Ronita Torcato (Mumbai)

The highly reputed multi-campus Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, estb.1936) — India’s first major postgrad institution for the study of social sciences including habitat education, gender, media, labour and management, rural development studies — has suffered a severe embarassment.

On June 28, the management of the institute fired 115 teaching and non-teaching staff of the TISS Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies (ACWS) employed in its Mumbai, Tuljapur, Hyderabad, and Guwahati campuses. These TISS-ACWS employees were informed that their employment contracts would not be renewed.

The reason advanced for this mass firing was that on June 30, the Tata Education Trust — one of several charitable trusts of the multi-billion dollar Tata Group of salt to software companies (annual revenue: Rs.13.8 lakh crore) — had ceased to pay toward their salaries and remuneration.

However the 115 TISS-ACWS employees have been granted a last minute reprieve. On July 30, Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata Trusts, announced that TET will resume payment of the dismissed TISS employees’ salaries and restore the status quo ante.

Explained Prof. Manoj Tiwari, Director of TISS, in an interview with the business daily Mint: “These staff were appointed under various projects under funding of the Tata Trust. The funding for these projects have stopped for the last few months.

Considering this, we allowed these teachers to work under clock-hour basis in the institute. But now we are unable to garner financial aid, so we decided to stop (sic) their services. We will reappoint them once funding from the (Tata) Trust resumes.”

Meanwhile the abrupt termination of such a large number of TISS faculty and staff has brought the low-profile TISS — ranked among India’s Top 100 universities under the Central government’s National Institutional Rankings Framework 2023 — in the national limelight and aroused indignation in India and abroad. Over 1,200 academics signed a joint petition dated July 9 calling upon the TISS management to reinstate the sacked employees.

“The faculty, students and alumni of ACWS have contributed significantly to advancing critical scholarship in women’s studies. The ongoing uncertainty regarding job security, Ph D supervision and course instruction undermines their collective efforts,” reads the statement.

The back story behind this contretemps is that for several years, the BJP government at the Centre has been packing boards of centrally-funded higher education institutions with ideologically aligned nominees, including at TISS (described as ‘Grant-in-Aid Institute’ by the Ministry of Education). Last June after TISS’ long-tenured director Prof. S. Parsuraman retired, UGC (University Grants Commission) — the country’s apex-level higher education regulator — appointed several government officials to the TISS board, tightening Central control over the institute. This provoked the Tatas’ loss of interest in TISS and a backlash against continuing to fund its operations.

Given the good record of the Tatas in funding education institutions, academics are uncritical of them. Comments Dr. Kurush Dalal, director at Instucen School of Archeology, Mumbai. “If government wants control of TISS, it should pick up the bill. But that they will not do. Government wants to disinvest in education, not invest in it.” Likewise Dr. Kranti Farias, a retired academic, says the Union ministry of education should fund its own institutions instead of relying on a private trust.

Meanwhile with the intervention of Ratan Tata, the matter of autonomy of the institute has been brushed under the carpet. But unless the basic contradiction of NEP 2020 — it simultaneously imposes greater government control over higher education institutions and recommends greater autonomy — is resolved, similar strains and stress are likely to persist.