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FOR some years now a feeling has grown that social science research (SSR) in India is in a state of crisis. Many feel that the institutions of SSR which were established in the 1970s and 1980s and played an important role in both policy formulation and public debate, have witnessed a steady decline. The same can be said about the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), set up in 1969 as the premier body for promoting SSR in India. And while there are many reasons behind the crisis, perhaps the most important is the shortage of assured government funding. This, at least, is the main thrust of the latest review committee set up by government to examine the functioning of the ICSSR. At a time when the government seems desirous of giving a big push to higher education and research in the country, the committee’s analysis and recommendations merit wider discussion.

Much of what the report says is unexceptionable. It points out that government support to SSR in India is very low in both absolute terms and also relative to the governmental support to natural and medical sciences. Moreover, over the period 2005-6 to 2009-10, the total grant to ICSSR while increasing by 22% in nominal terms, shrank by 7% in real terms. Incidentally, even in the University Grants Commission, the other major public institution which supports SSR, expenditure on SSR accounts for a mere 12% of its research support budget.

Turning to the ICSSR itself, it points out that over the period under review, even this meagre grant was increasingly used to support ICSSR’s own staff rather than the research institutes under its umbrella, whose funding declined by a substantial 16 per cent. The committee notes that the average faculty strength in the institutes has been declining, severely affecting both the quantum and quality of their output. Hardly surprising that, particularly after the Sixth Pay Commission which dramatically increased the salaries of university faculty, the ICSSR research institutes are finding it difficult to retain (far less attract) quality researchers.

The more damaging comments relate to the structure and functioning of the ICSSR – the ‘quality’ of its academic staff; the stifling nature of government control; the absence of leadership and innovation, particularly in forging relationships with the universities and worse, even its own research institutions. Not only is the ICSSR presence largely missing in the policy space, it has also failed in the emerging areas of inter-disciplinary research, within and beyond the social sciences. Starkly stated, the ICSSR system is today a marginal and declining presence in the world of SSR.

As a corrective, the committee proposes a quantum jump in official support, at least ten times the current level over the next two years. (Its preference is 25 times the level in 2010-11). It also favours greater financial autonomy through creating a corpus of Rs 1000 crore as a complement to funds from other sources, and recommends a drastic overhaul of its architecture and composition, increasing the role of academics and reducing the role of government nominees. In addition, are many suggestions about reworking relations with the research institutes, and drastically overhauling the systems of functioning and evaluation.

Not too many in the world of social sciences are likely to disagree with recommendations of greater funding support, effective autonomy from government interventionism, converting the ICSSR into a proper academic and professional organization, increasing transparency of functioning and accountability. Nevertheless, the report, as an analysis of why our SSR community and the institutions they have set up lack vitality and have become moribund, rarely rises beyond the pedestrian. It is as if inadequate funding explains all, even forgetting that the same institutions had in the past, despite equally severe funding constraints, worked much better. Nor is there any analysis of the shifts in the knowledge environment – new concerns and methodologies, the emergence of new networks of knowledge production and dissemination which cut across space, institutional affiliation and disciplines.

If the new and better funded ICSSR system is to move beyond self-serving concerns, it needs to first understand and then link up with the new sites of creativity in the country and abroad. In failing to recognize that much of the cutting edge research – in women’s studies, cultural studies, the interface of environment and development, law, even poverty and politics, and the list can be expanded – is happening, not in the old institutions of SSR, but new sites, including voluntary associations and consulting firms, the committee has ended up regurgitating old formulae. In the end we are none the wiser.

Harsh Sethi