Teachers — past and present — of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Calcutta, reiterated that the institute should remain “autonomous” and not have a “top-down” administrative structure, which the ISI bill drafted by the Centre seeks to impose, at its Foundation Day programme.

ISI, Calcutta, observed its 95th Foundation Day on Wednesday amid a raging protest by the institute’s professors, students and researchers against the bill.

Amartya Kumar Dutta, a professor at ISI, Calcutta, and Partha P. Majumder, a former ISI professor, underscored these points at the programme organised by the ISI Workers’ Organisation (ISIWO), comprising teaching and non-teaching staff.

Dutta, a professor of the stat-math unit of ISI, spoke on Jawaharlal Nehru and the ISI Act 1959. He referred to what Nehru had said during the passage of the Act in 1959 in Parliament.

“...wherever science has grown considerably — let us say, in the United States of America or the Soviet Union, two entirely different types of countries with different structures of government, they give the widest latitude, both of them, to their scientific apparatus to grow. Naturally, they have checks to see that money is not wasted. But they give them latitude,” he quoted Nehru.

Further referring to Nehru’s speech, Dutta said that if anyone wants science to grow, this broad approach — that scientific work should have a certain latitude — has to
be accepted.

Arijit Bishnu, an ISI, Calcutta, professor, told this newspaper that the 1959 Act was pushed by Jawaharlal Nehru to ensure that the ISI functioned as an autonomous institution.

Partha P. Majumder, a former National Science Chair of the Government of India, said in his address on Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, an Architect of Statistical Science and of Our National Development, that the draft bill smacks of a “sinister” approach by the statistics and programme implementation ministry as it seeks to destroy the “federalism, democracy and diversity of the institute”.

“It wants to replace the democratic and autonomous structure of the ISI with a top-down approach,” he said.

ISI, Calcutta, held a separate programme on the occasion of the foundation day. Economist Pranab Bardhan spoke on the inequality of labour in that event.