Two Winners And A Photo Finish
According to the INDIA TODAY-ORG-MARG opinion poll, there will be clear winners in two states, but a tight finish in a third.

The Last Rampage
To offset
J. Jayalalitha's slight edge, a pugnacious M. Karunanidhi gives it his all in what is his final electoral campaign.

The Sixth Sense
A mercurial Mamata Banerjee vs a dependable Buddhadev Bhattacharya. The mismatch leaves the Left Front with a premonition of victory.

Secular Stake
Even as the Church makes a blatant move to play a more political role in the state, the CPI(M) nominates a priest to woo minorities.

One Man Barmy
India's apex social sciences facilitating body is rocked by civil war: the chairman says he is being opposed by both RSS ideologues and leftist academics.

Changing Order
An ageing profile and a frustrated officer corps leads the force to consider VRS and restructuring.

Liquid Asset
The Rs 700-crore industry has attracted many players. Now, purity will decide who stays in business.

Board Of No Control
Tax authorities say the BCCI spends more money on meetings than on matches.

THE NATION: ICSSR

India's apex social science body is in the midst of civil war: the chairman vs everybody

By Ashok Malik

Sipping coffee in the dining room of Delhi's India International Centre, Manohar Lal Sondhi mutters, "I'm dealing with primitives who don't understand the world." The reference is non-specific but the chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) is engaged in separate battles with three sets of people.

• An "RSS cabal of seven of ICSSR's 18 nominated members", which is opposing Sondhi's "liberal and pluralistic values".
• "Leftist academics", particularly certain members of the ICSSR staff who speak a "Soviet-style language" and often push meritorious applicants "out of the loop".
• Bureaucrats at the HRD Ministry who deny him money and abhor his independence. HRD Secretary M.K. Kaw, Sondhi says, is unhappy because, "I did not organise a seminar on his book on particles called thoughtons". It is an accusation Kaw vehemently denies.

MAN ABOVE: Joshi has to clean the mess

In recent days, it is Sondhi's very public brawl with "RSS-friendly intellectuals" that has been news. Widely reported in the media, it has, in fact, made him the darling of designer pinkos, an occurrence not bereft of irony given the very circles had criticised Sondhi's appointment in 1999 citing that old BJP chestnut, "the hidden agenda".

ICSSR is the premier agency promoting social science studies in the country. Funded by the HRD Ministry, it in turn disburses grants to 27 institutes across India, in addition to supporting individual projects, study tours and so on. It is governed by a council consisting of the chairman, 18 nominated members and seven ex-officio members, including the secretary, HRD.

ICSSR's budget for 2001-02 is Rs 31.35 crore. In an age when the humanities as a whole is living below the poverty line as it were, this is a goldmine. ICSSR's outlay has "almost trebled from its 1998-99 level of Rs 13.87 crore", a fact Kaw stresses in his refutation of Sondhi's charges.

When the NDA government came to power in 1998, D.N. Nanjundappa-an agricultural scientist from Karnataka considered close to S.R. Bommai, HRD minister in the previous United Front government-was the chairman. Vacancies to the council were filled in two lots, 12 in September 1998 and six in March 1999. Some of those named to the council by HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi were considered saffron sympathisers. These included Saradindu Mukherji of Delhi University, J.K. Bajaj, director, Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai, and S.K. Gupta, vice-chancellor, Himachal Pradesh University.

In October 1999, when Nanjundappa's three-year term ended, Sondhi was appointed chairman-and the games began. To go by Sondhi's version, conveyed to the prime minister in a letter, the "Sangh cabal" gradually lost its patience with him because he was not ostracising left wing academics.

The firestorm started, he says, when he was asked to explain why the ICSSR was funding the visit of Kiran Saksena, who teaches political science at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), to the US. Saksena had submitted a research proposal on the RSS, which Sondhi says may have been critical but was academically sound. "I told them," he explains, "to bring their own pro-RSS projects. They too would be funded if they were found suitable." A year ago, Sondhi's associates say, a prescriptive book on India's economy was commissioned by ICSSR. Edited by Surjeet Bhalla, it "opposed swadeshi economics". The book was "not distributed", indicative of "censorship by the Sangh cabal".

MetroScape

Bond Free
The Savoy in Mussoorie must be the only hotel, apart from the Raffles in Singapore, to have a thing about writers. So, it was quite kismet when publisher Pramod Kapoor of Roli Books and author Namita Gokhale, who has an imprint with him, hosted the Ruskin Bond Festschrift—a Writers' Retreat in honour of that gentle Indian Roald Dahl, Ruskin Bond.
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