Mainstream WeeklyFortunately or unfortunately, in this concertedly imposed global age of AI, which we all are virtually forced to inhabit, writing up a thematic/topical essay does not require its author to set out with an introductory section or a brief background discussion on the topic, or issue, or the institution to be dealt with – thanks to AI, which instantly delivers a seemingly cogent introductory remarks on damn anything on earth with just a single click or touch on the universally accessible electronic device with internet connectivity. Accordingly, I refrain from setting out with a conventional/traditional introductory part, in which I would have elucidated the genesis and intellectual pedigree and purpose with which the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS hereafter) was set up in 1965 in a historic cradle of gothic architectural grandeur built by the British colonial administration as a residential estate of successive Governor-Generals/Viceroys in the historic mountainous city of Shimla sited on the lap of western range of the Himalayas. Therefore, let me jump straight to a curious revelation about historically emblematic IIAS, which was conceived as a national institution for nurturing intellectual minds, scholarship and deep thoughts that would continually augment enlightening research output and enable esoteric intellectual exchanges for excellence purportedly in resonance with ancient Indian tradition of rich literary creations, arts, philosophical discourses on religion, spirituality, ethics, humanities, hard reasoning, moral and social values, among others.
Appositely, IIAS, since its very inception, has been running doggedly its major flagship programme of residential fellowships for scholars drawn both from within the country and even from outside for short and long terms of tenure, thereby hosting liberal and esoteric research and interactions on a broad range of themes/issues belonging to the broad orbit of humanities, social sciences, cultures, history. In pursuance of this long tradition, IIAS brings every year a stipulated number of purportedly motivated academics selected for residential fellowship programmes of diverse durations on basis of their already earned educational qualifications as well as degree of ingenuity of their proposed research within larger academic agenda and research priorities set out by IIAS. Incidentally I myself, a superannuated (retiree) academic, albeit active volitionally in carrying on major academic researches including one long-sustained study of cultural demography of India’s tribal population in both temporal and comparative perspectives, applied for a short-term fellowship at IIAS in 2024-25 round of selection process, and happened to be unsuccessful – an outcome, which, it is needless to add, is perfectly within the remit and ‘rules of the game’ of selection process especially when number of applicants far exceeds what can be physically and materially feasible or sustainable at the Institute. Consequently, I am left with no qualms for finding sheer incidentally myself in the group of what one could rather harshly call ‘failures’ in 2024-25 round of selection process at IIAS. As a corollary, I cannot have any misgivings about those who happened to be included in the group of ‘winners’ of the fellowship.
However, this outcome of failure, sheer incidentally, evoked a quintessentially innocent, albeit intrinsically intuitive, curiosity within me particularly about regional distributions, or patterns thereof, both of applicants and those who happened to be selected. The onset of this curiosity might have been partly or rather feebly fed into by my past success as an IIAS fellow for a short-term of three months more than a quarter of a century ago in 2000, with my then proposed research on evolution of notion and identity of India’s aggregate tribal peoples. What began parenthetically as an innocuous inquisitiveness in my mind rather quickly culminated – possibly with an added mediation of typically germane forces in an otherwise lazy phase of my lifecycle as a superannuated academic - into a modest action, on my part, of formally seeking answers online to my above curiosity through the provisions of India’s stellar legislation of the Right to Information Act 2005 (so-called RTI Act).
In continuing to be precise and pointed, let me now hasten to present the information received from the designated Chief Information Officer of IIAS on state-wise distribution both of total applications received for fellowship as well as of those which were selected at the historically iconic IIAS in 2024-25 round of its rolling selection process:
Regional Break-up of All Applications Received for the award of IIAS Fellowship in 2024-25 round of selection
State-wise Break-up of All Applications Selected for Fellowship at IIAS in 2024-25 round of the selection
This above set of information, while seemingly tiny and tidy, readily evokes a set of deeper and no less immaculate curiosities, given the fact that IIAS fellowship is known to be eminently lucrative and hence fairly competitive, particularly because of its superb locational, architectural and ecological ambience, modern infrastructural facilities and other resources needed for independent full-time research. For example, the question of why many states/territories of the country are not represented at all in total applications received could easily arouse one’s innocent amazement. The precise question of why not even a single academic from many of India’s 28 states and 8 union territories evinced an interest in IIAS fellowship programme might sound too esoteric for eliciting serious exercise/attempt in unravelling its underlying mystery.
However, the following two exceedingly interesting wonders conjured up by the above set of information of stark regional penchants cannot help crying aloud for attention and for respective clues: a) how come that the number of applications received for IIAS fellowship in 2024-25 round from one single state, namely Uttar Pradesh (UP hereafter), even though surely most ‘populous’, constituted nearly 30 per cent of the total, while the state’s share in country’s aggregate population does not exceed 17 per cent as per the latest census enumeration?; ii) in the same vein, how come that UP’s share in total selected applicants for fellowship is more than 35 per cent, which is nearly twice its share in national population and very likely in the country’s entire pool of academics in higher education too?
Let us dive a little deeper in an objective bid to extinguish the flame of what are clearly very natural and spontaneous astonishments/wonders noted above. Is this inordinately large number of applications for IIAS fellowship from a single state of UP consistent with its relative position in terms of proportionate size of highly qualified persons, let alone in humanities and social sciences, which only are directly relevant to IIAS fellowship programme and priorities? In groping for an answer to above innately natural awe, one can reasonably hope for deriving useful insights by bringing in a little dose of census-based demographic statistics. As per the last census conducted so far in the country in 2011, the proportion of population aged 15 years and above who have had post-graduate qualifications (other than technical degree) is 2.1 per cent in UP, whereas the corresponding figure for whole country is about 5 per cent. Thus, UP clearly cannot stand out as an exceptional state with a very high relative size of educated population above 15 years with at least post-graduate [non-technical] degrees. [As just for an illustration of this point, while Kerala’s (proportionate) share in total applications received at IIAS in 2024-25 (about 6 per cent) turns disproportionately large, like UP’s, in relation to the state’s share in country’s total population (about 2.6 per cent), Kerala’s case does not elicit same astonishment as does UP’s case, because Kerala’s proportion of population aged 15 years and above with post-graduate qualification (non-technical) is consistently high (about 6 per cent) and indeed far higher than UP’s corresponding figure of 2.6 per cent.] Furthermore, roughly half of such highly qualified population aged 15 years and above in any state (e.g. those qualified in physical and biological sciences) are ineligible in relation to main research ambit of IIAS fellowship programme designed since its inception to promote academic research only in select branches of humanities and social sciences.
However, someone – not necessarily pathologically argumentative or fastidious - could still legitimately dispute that the above demographic statistics is far too crude to nullify a hypothesis of UP’s exceptionality on a count of its proportionate size of highly qualified population in the age groups relevant to IIAS fellowship, which can hardly be below 25 years [as applicants generally must have completed PhD before applying for IIAS fellowship], majority of whom by the same token would very likely be residents of urban areas. Let us see where UP stands after considering only urban cohorts who are at least 25 years old as per census enumerations with a post-graduate degree (non-technical). For UP, this proportion according to 2011 census turned out to be nearly one and half per cent, while corresponding all-India figure is more than five per cent. Therefore, demographics of UP’s population with higher education nullifies, in quantitative terms, its hypothesised exceptionality in terms of its relative (proportionate) size of appropriately qualified population in relevant age groups for IIAS fellowship. Thus, an ostensible fad of UP’s social science academics for IIAS fellowship, as reflected in its disproportionately large shares both in total applicants and awardees in 2024-25 round of selection at IIAS, does not appear to be matched by its broad demographic/statistical specificities and parameters. This clearly calls for an examination of more direct educational statistics more closely relevant to eligibility of applicants’ profiles.
In continuing to be precise and pointed even while examining more closely and intensively the veracity of the above hypothesis, we now concentrate only on the size of total teaching staff in higher education institutions. According to the UGC’s Annual Report for 2022-23, the total number of teaching staff in UP’s higher education institutions is 1,85,283, which constitute 11.5 per cent of aggregate national number of 16,07,839. This is wildly less than not only UP’s proportionate share in total national population of relevant age-groups with post-graduate educational degree, but it is far below UP’s proportionate share (30 per cent) in total fellowship applications received at IIAS and of those selected (35 per cent) in 2024-25 round of selection. This information is stark and direct enough to squarely demolish any illusion about UP as an exceptional state insofar as its relative (proportionate) size of urban population aged 25 years and above with higher educational degree is concerned. Since UP’s curiously stellar position (with its disproportionately large numbers of applications as well as selections for IIAS fellowship in 2024-25) does not seem explicable or consistent with quantitative/statistical information on its relevant demographics and higher educational landscape, one can still suggest a need – in a quest for a clue to the above curiosity - for imaginatively investigating qualitative dimensions/distinctions, if any, of UP’s academics in humanities and social sciences at higher education level.
For example, one could advance a case for UP-academia’s exceptionality from a qualitative standpoint, namely that its academic fraternity/professions in social sciences are excessively predisposed (maybe as a regional/cultural/historical trait) towards full-time academic research - a precious (and admittedly noble too) mental make-up of the soil’s academia, which is what IIAS’s flagship fellowship programme also ideally should warrant too. Thus, as such an argument should run, an extremely large proportion of UP’s total academic personnel – because of their (hypothesised) extraordinary zeal for full-time academic residential research at IIAS - would apply for IIAS fellowship and would get selected too in extraordinarily large number. However, it is hardly very hard to see that this line of argument sounds somewhat slippery and not easily falsifiable in terms of tangible data and evidence. This specific line of reasoning, based as it were on intangible and unquantifiable mental trait or volitional affinity for full-time research, could perhaps be seen typical of somewhat dodgy way of thinking bereft of enough pragmatism or praxis. Characteristic traces of such cluttered thinking are often referred to in discussions of several Indian Constitutional clauses or laws or regulations. For instance, the section 295A of Indian Penal Code, which attributes criminal offence to a ‘deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens’ (italics added) is perhaps a case in point. Since one can hardly fathom tangibly or ascertain objectively, let alone quantifiably, whether someone’s ‘feelings’ are ‘outraged’ as alleged, or one’s ‘intention’ is truly to ‘outrage’ somebody’s religious feelings, this particular criminal clause has been long a source of much judicial or executive circumvention. This is so because verifying an individual’s intangible ‘sentiment’, ‘intention’ or ‘sentimental hurt’ or ‘emotional bleeding’ caused by someone’s ‘words’ or ‘representations or otherwise’ is something which is innately impossible to measure and prove directly and hence easily subject to subjective arbitrariness and potential dodging both by judge and the litigant parties.
However, even an intrinsically immeasurable volition-based (hypothetical) alibi as noted above for astoundingly large representation of UP’s academics at IIAS both in the categories of applicants and awardees of fellowship could be subjected – of course indirectly - to some empirical verifications and tests in a bid to ascertain its veracity. For example, most of the recent evaluations of social science research performance, which are available in public domain, thanks to our digital age, club UP within the league of ‘Low Performing States’. According to some existing reports, Bihar, Assam, and Uttar Pradesh have historically faced daunting challenges in research-capacity and funding, and are chronically ranked in the bottom tier of socioeconomic and research output and quality indices. A few recent research-mapping exercises show much greater concentration of social sciences publications in southern and western vis-à-vis northern regions of India. Thus, publicly available information on relative standing, standard and performance of UP’s academics of higher education institutions, particularly in humanities and social sciences, appears not only not supportive of a hypothesised qualitative extraordinariness, exceptionality or volitional/temperamental affinity for academic research, but the state’s overall qualitative landscape of higher education as per relevant records does not seem to testify to its such historical and sociocultural feats, accomplishments, or exceptionality as could have fed into making of an extraordinary research-mindedness, research-inclination and related temperamental predispositions amongst its academics particularly in humanities and social sciences.
Thus, we are back to square, with no simplistic clues to this apparently baffling enigma/curiosity behind what could perhaps metamorphically be described as a ‘proverbial gold rush’ to IIAS by UP’s academics of higher educational institutions (at least in 2024-25 round of selection of fellows). Therefore, clues seem to lie both beyond UP’s demographic specificities and academic topography of its higher educational professions. Of course, a credible explanation of this ostensibly awry revelation for 2024-25 calls for corresponding information for several other years – a job, which I could not do myself because of my other substantive preoccupations. [Also, I am not so-called ‘RTI-activist’, although this is not meant to preclude my remaining ‘curious’ about larger societal or sociological phenomena and processes particularly pertaining to higher educational sphere and its historically eminent institutions.] After my preliminary enquiry (as above) in vain into both demographic and educational statistics as well as results of some state-wise evaluative studies on quantum and standard/quality of academic output in higher educational sector, it seems clear enough that potential explanatory clues to my above noted curiosities, occasioned and aroused as it were by RTI-based official records, cannot but lie in such domains as politics, sociology, public administration and perhaps more broadly India’s internal geo–political circumstances and differences - the domains in which I have inadequate expertise/knowledge and understanding. And hence I would like to leave the job of finding cues to the above curious case of IIAS fellowship in 2024-25 with intelligent and relevant experts as a food for thought and of course with a hope for eventual unveiling of its underlying cause. Meanwhile, notwithstanding an apparent smell of a collusion between my failure in being selected in 2024-25 round at IIAS and of my broaching above ‘curiosities’, I decidedly disown such possible attributions on my personal intent or subjectivity by responsibly reaffirming the latter as being firmly grounded in my abiding interests and concerns for wellbeing, functioning, flourishing and academic priorities of such a historically renowned public academic institution as IIAS.