The survival of academic autonomy is becoming more difficult in India. The Indian Statistical Institute, founded by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis over nine decades ago in Calcutta and reputed the world over, is now faced with the draft revised Indian Statistical Institute Bill, 2025 that aims to change its governance structure. The ISI is governed by its own society constituted by a state law. For administrative matters, it has a council composed of teachers, representatives from the non-teaching staff and the Centre, and an academic council composed only of teachers to decide on academic matters. This guarantees its autonomy with internal checks and balances. The Centre’s draft bill proposes a board of governors made up of persons nominated by the Union government, to which the councils shall be subservient and which shall decide on all matters, including courses and the director’s appointment. Whatever government representatives might say about ensuring greater autonomy and faster decision-making processes — which they have — this sounds like a takeover. The insistence on introducing what the government calls Indian Knowledge Systems into every institution is being perceived by the ISI’s teachers and supporters as a way to dilute scientific rigour by injecting pseudoscience while controlling research and manipulating data for outcomes convenient to the government. The ISI’s research into Indian economics may be proving uncomfortable for the Centre as may its researchers’ ability to uncover fudging in statistical reports.
The desire to alter the ISI’s governance structure and the expected attempt to introduce IKS bare the confluence of ideology and hijacking of autonomy that is manifested in the Centre’s intervention in other educational institutions too. The ISI draft bill also shows the Centre’s disrespect for state laws and, implicitly, of federalism. According to an economist, there might be more to the Narendra Modi government’s intervention. The ISI focuses on pure theoretical research, whether in economics, mathematics or computers. This government thinks that pure theory is a waste of resources, without any awareness that theory is necessary for application in the future. If true, it would imply that the Centre’s planned intervention aims at changing the character of the ISI’s work and suggests that the government has a fundamental lack of understanding of learning or hostility towards it. Whatever is behind it, the draft ISI bill augurs ill for both academic autonomy and research in the country.