Asiatic Society at a crossroads, set for stormy AGM

A disgruntled staff, vacant positions in the library, a funds crunch, and allegations levelled by a few members have marked Vispi Balaporia’s term as president, which follows six years as honorary secretary

MUMBAI: At 3:30pm on Saturday, when members of the 221-year-old Asiatic Society of Mumbai (ASM) take their seats for the annual general meeting (AGM), they will veer off script in a way that hasn’t happened before.

Asiatic Society at Fort (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

According to convention, the AGM begins with elections to fill positions in the managing committee that have run their term, ending with the results being announced. This time, there will be no elections.

The anomaly dates to the previous AGM in 2023, when elections were held to fill 17 posts, including that of the president, a position currently held by Vispi Balaporia, the ASM’s first woman president, who is at the end of her six-year-term.

At the time, the returning officer for the elections had been a member of the ASM for less than five years, falling short of the minimum requirement and prompting the charity commissioner to declare the elections “not legal and valid” in August.

“This put us in a tricky position and we continued with our day-to-day functioning. Now we plan to appeal the charity commissioner’s order,” said Balaporia. The order had been given on objections raised by three members – Pulind Samant, Renu Parekh and VM Chakravarthy.

The glitch in the elections of this two-century-old institution reflects simmering discontent among its 3,000-odd members, of which only around 150 are actively involved. Balaporia, who has hit the limit of her term as president, is relieved to be on the way out but she is not pleased on the note on which she will step down.

“I think we might have done even better if we did not have to face some negativity from our own members,” she wrote in her last president’s message in the ASM’s annual report. “I fail to understand what such negativity hoped to achieve. It certainly did nothing for the Asiatic Society.”

A disgruntled staff, vacant positions in the library, a funds crunch, and allegations levelled by a few members have marked Balaporia’s term as president, which follows six years as honorary secretary.

“We haven’t had a librarian for a few years, the work of whom is being done by three library technicians,” admits Balaporia. “We are now on the cusp of hiring one, funded by the Tata Group, although there is some opposition from the permanent staff we are trying to quell.”

In September last year, the ASM’s employees’ union had publicly announced their demand to be given arrears pending since the Covid pandemic. “Those arrears have since been paid,” said a union representative. “Our demand now is for salaries as per the Maharashtra government’s Seventh Pay Commission. We never know whether or not our next salary will be credited to our bank accounts.”

Balaporia admits to a funds crunch. She says it’s a struggle to pay the 27 permanent employees and few contract staff. Matching government-mandated salaries is unthinkable, for the moment, she says.

In the last year, the ASM started receiving its annual recurring grant of ₹1 crore from the state government, although this came with the condition that it could not be spent on staff salaries. The institution also received its annual ₹1 crore from the Government of India’s Ministry of Culture, and an additional ₹75 lakh from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation for the last two years.

Asked how much more would be needed for the ASM to function smoothly, Balaporia says, “an additional ₹3 crore a year”.

The paucity of funds has led some members to push for the ASM to be declared an “institute of national importance” by the Government of India. This would come with a ₹50-crore grant, they point out. It’s a demand raised intermittently over the last two decades.

But Balaporia is wary. “It would certainly solve our funds shortage, but it would come with side effects. The Asiatic Institute of Kolkata, which received the honour, has had its entire committee dissolved and taken over by an administrator for two years. Besides, it is not an easy status to get; it needs a Rajya Sabha member to recommend it in the house.”

A disgruntled ASM member says there is a reason for objections raised in past meetings. He alleged “wasteful expenditure of public money” of ₹9.5 lakh spent on shelves in 2023, of which only a fraction has been used. A complaint was submitted to the charity commissioner in 2024. Half the shelves could not be installed due to additional funds required to fit them into the framework, a point admitted to and apologized for in a special general meeting held in late 2024.

The member adds, “Through an RTI application, I found out that 13 objects, which the ASM had given to the Prince of Wales Museum, are missing, which is a little-known fact. There is little regard for rules and procedures, which has diminished faith in the institution.”

Members are bracing themselves for Saturday’s AGM in the august Durbar Hall. It is bound to be a stormy one.