Ideas for India: The CPR saga is a cautionary tale
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024 was meant to be a valedictory year for the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), one of India’s most venerable independent public policy think tanks. For five decades, the New Delhi-based organisation has been driven by a simple mission — to conduct original research that contributes to the annals of scholarship in a manner that informs the design and implementation of pragmatic public policy. Its scholars have earned a well-deserved reputation for independence, integrity, and rigour.
But rather than planning for the next halfcentury, the institution instead finds itself contemplating a markedly different fate. This week, CPR’s chief executive, one of India’s leading development scholars, announced her resignation, the latest step in the gutting of an organisation that had developed a global — not just national — reputation for excellence. Its independent ideas, it appears, proved too inconvenient for some.
At a time when India occupies a unique geopolitical sweet spot, its ability to fully exploit this opportunity rests on three mundane, but essential, endeavours: Building robust institutional capacity, developing farsighted policy, and enhancing the country’s human capital stock. All three pursuits are imperilled when the values of academic freedom, independent thinking, and critical analysis are curtailed. In this respect, CPR’s story serves as an important cautionary tale.
In September 2022, income tax authorities carried out what is euphemistically referred to as a “tax survey” of CPR’s offices to investigate alleged “irregularities”. In quick succession, the government suspended (and later revoked) its licence to accept foreign funds and cancelled the organisation’s tax-exempt status. For good measure, criminal charges were filed against several CPR affiliates. The organisation, reliant on foreign philanthropy to finance its operations, turned its attention to exclusively raising funds from domestic sources. But a not-so-subtle signal seems to have gone out to private capital that it was deemed untouchable, leaving the organisation between a rock and a hard place.
Soon its staff of 200 plus began to shrink and the organisation became a shell of its former self — its once bustling conference room went dark, its corridors fell silent, and its offices shorn of argumentative policy wonks. Today, fewer than two dozen people remain on the rolls.
At first glance, it is easy to dismiss a nonprofit think tank nestled in leafy Chanakyapuri as part of a Left-wing cabal or the extension of the proverbial “foreign hand”. But doing so would be unwise as well as inaccurate. The chairperson of the Prime Minister (PM)’s economic advisory council and two successive chiefs of the government’s apex internal thank tank are distinguished alums. Current and former members of the body’s governing council include an ex-PM, a former chief justice of India, and one of India’s most decorated diplomats.
Yet, the roster of intellectual luminaries associated with CPR is not what makes the institution exceptional; the real truth lies elsewhere.
CPR’s example demonstrates that while India’s human capital challenges may be daunting, even modest investments in young people can pay disproportionate dividends. Look far and wide across India — from the halls of government to grassroots development organisations and the nation’s leading research centres — and you will be surprised by how many emerging leaders have punched their ticket at this small think tank.
Perhaps the best — and most intimidating — aspect about delivering a presentation at CPR is not knowing from which angle you might be critiqued. That is because researchers there rarely agree with one another on much of anything. To the outside world, this might give an impression of disorder. But, for those on the inside, it is a marker of confidence and a free-wheeling independent streak. When your institutional identity is secure, conformity can make way for coexistence.
In fact, it is precisely this spirit that has made CPR a prized partner for the government. CPR is not the organisation bureaucrats turn to if they need intellectual cover to validate a pre-cooked position. Rather, it is the chosen partner of officials with a penchant for intellectual curiosity, who are willing to follow the data wherever it may lead. This is why CPR’s advice and counsel have been actively sought out by governments of all stripes, including the present one. From developing the country’s long-term low emissions development strategy to piloting novel expenditure tracking tools and fostering Centre-state cooperation on internal migration, the organisation’s impact statement writes itself.
Of course, there are plenty who will choose to blame the victim. Why was the organisation so reliant on foreign funding? Why did affiliated scholars write so critically? Whose interests was it really serving? By now, these hackneyed tropes are both well-rehearsed and ubiquitous on social media. The law has served its purpose, to smother the organisation in a warren of legal minutiae. The eventual outcome seems irrelevant; as the saying goes, the process is the punishment.
One would have to be wilfully naïve to believe that vitiating a research organisation will bring the gears of policymaking to a halt or raise enough eyebrows to force a self-assured government to change tack. After all, there are elections to be fought, economic deals to be struck, and foreign relations to be negotiated. Policy conversations in the nation’s Capital will go on without missing a beat. But one would have to be equally naïve not to grasp that this onward grind proceeds with attendant costs — of a discourse that is diminished, a talent pool that is enfeebled, and a spirit of independent inquiry that is sapped. To paraphrase an old line from Eleanor Roosevelt, small minds discuss people and average minds discuss events. It is great minds that discuss ideas.
CPR IS THE CHOSEN PARTNER OF OFFICIALS WITH A PENCHANT FOR INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY
REgD. NO. LW/GPO/NP-226, R.N.I. NO. 66165/1997