Discussion
Social Science Research
in India
G N RAMU
Y our editorial and A Vaidyanathan’s
essay on social sciences in India
(January 13) are informative and should
form the basis of an extended discussion
on this important issue. The editorial
suggests that in pre-independence India
much of the “trail-blazing” research was
conducted within the domain of univer-
sities that were ill-funded. I am not sure
this is not the case even now. Despite the
lack of basic resources, which are taken
for granted in most western universities
(e g, research assistance, computers and
professional development funds for each
faculty member), the most significant
research in sociology, anthropology,
political science and economics, to name
a few, is still conducted by scholars who
work in universities in India. Their con-
tributions are the bases on which new
generations social scientists are trained
and foreign researchers working on India
depend. For example, without the research
by G S Ghurye, M N Srinivas, V K R V
Rao, K M Kapadia, Andre Beteille,
T N Madan, Deepak Nayyar, Prabhat
Patnaik, and T K Ommen, to name a few,
there will be little of social science that
is to be applauded in India and respected
abroad. What is also crucial is the recog-
nition that researchers in university set-
tings, unlike their counterparts in the
research institutes, do their research in
addition to full-time teaching and gradu-
ate student advising and often without
mega-grants from agencies such as the
ICSSR or the World Bank.
What I would have liked in Vaidya-
nathan’s essay was a critical assessment
of how research done under the aegis of
various institutes compares with that done
by university-based researchers. In mak-
ing the preceding comments I am mindful
of the fact that there are over 200 univer-
sities and deemed universities as opposed
to just 27 research institutes (ICSSR
supported) and not all these universities
are engaged in cutting-edge research.
Economic and Political Weekly March 17, 2001
Nevertheless, in universities norms per-
taining to promotion still place a strong
emphasis on research publications rather
on teaching performance which consti-
tutes at least 50 per cent of a faculty
member’s academic responsibilities. Con-
sequently, academics in university set-
tings must do some research in the interest
of their career progress which coinciden-
tally adds to the development of social
sciences in India, however meagre that
addition may be.
However, as an observer of and a par-
ticipant in social science research over the
last 25 years, I believe that the overview
of the research institutes in India by
Vaidyanathan is brief and not adequately
critical. Barring a handful of institutes that
have a reputation for research and pub-
lications that meet international standards,
I have difficulty in naming a good chunk
of the 27 institutes, let alone recognising
their contributions to the development of
social science in India. The main purpose
for which these research institutes came
into being was to enable gifted individuals
to have full autonomy and necessary
resources (which Vaidyanathan argues
have become very scarce in recent years)
to engage in unfettered critical thinking
and reflection on issues salient to Indian
society in general and specific social
science disciplines in particular. Ideally,
the scholars in research institutes enjoy
freedom to pursue any aspect of Indian
society that their intellectual curiosity takes
them to. The outcome of such an intel-
lectual pursuit in the end should be sub-
mitted to their peers in particular and to
the public in general by way of seminars,
conferences and ultimately in referred
journals and monographs. What underlies
this endeavour is the intellectual freedom
to produce novel and alternative theoreti-
cal paradigms, even if they contradict the
prevailing ones, and even if they oppose
the views of federal funding agencies that
are overseen by political regimes of one
ideological hue or the other. Ideally, then,
researchers in these institutes were
endowed with an environment which could
be used for path-breaking research, shape
public opinion and in the process influ-
ence public policies toward the creation
of a just and humane society. Such a
mission is both a challenge and an oppor-
tunity. In order to meet this challenge, the
jobs of most researchers in the national
institutes were freed from time-consum-
ing teaching and grading and other admin-
istrative tasks that fell on the shoulders of
their counterparts in universities. Given
this situation, one expects not only a higher
level of output, but also a trail-blazing
performance that excels the performance
of university-based researchers. Sad to
note, with the exception of some half-a-
dozen research institutes, most others have
left a marginal impact on the development
of social sciences in the post-indepen-
dence era.
Some factors that have contributed to
many research institutes’ failure to ad-
vance social sciences can best be described
as structural. First, the disjunction be-
tween teaching and research is not a healthy
one in the long run. Most members of the
so-called ‘think-tanks’ either in India or
elsewhere have served their time in ‘teach-
ing trenches’ and proved their superior
scholarly skills before they joined the think-
tanks. Second, many research institutes
suffer from a lack of rigorous annual or
biannual evaluations of their researchers
using agreed upon performance indica-
tors. Third, the administrative structure in
many of the research institutes is such that
it makes it virtually impossible to termi-
nate the services of unproductive research-
ers, especially those who hold senior ranks.
Finally, inadequate funding from federal
agencies such as ICSSR compels many
researchers to seek contracts which
distracts from their main mission.
In short, researchers in university and
research institutes share the burden of
improving both the quality and quantity
of output. But a well-designed and prop-
erly executed evaluation of performances
of these two groups of researchers, taking
into account their designated responsibili-
ties (e g, teaching, research and services
such as advising government, NGOs and
even the private sector) is likely to show
that performance of researchers in a
majority of research institutes falls short
of expectations. EPW
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