Lawlessness in the Name of "Self-Governance" at CSDS
None Called to Account for Non Performance or Absenteeism
None Called to Account for Non Performance or Absenteeism
In Part 1 of this
series, I had provided a glimpse of lawless regime operating at CSDS whereby
there is no system of marking attendance, no limit on the amount of time
faculty members can spend on varied assignments abroad, no need to
declare the extra income earned from these parallel careers and
remunerative consultancies with the likes of Ford Foundation. I had also
described how the absence of academic audit of faculty members who are employed
for full time research without any teaching load in effect means you can get
away with doing practically nothing for years on end or using the institution
for political pamphleteering instead of academic studies.
The founding fathers
of CSDS had conceptualized this institution to be a haven of academic freedom
where each faculty member was free to decide the content, quality and pace of his
own work. However, even in the heydays of CSDS, this model threw up serious
challenges. As per the version given by CSDS seniors, in the 1980's three senior colleagues, namely Prof Ali Baquar, Prof Sudhir Kakkar and Prof Vijay Pillai had gotten into the
habit of coming to CSDS just once a week on Wednesday for a couple of hours even though they
held full time faculty positions at CSDS. Therefore, they came to be sarcastically referred to as the Budhwari group.
