Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)

The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) or more informally, the Centre, is one of India’s leading institutes for research in the social sciences and humanities. Since its inception in 1963, the Centre has been known for its critical outlook on received models of development and progress; it is animated by a vision of equality and democratic transformation. The Centre’s scholarship has challenged tendencies in academic and policy regimes to seek and prescribe standardized pathways to social and political change. The Centre has done this by attending to the patterns of difference, diversity, and creativity that emerge from the ways people survive in and reinvent the contemporary world and generate alternative practices and imaginations. In contrast to the development economics profile of most social science research institutions, the Centre is singular in its multi-disciplinary approach. Scholars of political studies and political philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and legal and media studies  have populated the Centre over the years, giving it a live interdisciplinary context.