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The Tata Institute of Social Sciences was founded in 1936, as the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work. Since that year, the institute has played a vital role in shaping the field of social sciences in the country.

It has also carried out important on-ground work, sending relief teams in the aftermath of events such as the Partition, drought in Ahmednagar in Maharashtra in 1972, the industrial gas leak in Bhopal in 1984 and the cloudburst in Uttarakhand in 2013. 

Throughout, TISS’s work has benefited from a high degree of autonomy that the faculty enjoyed, which allowed them to raise difficult questions and critique government policy and proposals where needed. 

Since 2014, however, the government has been choking this autonomy, as Johanna Deeksha found. It has, for instance, made funding unpredictable and unreliable, leaving some departments in programmes in a state of crisis. Faculty say that the government, through the administration, has also cracked down on dissent on campus, leaving them anxious and frustrated.

“It is sad that a space of such historic significance is facing such uphill challenges with regard to funds,” Deeksha said. “But what is more alarming is the degradation of its autonomy, which is not something that just affects the institution but also the country – because the critical data and research it produces affects us all, as a society.”

You can read the story here

How the government undercut TISS over the past decade

The storied institution has made crucial contributions to social sciences research and policy. Now, faculty say, the government is choking its autonomy.

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Ajay Krishnan,
Senior Editor