How Left Citadel CSDS Sabotages Rules of Discipline
53-year-old Public Funded Organizations Still Doesn’t Have Clear Rules for Its Administration
The founding fathers of Delhi based CSDS ( Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) at
least had the self confidence to openly admit to the world that they did not
believe in externally imposed discipline and that they envisaged CSDS to be a
place where people had freedom to choose not only their working schedules work
but also be free to determine the content, quantity and quality of their
academic output.
However, once the old generation
began to retire or pass away, the old order had to give way to new. Unfortunately,
most of the new recruits saw the job at CSDS as just another job—with just one big
advantage—the institution has virtually no rules to enforce discipline of
attendance or academic output. As the old freedoms began to be widely misused,
the seniors or “Uncles”-- as they began to be derisively referred to by the
younger entrants—began cautious attempts to make the CSDS faculty accept some
minimal rules for ensuring basic discipline and accountability. Since three of
the “Uncles” became members of the Governing Board after retirement, they began
to push the faculty through Board meetings. Coincidentally, this process of
making and sabotaging rules began in 2001, the year I returned to CSDS as full
professor after two long stints in 1990’s as Visiting Fellow.
At the insistence of the Board of Governors, in 2001 the first
ever Committee of the faculty was appointed to draft the Rules and Regulations for
the Centre. The following account based on the Minutes of various faculty and
Board meetings over the years reveals how through a clever sleight of hand,
obfuscation and delay tactics, the Ruling Coterie of CSDS managed to evade
accepting not just those rules and regulations which are applicable to all
public funded educational institutions but even the exceedingly generous rules
proposed/adopted by the B.O.G.
