A Chief Minister's push, K. N. Raj's leadership and a Laurie Baker campus: Kerala's social science research institute

Background

The Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram was set up on 19 October 1970 as an autonomous institute for social science research. Its own account credits C. Achutha Menon, then Chief Minister of Kerala, with the creation of several research centres in the State, and with persuading the development economist K. N. Raj to start this Centre and give it intellectual leadership; Raj stayed the driving force of its academic work for over twenty years. Laurie Baker, the architect, gave the campus and its buildings a distinctive but low-cost design, and the campus still carries that stamp. A Governing Body of academicians, planners and administrators manages the Centre, and it has passed several of its powers to sub-committees. Its finances rest mainly on the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Government of Kerala. The Reserve Bank of India, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Planning Commission now called NITI Aayog and the Government of Kerala have instituted endowment units there for research in selected areas. A research programme on international migration from Kerala has been set up at the Centre, and the Union Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs had placed a migration unit there.