Three prominent knowledge institutions your columnist has been associated with — the Survey of India in Dehradun, the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in Shimla, and the National Library in Kolkata — are all ‘headless’ for several months. While the Survey of India falls under the Department of Science and Technology, the Shimla institute is with the Ministry of Education, and the Kolkata library under the Ministry of Culture. This shows that the problem is widespread. In none of the three organisations did the incumbent ‘die in harness’ or get placed under suspension for malfeasance or resign in a huff for personal reasons. It is just that after the regular appointees completed their term or reached their age of superannuation, no concerted effort was made by the ministry to start the process of selecting a regular appointee. One can understand if the additional charge is a matter of a few weeks – in all these three organisations, the period of absence of a regular chief has exceeded a year.
This will certainly not affect India’s ability to achieve the target of a $5 trillion economy by 2025 or a $40 trillion economy by 2047. It will also not affect the stock exchange or the outcome of the Lok Sabha election in 2024. Life will continue as usual.
But the intangible losses will affect the quality of our research, scholarship, and competing discourses — attributes that are the true hallmarks of a nation rooted in a civilisation that celebrates critical thinking. Unlike a typical government organisation where there are clearly identifiable targets, a knowledge organisation develops and evolves its own agenda. If the head has a fixed tenure – say, three to five years – he/she can give clear direction and also advise the government on the pros and cons of current and proposed policies, besides keeping abreast with the best international practices in their specific domains. Even the most efficient joint secretaries, with the best possible intentions, just do not have the time or the bandwidth to get to the depth of the issues at hand.
Moreover, the succession plan of the organisation in which professionals have legitimate career aspirations to reach the top is compromised, leading to a general sense of ‘disempowerment,’ which goes against the government’s declared policy of making each employee a karmayogi with a clear mandate for the tasks and responsibilities entrusted to them. This is not to deny that even while holding ‘additional charge,’ those holding the additional charge may issue policy papers and documents – but whether or not the roadmap will be owned by the key stakeholders is a question that begs an answer.
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Headless in Dehradun, Shimla, Kolkata
The Survey of India in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, has introduced the National Policy on Geospatial data (NPGD). However, the real challenge lies in effectively implementing this ambitious document. The absence of a regular head has resulted in the Survey of India losing its core mandate: the production of physical maps. It is true that in this age of digital supremacy, almost everything can be accessed online, but how will history and geography be taught without authentic maps produced by the Survey of India? As things stand, the NPGD will collate data from multiple stakeholder organisations: the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will provide information related to roads, the Irrigation and Water Resources Department about rivers, the Forest Survey about the coverage of flora and fauna, and the Department of Agriculture about cropping areas. But what if there is a conflict in measurement or interpretation, as will certainly happen in the case of agricultural lands and highways in the vicinity of forests?
On a more mundane and practical level, the frequent renaming of states and districts means periodic revisions to our maps is now essential to keep citizens updated with the time. The last political map of India, published after the reorganisation of erstwhile state Jammu and Kashmir into the Union Territories of Ladakh and J&K in 2019, makes an important cartographic statement. Even seemingly minor changes in geographical boundaries like the merger of Dadra and Nagar Haveli with Daman and Diu in 2020 must be reflected on an India map authenticated by a sovereign agency. Had the NPGD been implemented under a guidance of a regular Surveyor General, greater acceptance of these decisions might have been achieved. The middle-level functional officers would have had the satisfaction of feeling ‘consulted’ in path-breaking decisions.
Then there is the National Library in Kolkata, West Bengal. Like the United States’ Library of Congress, it serves as the record-keeper for all books published in India. As per the Delivery of Books ‘and Newspapers‘ (Public Libraries) Act of 1954, the publisher of every book, newspaper, or serial must deliver a copy of their publication to the National Library in Kolkata within thirty days of release, along with distributing copies to three other public libraries specified by the central government. While many established publishers adhere to this requirement, the challenge lies in ensuring easy retrieval, digitisation, and access for the general readership. And what of those who do not submit a copy of their publication? This can be achieved only when there is a regular librarian with a full-fledged research department, serving as the ‘beacon light’ for library and information professionals across the country. Additionally, the National Library must ensure a national policy on digitisation of books and manuscripts, considering the proliferation of digital libraries with state and central universities establishing their own. If a digital book is available in any one library of the country, do we need to expend more resources on many more digital libraries?
The less one says about the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) in Shimla, the better. It was a knowledge organisation conceived by the scholarly second President of India, S Radhakrishnan, who argued that the erstwhile Viceregal Lodge should be a centre for scholarship and learning. With a fine repository of manuscripts, books, and periodicals, the IIAS was a haven for a diverse range of research – from post-colonial literature to the intricate nuances of semantics in the AI/AGI age. The IIAS director, in consultation with the Governing Board, invites scholars to take up National Fellowships and Tagore Fellowships, and evaluates applications from young academics immersed in their scholarly pursuits. However, the institution’s current state is concerning. Applications for the 2024 fellowships should be up on the website by now, but the clock seems to have stopped a year ago. Several names on the website belong to people who retired more than a year ago. How can an organisation that cannot even update its website be expected to explore the ‘frontiers of knowledge’?
Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Until recently, he was Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)