said. “We don’t even feel safe talking to each other on campus. Word always gets out and we are so scared we will be targeted by the institution.” One professor was at first fearful of even answering Scroll’s phone calls inside campus, and only spoke over the phone when they had left the campus. All the professors asked repeatedly for assurances that their identities would not be revealed.
Many argued that the crisis at TISS was not just about the functioning of one premier institution, but was symptomatic of a larger problem with the way the Modi government views higher education, particularly in the social sciences. “Everything to do with social sciences is to ask questions about where we are and where we are heading as a nation,” a professor said, adding that the current government did not want academics to raise uncomfortable questions.
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Scroll emailed questions about the problems at the institution to the vice chancellor, pro vice chancellor and other senior management of TISS, as well as to the education ministry. This story will be updated if they respond.
This story is part of Common Ground, our in-depth and investigative reporting project. Sign up here to get these stories in your inbox as soon as they are published.
T
he roots of the present crisis at TISS lie in changes made after 2014 in the way the institution is funded.
While it was funded by the Sri Dorabji Tata Trust in its first few years, TISS began to receive funds from the Union government from the late 1940s. In 1964, the University Grants Commission recognised it as a “deemed to be university” and became its primary funder.
“The Union government recognised TISS as an institute of repute and decided to fund it,” the first professor said. “The state government of Maharashtra also gave it some nominal funding around the same time.”
For many years after, TISS remained a small institution with a few postgraduate diploma courses that mainly focused on social work, health administration and labour welfare.
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In 2004, with the arrival of S Parasuraman as the institute’s director, the institution began to evolve rapidly. Faculty told Scroll that Parasuraman had high academic and social aspirations for the small campus. “We had internal discussions about reimagining the institution,” the first professor said. “A lot of restructuring took place during this time. New schools and centres were established.”
In 2004, with the arrival of S Parasuraman as the institute’s director, TISS began to evolve rapidly. Faculty said that Parasuraman had high academic and social aspirations for the small campus. Photo: TISS
Between 2006 and 2014, the institution launched 32 new courses, including masters programmes in women’s studies and media and cultural studies. Today, TISS has undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD programmes, as well as programmes in continuing education and skill education. As part of these, faculty offer a wide range of courses, in fields such as education, rural development, gender, environment, anthropology and ecology.
“One of the reasons why the idea of restructuring arose was because we had so few programmes and so many students applying to study here,” the first professor said. “Students aspired for a career in social sciences and applied social sciences. The expansion helped make these courses more accessible to a larger number of students.”
Members of the faculty said that unrest at the institution began in 2014, and was linked to decisions of the Narendra Modi-led government that affected TISS’s governance.
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Among these decisions was the dissolution of the Planning Commission, which was set up in 1950 with Jawaharlal Nehru as its first chairperson. In his first Independence Day speech in 2014, Narendra Modi announced that the commission would be replaced by a new body.
Under the commission, the Central government formulated five-year plans, through which it allocated resources to fulfil economic goals within fixed time periods. In the first ever five-year plan, TISS was allocated funds that it used to develop a department of tribal welfare in 1951.
The first professor explained that during these years, the government funded universities through “plan grants” and “non-plan grants”. Typically, new centres and programmes would be established through the former, while subsequent funding would be allocated under the latter. “All grant approvals and disbursals had formats, procedures and evaluations by external review committees,” they said. They added that this systematic approach “enabled universities to steadily grow and also respond to changing educational demands and national human resources requirements.”
With the tenth five-year plan for 2002-’07, the University Grants Commission sanctioned faculty and staff positions for a TISS campus in the town of Tuljapur. This was the institution’s first “off-campus” – centres overseen by the same governing body, but with independent programmes and activities. The centre had been established in 1987, and its initial activities focused on rural development projects. With the funding from the five-year plan, it expanded into academic programmes and launched a master in social work and PhD in rural development.
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Faculty explained that TISS’s funding was determined by the University Grants Commission’s assessment of its needs and performance, based on which it would make recommendations to the government. Under Parasuraman, TISS began to receive increased funds from non-governmental sources, particularly the Tata Trusts, for new initiatives, including off-campuses and new schools in the Mumbai campus. “The understanding was that these new initiatives will be covered through the plan and non-plan grant framework,” the first professor said.
Throughout, the professor said, “The fees at TISS were affordable to students and thus candidates from different backgrounds were able to apply.” They added, “TISS was a classic example of a public-private entity. Both sectors coming together for the social sciences.”
With the dissolution of the planning commission, the five-year plans ceased to be formulated, and TISS’s funding became unpredictable.
In his 2014 Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the dissolution of the Planning Commission. With this, the funding patterns for several institutions, including TISS, became unpredictable. Photo: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
In a letter to the higher education secretary in 2015, Parasuraman wrote: “The current financial year has commenced and we are yet to receive grants even to meet the salary and pension of March and April 2015 and other critical operational costs like electricity, water, security, annual maintenance contracts, etc. It has come to a situation that we had to take loans to pay salaries and pension for these months.”
TISS repeatedly urged the human resource development ministry to directly provide it with funds, since the University Grants Commission was not doing so. “When the government dismantled the planning commission, they did not come up with an alternative framework that actually addressed the financial requirements of public funded universities to grow,” the first professor said.
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Soon, the financial pressures on the institute intensified. In the years that followed, the government urged institutions across the country that received government funds, TISS among them, to become self-reliant. “The old programmes under the non-plan grant were still supported. But for new courses, the government wanted institutions to raise their own money,” the first professor said. TISS, like many other institutes, was encouraged to launch “self-financing” courses, members of the faculty said – that is, courses that were fully funded through fees, with no assistance from the government.
Many saw this as an ill-advised move for an institute like TISS. “Spaces like TISS have for years tried to enable students from marginalised communities to study social sciences by making it financially accessible,” the first professor said. “Self-financing courses with high fees would be making education inaccessible again.”
Faculty noted that this was also a period during which the University Grants Commission was encouraging TISS to start more off-campuses. The Tatas Trusts provided significant funds to establish two such campuses, in Telangana and Assam.
“The understanding was that the government was asking us to go to scale and that we had the competence to do so,” the first professor said. “So the Tatas were ready to offer financial support.”
The administration initially assumed that while the Tata Trusts would be supporting this expansion, the institute would also be receiving funds from the University Grants Commission for it. However, to their shock, when the approval letters for these off-campuses arrived, the commission announced that it would not provide any financial support. “This was a disappointing step from the government,” the professor said.
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The first major signs of financial strain started to show in 2017. That year, at TISS’s Mumbai campus, 35 staff were fired because the institute did not receive funds it needed from the University Grants Commission.
Other measures to cut costs followed. In 2018, the institution announced that it was ceasing financial aid programmes that provided assistance to students from Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Class communities – it stated that it was doing so because it had not received funds for the programmes from the University Grants Commission. In response, students protested across four of the campuses. The commission subsequently released funding for the programmes.
Other news of TISS’s financial problems had also begun to be reported – for instance, that teachers were going without salaries. It was as these troubles began to foment that Parasuraman resigned from his post, in 2018. A former assistant professor at the Mumbai campus and founding chairperson of an off-campus centre in Nagaland wrote that “the changed political situation and TISS’s increasing financial woes” had left Parasuraman disheartened.
Even so, the institute resisted pressure from the government to increase fees, the third professor recounted. “Social sciences institutions cannot charge high fees,” they said. “It will exclude a large section of students. Most students at TISS come from disadvantaged backgrounds.” Further, they said, TISS lacked an incentive to increase its fees, because “they knew that if they did end up raising enough funds, the UGC would reduce its funding”. They added, “It didn’t make any sense.”
W
hile these struggles continued for the next few years, they boiled over in June 2023, when the University Grants Commission compelled five institutions across the country to which it provided more than 50% funding, including TISS, to sign new agreements.
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Previously, TISS had a governing body, whose chairperson was selected by the Tatas and was often an individual from the Tata Trusts. The trust could also select the director of the institute, and usually had two or three seats on the governing body, while the remaining members were representatives from the Union and state governments, and from the institution.
The governing body made all major decisions at TISS. “Promotions, centres, schools, opening of new centres, campuses, academic results, ensuring quality of the institution, finances, governance structure and programmes – all of this was taken care of by the governing body,” the third professor said. “Everything had to be justified in front of the governing body before approval was given.”
Faculty were largely satisfied with the role that the Tatas played in the institution. “Through a search committee, they recruited people to these leadership posts with due diligence,” the third professor said.
The professor described the Tata Trusts as “benevolent”, and said the institution was “proud” of its relationship with the group. “They were a wonderful support to us,” the professor said. “If there were delays in salaries, we could approach them for funds and pay them back later.”
But the new memorandum of agreement stated that since the University Grants Commission provided more than 50% of the funds to the institution, it would now appoint a vice chancellor, and pro vice chancellor, a key post under the vice chancellor. These posts had not existed before. The new agreement did away with the post of the director, and reduced the number of board seats the Tata Trusts had to one.
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After the new agreement was signed, the Tatas were left with almost no role at TISS. “We have treated them very badly in recent months,” the third professor said.
A student protest underway in 2018. That year, TISS announced that it was ceasing financial aid programmes that provided assistance to students from Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Class communities. Photo: TISS Students’ Union
The Tatas had given faculty considerable autonomy, teachers said. Faculty also said they could challenge opinions and decisions of the Tatas without fearing repercussions. As the Union government has sought to displace them, this freedom and transparency has been jeopardised, they noted.
“We used to be able to walk into the office of the director whenever we wanted. We were able to voice out our opinions,” the third professor said. “Today, we have to take appointments and most of the time we don’t get the chance to even meet the pro vice chancellor.”
The problems were exacerbated six months ago, when the director of the Indian Institute of Management Mumbai, Manoj Kumar Tiwari, was given the additional charge of vice chancellorship of TISS. Faculty Scroll spoke to said that since Tiwari’s appointment, many of them had not even seen him. The third professor said that faculty “did not even have the slightest clue” about the appointment, though they were “usually always kept in the loop about these things”.
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A fourth professor said, “He took over in September, it is nearly a year and we haven’t had the chance to meet him. How can this be okay?”
Most of the work is overseen by the pro-vice chancellor. “He has taken over several other charges, he’s also a dean, part of the CSR committee, director of a major project, part of another coordinating committee. It’s simply impossible for someone to be taking on as much as he is and still do a good job,” the third professor said. “We can see easily that he is failing.”
Faculty said that of late they have been kept in the dark about many administrative decisions. For instance, the facilitation committee, which, according to the institution’s website, “ensures alignment in decision-making, management and coordination amongst schools, centres, administrative units, and the general administration” has become “defunct”, the third professor said.
“All the deans and heads of the schools were a part of this committee and took crucial decisions on campus,” the professor added. “Now it doesn’t even exist.”
In another instance, on August 6, the administration issued an order stating that the Centre for Excellence in Teacher Education and the Centre for Studies in Sociology of Education would be merged with the School of Development Studies. “This decision again was taken without consulting any of us. We have no idea why the merge even happened,” a fifth professor said.
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With this loss of transparency, faculty have grown wary of expressing themselves freely about the institution. “We used to be able to say what we feel – about TISS, about politics and other affairs. Now we are so scared to share our opinions. We feel we are always being watched, and it’s true because word always reached the top,” the third faculty said. “If we criticise something, we are immediately targeted.”
Teachers also began to have serious concerns about inefficiencies, delays and incompetence. For instance, teachers are required to obtain approval from the institute when they plan new projects, or apply for new grants – they observed that since the change in leadership, they are typically forced to wait for long periods to get these approvals. “These projects and grants are good for the institution yet there are long drawn-out delays,” the third professor said. “The pro vice chancellor will sit on it for weeks and months together.”
Students at a workshop in TISS. Faculty noted that under the current administration, process have become increasingly inefficient, and that approvals for new projects and grants are severely delayed. Photo: Pavanaja/Wikimedia Commons
Teachers also said that the pro vice chancellor follows a system of functioning wherein he constitutes committees for the smallest of purposes. These committees oversee the nitty-gritties of activities like organising events and seminars. “In the past we had the freedom to invite people to give talks and organise events, but these days we have a committee that screens everything,” the third professor said.
The professor added, “It makes us feel as if we are doing something wrong. Recently they also put together a committee to ‘lower our workload’. I can’t understand the point of all this.”
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Teachers said that the worst impact of this new kind of administration has been on the work that TISS produces. “There have been many instances when the Supreme Court has directed TISS to develop protocols, frameworks to analyse certain issues or cases,” the first professor said. “TISS has been part of government projects including Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship programme, MNREGA, social audits, water and sanitation programmes, entrepreneurship development, evaluations and reviews of government schemes and programmes.”
However, the government’s attitude has changed in the last ten years, teachers observed. “The current government doesn’t like that we ask questions or submit data that might portray them in a bad light,” the professor said.
The third professor noted, “We are losing our autonomy.”
T
ISS, and other social science institutions, have also been negatively affected by the Central government’s National Institutional Ranking Framework, launched in 2015.
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Faculty noted that the parameters set by the framework would not allow TISS to secure a high rank.
“These parameters measure the student population, number of labs, the size of the campus, number of teachers and students, the ratio of the two, number of patents, publications, the proportion of students who go abroad, their salaries,” the first professor explained. “But when it comes to social sciences, students have different priorities.”
The problem is significant, faculty explained, because the National Institutional Ranking Framework doesn’t merely rank institutions, but also affects their future prospects.
Among the schools and centres that are feeling the pressure most keenly are the school of gender studies and the centre for study of social exclusion and inclusive policies. “TISS women’s studies department had contributed greatly to the women’s movement in India and also contributed greatly to policy interventions,” the second professor said.
The faculty explained that the ranking framework’s parameters are inadequate to measure the efficacy of programmes in a discipline like women’s studies. “They want to know the employability capacity of a discipline like women’s studies,” the professor said. “But the graduates from these disciplines go on to play crucial roles in various state and non-state sectors and contribute greatly to discourse about women’s rights. That may not translate to big paying jobs.” They added that they fear that under the new norms, “particular disciplines are being targeted”.
Many faculty members argued that clear steps needed to be taken to safeguard the institution’s autonomy, such as granting it a special status. “It would help if the government recognised it as a one-of-a-kind institution, one of the oldest institutions of social work and sciences,” the first professor said. “A special status like an institute of excellence or national importance will help the institution get the importance it needs and thus get proper funds.”
Source: https://scroll.in/article/1072240/how-the-government-undercut-tiss-over-the-past-decade?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-intl