A row has broken out between the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, estb.1936), reputed as among the country’s best social sciences higher ed institution (ranked #25 in the EducationWorld India National University Rankings 2015), and the University Grants Commission (UGC, estb.1956), the apex non-technical higher education regulatory and funding organisation. A deemed (public) university, TISS accuses UGC of having short-changed it of Rs.13 crore of the amount sanctioned by the Union HRD ministry for payment of faculty and non-teaching staff in the fiscal year 2015-16. As a Central government-funded university which levies below-cost (Rs.1.3-1.5 lakh per year) tuition fees in the public interest, TISS receives an annual non-plan grant of Rs.45 crore from the Union government routed through UGC.

Promoted by the highly-reputed business house of Tata 80 years ago, as the Sir Dorabji Tata Institute of Social Work, it was rechristened The Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 1944. In the heyday of Nehruvian socialism when tuition fees in higher education institutions were strictly controlled by the education ministry, the Tatas ceded control of the institute which became a wholly publicly-funded institution. In 1964, TISS, which has campuses in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Tuljapur and 5,000 students on its muster rolls, was conferred deemed university status, and awarded a 5-star ‘A’ grade rating by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) in 2010.

One of the few Centrally-funded universities countrywide, TISS receives a total annual grant of Rs.60 crore to meet its non-plan (salaries, maintenance and overheads) and plan (capital) expenditure. However, the TISS management has made several complaints to the HRD ministry about the failure of UGC to make timely disbursal of the sanctioned non-plan grant.

Last year in a letter (April 29) to the higher education secretary, TISS director, S. Parasuraman complained about having to avail bank loans to pay for salaries, pensions and overhead expenses of the institute in March and April 2015. Curiously although several newspapers have quoted verbatim from letters written by TISS, several calls to TISS director S. Parasuram’s office by your correspondent went unanswered.

“There is no need to humiliate us. TISS is not asking any favours, we are only asking for rightful grants. And we have no one at the UGC to turn to demand to be treated in a dignified manner,” Parasuram is reported (The Economic Times, September 12) to have written in a letter to UGC in July.

Also curiously, none of the other eight deemed universities countrywide, funded by the Central government, have experienced similar “accounting problems” with UGC. They are the Agra-based Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Gujarat Vidyapith, Ahmedabad, The Gandhigram Rural Institute (Tamil Nadu), Avinashilingam University, Coimbatore, Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Delhi, Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati and Gurukul Kangri Vishwavidyalaya, Haridwar.

According to knowledgeable academics in Maharashtra ruled by the BJP which swept to power in the state legislative assembly elections of October 2014, the troubles of TISS are rooted in the “intolerable liberalism” of its faculty and student bodies.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the RSS-backed students association, had strongly criticised TISS students and faculty for voicing their disapproval of the Central government’s mismanagement of the February 2016 students agitation in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Moreover, TISS students organised several rallies demanding justice for Dalit scholar, Rohit Vemula, who killed himself on the Hyderabad Central University campus in January 2016.

Meanwhile with the HRD ministry under its former minister Smriti Irani adamantly refusing permission to raise tuition fees, the TISS management has reportedly requested an increase in its annual grant to Rs.100 crore. But the prospect of this request being granted are dismal.

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)