Scheme of Grants-in-Aid for supporting professional associations/ organisations of social scientists, companies and trusts duly registered under the Companies Act for their development(PUBLICATION GRANT FOR MAINTENANCE & DEVELOPMENT)

Overview

About PUBLICATION GRANT FOR MAINTENANCE & DEVELOPMENT

A learned society claims this grant in its own name, and no student, fellow or principal investigator appears anywhere in the file. The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), the Ministry of Education body that funds social science research in India, gives an ad hoc annual grant-in-aid to professional associations and organisations of social scientists, and to companies and trusts registered under the Companies Act, for their own development. The ceiling is Rs 8,00,000 a year, and the guidelines fence the money to office costs: electricity, rent, telephone and related expenditure on running the office, plus books and journals for the library, postage, computer, furniture and office stationery (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines).

That fence is the whole character of the scheme. Nothing here buys a study, a survey or a publication. It pays for the institutional shell that lets a learned society keep functioning between its own subscription cycles, and the only thing the recipient owes back is a clean account of how the money was spent.

The scheme is old and small. ICSSR has made ad hoc maintenance and development grants to 442 associations and organisations since 1969, and in 2024-25 it sanctioned Rs 58,50,000 across 15 organisations (ICSSR Annual Report 2024-25). Bodies funded that year included the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, the Indian Anthropological Society, the Indian Society for Ecological Economics and the Academy of Grassroots Studies and Research of India, which gives a fair picture of the constituency: national learned societies with a research output and a permanent address.

Inside ICSSR the file sits with the Publication and Research Survey Division (PRS), which also holds the manuscript subsidy and the journals line (ICSSR, Research Survey and Publication). The manuscript subsidy pays a publisher, the journals line pays for a periodical, and this one pays for an office, so an application filed against the wrong line loses a cycle.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

ICSSR runs this scheme by advertisement, and the guidelines set no standing calendar for it. The last published cycle was Financial Year 2025-2026, and it opened and closed inside December (ICSSR, call for applications).

That window is the only calendar signal an applicant has. The journals grant guidelines promise advertisements tentatively twice a year, in May-June and December-January, but the development scheme guidelines carry no equivalent sentence (ICSSR, Grant-in-aid for research journals). No fresh call for this scheme appears on the ICSSR announcements page, so an association should keep documents current and watch the announcements list rather than plan around an expected date (ICSSR Announcements).

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

A nationwide membership of not less than 200 is the hard floor here, and it settles most cases before anything else in the file is read. A state chapter, a departmental forum or a specialist group with a few dozen names on its rolls does not clear it, however good its research is. Beside that floor the guidelines ask only two things: that a privately funded organisation be registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and that the body have been involved in national, regional or local socio-economic research objectives (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines).

Proof of the membership is documentary, not asserted. The same clause requires the list of members to be sent in with the annual audited accounts and the annual report for the last 3 years, so an association that has never had its books audited cannot evidence the roll it claims.

How long the body must already have existed is answered in two places, and the answers do not agree. The scheme guidelines fix no minimum period of existence at all, and the shorter figure that circulates on scheme listings has no counterpart in ICSSR's own documents. The Council's public eligibility summary puts the maintenance and development line at 5 years of standing for a nationally registered association (ICSSR, Frequently Asked Questions). Plan for the stricter reading: a body that cannot show 5 completed years, with accounts to match, is exposed on this point.

Work on the professional development of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, or research related to them, is considered under the SC/ST category of the same scheme rather than as a separate programme. The 2024-25 sanction list carries such a case, the Madhya Pradesh Dalit Sahitya Academy, tagged SC in the Council's own appendix (ICSSR Annual Report 2024-25).

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

Associations and organisations primarily engaged in extension or social welfare work are not eligible, and neither is a body whose activity is not academic work in the social sciences. A charity with a strong field programme and no research programme is outside the scheme by design, not by oversight.

The permitted-use list works as a second exclusion, quieter than the first. The guidelines say the sanctioned grant should only be used for the office running costs and the office purchases they enumerate, so staff salaries, fieldwork, honoraria, conference hosting and the printing of a journal have no route through this grant even for an association that clearly qualifies on membership (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines). Each of those has its own ICSSR line or none at all.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Sanctions are made one year at a time, and this route stops at 5 years. Anything the Advisory Committee of Experts approves past that point is referred onward to the Research Committee, which decides on further extension, so year 6 is a fresh institutional judgement and not a renewal (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines).

Renewal is not a rollover. Each cycle needs a fresh application in the prescribed form with current accounts, and the last instalment of the previous sanction stays withheld until the audited statement and the utilisation certificate arrive, which in practice makes the previous year's paperwork the gate on the next year's money.

What you get

Award & benefits

The ad hoc grant is capped at Rs 8,00,000 a year, and a second, one-time track sits three clauses further down the same page carrying a cap of its own.

The one-time track exists for associations of national importance seeking further development, and for any other innovative idea that would help the social science community at large. It sits on top of the recurring ad hoc grant, with its own annual cap, so an association with a genuine institution-building proposal is not limited to what its electricity bill justifies.

What ICSSR actually sanctions is well below the ceiling. Across the 15 grants made in 2024-25, the largest single sanction was Rs 5,00,000 and the smallest Rs 2,00,000, and none of them touched Rs 8,00,000 (ICSSR Annual Report 2024-25).

The cadence is steady rather than expanding. ICSSR sanctioned 15 of these grants in 2024-25, 15 in 2023-24 and 16 in 2022-23, and the whole run since 1969 comes to 442, against 1,212 grants made on the journals line over the same period (ICSSR Annual Report 2024-25). An association is competing for one of roughly fifteen sanctions a year, not for a share of an open pool.

• Grant-in-aid up to Rs. 8,00,000 for supporting professional associations/ organisations of social scientists, companies and trusts for their development.
• Coverage of office maintenance costs like electricity, rent, and telephone.
• Annual renewal for up to five years based on review.
• Amount is disbursed in two instalments, first installment is 90% and second will be 10%, which will be released after submitting Audited Statement of Accounts and Utilisation Certificate

What to prepare

Documents required

The myScheme record for this scheme leaves the documents field blank, but the guidelines specify the annexures that go with the prescribed application form. Annexure 1 carries the information about the association, organisation, company or trust. Annexure 2 and Annexure 3 carry the audited accounts and the annual reports for the last 2 years. Annexure 4 is a brief CV of the head of the institute or association, and Annexure 5 sets out the sources from which the body's funds were met for the last 2 years (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines).

The look-back period is stated two ways in the same document, and the safer course is the longer one. The eligibility clause asks for the list of members, annual audited accounts and annual report for the last 3 years, while the annexures ask for 2 years of accounts and reports. Filing 3 years satisfies both readings and costs nothing.

Step by step

How to apply

The application form goes in through the ICSSR dashboard, and the printed copy of it, signed off by the affiliating institution and carrying every enclosure, then has to physically arrive at the Publications and Research Survey Division, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, JNU Institutional Area, New Delhi 110067 (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines). Neither half counts on its own, and the postal leg is the one that gets forgotten.

The form has to be prepared strictly in the prescribed format, and the call for Financial Year 2025-2026 told applicants not to attach a separate proposal document (ICSSR, call for applications). Incomplete applications will not be considered for the grant, which is a stated rule rather than a matter of discretion, so a missing annexure ends the application without a query being raised.

How to Track an Application

ICSSR publishes no status screen for this grant. The applicant login at app.icssr.org, the same dashboard that took the form, is the only portal on the route, and what it offers in place of tracking is a grievance portal and two published addresses: portal faults to the Computer Centre at cc@icssr.org, everything else to the divisional in-charge (ICSSR Application Dashboard).

For this scheme the divisional in-charge is the PRS Division, reachable at prsdivision@icssr.org and on +91-11-49979741 (ICSSR Divisions). ICSSR published a dedicated mailbox for the journals grant call but has not published one for the development grant, so the divisional address is the route for a status query.

How winners are picked

Selection process

An Advisory Committee inside the PRS Division reads every proposal, weighing the applicant's academic viability, its stated objectives and what it has contributed to social science. What that committee recommends travels to the Council, which takes the approval decision (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines).

There is no interview, no presentation and no published scoring rubric. Since the committee reads institutional standing rather than a research design, the annual report and the audited accounts are doing the persuading, and a thin annual report is a weak application even when the arithmetic on eligibility is fine.

How the amount itself is arrived at is not published either. The journals line handled by the same division sets out the parameters its committee weighs before fixing a figure, down to the number of issues and whether an electronic version exists (ICSSR, Grant-in-aid for research journals), while the development guidelines list nothing equivalent (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines). The 2024-25 sanctions run from Rs 2,00,000 to Rs 5,00,000, and nothing ICSSR publishes explains the differences (ICSSR Annual Report 2024-25).

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The spend restriction is a condition of the sanction and not a guideline. Money drawn under this grant is to be used for running the office and for the listed purchases, and for nothing else.

The closing instalment is 10% of the sanction, payable at the end of the year and not before the audited statement of accounts and a utilisation certificate covering the whole sanctioned amount have reached the Council (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines). That holdback is the enforcement mechanism: an association that spends the first tranche and files its papers late does not lose the grant, it loses the tail of it until the paperwork lands.

Get help

Contact

prsdivision@icssr.org is the working address for anything on this file, and the two lines published beside it are +919220521105 and +91-11-49979741 (ICSSR Divisions). Post for the division reaches it at Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, JNU Institutional Area, New Delhi 110067, and the Council's general exchange, +91-11-26741849, is the switchboard rather than this scheme's line (ICSSR, Maintenance and development guidelines).

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

Explore more

Related scholarships

References

Sources