Another Ashoka Professor Quits Over Research Paper, Faculty Writes Support Letter

A second Economics professor has resigned at the Ashoka University alleging an "environment of fear", days after his colleague Sabyasachi Das quit amid a massive controversy over his research paper citing evidence of election manipulation.

Pulapre Balakrishnan, whose published work spans the inflationary process in the Indian economy to the country's economic growth, resigned today as professors of the Economics Department objected to Mr Das' exit.

Mr Das' paper, 'Democratic Backsliding in the World's Largest Democracy', has landed the private university at the centre of a political war between the Congress and the BJP. The university has accepted his resignation.

"Professor Das did not violate any accepted norm of academic practice... The governing body's interference in this process to investigate the merits of his recent study constitutes institutional harassment, curtails academic freedom, and forces scholars to operate in an environment of fear," professors of the Economics department said in an open letter to the university.

"We condemn this in the strongest terms and refuse as a collective to cooperate in any future attempt to evaluate the research of individual economics faculty members by the governing body," the professors said in the letter.

The professors put out two demands - for professor Das' unconditional return to his position at the Ashoka University, and for the governing body to play no role in evaluating faculty research through any committee or any other structure.

In the research paper, Mr Das stated the BJP's disproportionate win of closely contested constituencies is largely concentrated in states ruled by the party at the time of election. The paper said the density of the incumbent party's win margin variable exhibited a discontinuous jump at the threshold value of zero.

This, he wrote, implied that the BJP won disproportionately more in constituencies where it was the incumbent party and which were closely contested. The paper mainly explores evidence in favour of the election manipulation hypothesis, also arguing that manipulation is local at the booth level, and implying that manipulation could be concentrated in constituencies that have a high share of observers who are state civil service officers from BJP-ruled states.

The university in a statement said the paper in question has not yet completed a critical review process and has not been published in an academic journal, and that social media activity or public activism by Ashoka faculty, students or staff in their individual capacity does not reflect the stand of the university.