Petition: We Demand the Immediate Release of Anand Teltumbde and the Dropping of All Charges Against Him

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On April 14 Anand Teltumbde was taken into custody by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on charges of having Maoist links, conspiring against the government and plotting the murder of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The dubious and contrived nature of these accusations is apparent to anyone who looks into the details of the farcical police investigation carried out against him. 

Dr Teltumbde has a stellar record of academic and professional achievement and selfless service to society. His life and work are testament to his commitment to the values of justice and non-violence. Please see the details of his extensive professional and academic experience and social activism in the profile appended below.

It is clear that the charges against him have no basis in fact. The investigators have got even the most basic facts relating to the case wrong. For example, though the violence that occurred following the Elgar Parishad gathering was used as the pretext for his arrest, he was not even an organiser of the event and only attended it for a few minutes. The two distinguished judges who had organised the event have denied that he played any role in its conception or organisation. 

With the change in government in Maharashtra, when there was a possibility of justice, the union government hastily transferred his case to the NIA. It is in order to deny him and the other arrested human rights activists a fair trial that they are being charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which precludes any possibility of bail. These actions are a reflection of the current political climate in India, in which the harassment and arbitrary arrests of activists have become commonplace and even basic civil liberties are under threat.

Now in the time of the COVID-19 crisis, the imprisonment of Dr Teltumbde — who is 68 years old and an asthma patient —  is even more unconscionable. The Socialist Party (India) demands that Anand Teltumbde be released and the charges against him dropped immediately.

Endorsed by*:

Anand Teltumbde

Designation: Senior Professor, Goa Institute of Management. 

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering), Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, 1973
• Post Graduate Diploma in Management, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
• PhD (Cybernetic Modelling), University of Mumbai, 1993
• Fellow of the institution of Engineers India
• Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences
• D. Lit. (Hon), Karnataka State Open University

Professional Experience

Anand Teltumbde has worked for more than 35 years in the oil industry encompassing the entire value chain. He has headed functions such as Corporate Planning, Engineering & Projects, Supply and Distribution, Information Systems and many new strategic initiatives, such as the implementation of ERP and foray of BPCL in Upstream. 

He pioneered many innovative systems and was presented numerous awards by various industry forums. He also worked on various industry committees and was a member of the first Study Group for deregulation of Oil Industry in 1994-95. He handled many assignments abroad and worked as Managing Director, National Oil & Chemicals Company, Lagos, Nigeria during its post-privatization turnaround, Project Manager, East Africa Pipeline Project of Kenya Pipeline Company, Nairobi and consultant to CNPC, China. 

He had been visiting faculty to numerous management institutions in Mumbai and IIM, Ahmadabad over 25 years. Before entering full-time academics, he was Managing Director and CEO of Petronet India Limited and member of the Board of a few other companies. He worked as faculty in Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM), IIT, Kharagpur for the last five years, teaching Strategy, Operations Management, Information Systems, Supply Chain Analytics, Project Management, etc. He is currently the head of GIM’s Big Data Analytics Program.

Area of Expertise

Strategy, Productions and Operations, Project management, and Business Analytics

Background

Dr. Teltumbde was born in Rajur Village in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district to a Dalit family of farm labourers. During his school days, he worked as a part-time painter so that his family could make ends meet. He is married to Dr BR Amedkar’s granddaughter Rama Ambedkar. Dr Ambedkar’s life and legacy have been foundational to Dr Teltumbde’s work. Because of his commitment to human rights and constitutional values, he has unhesitatingly criticised policies of the present and past governments. 

Social Activism

Dr Teltumbde is also an activist who is actively involved in several organisations, including the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights and the All India Forum for Right to Education.

Research and Publications

Anand Teltumbde has published over 20 academic papers in various refereed journals and other publications. He has also authored more than 20 books and contributed more than 70 chapters to books authored by others on various topics of public interest. He has written extensively on issues of caste violence and discrimination and the history and politics of India’s anti-caste movements. Some of his most well-known books include “The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders & India’s Hidden Apartheid: The Khairlanji Murders and India’s Hidden Apartheid” and “Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva”. He has been a long-time columnist at the Economic and Political Weekly where his column ‘Margin Speak’ has mounted incisive critiques of the establishment on a wide range of issues concerning social justice, equitable development and civil liberties.  Besides this, he has contributed numerous articles and papers to various English newspapers, magazines and journals commenting on public policy and socio-political issues. 

List of Academic Publications

Refereed Publications

• A framework of evaluating ERP projects. International Journal of Production Research 38, pp. 4507–4520.
• India’s Democratic Transition: Dividend or a Disaster?, The Indian Economic Review, vol. VII, 31 March 2010, pp, 12-19.
• Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs in Corporations, Vikalpa • vol. 31 • no 1 • January – March 2006, 129-32.

Others

• Portfolio of multi-locational projects in EM Dar-El, R Karni and YT Herer, Global Frontiers in Manufacturing, Freund Publishing, London, 1995, 556-58.
• Do the discrete performance standards really serve the project control in EM Dar-El, R Karni and YT Herer, Global Frontiers in Manufacturing, Freund Publishing, London, 1995, 559-61.
• A framework for implementation process for an organizational change through MS intervention in Ahmet F Ozok and Gavriel Salvendy (Ed), Advances in Applied Ergonomics, USA Publishers, Istanbul, 1996, 31-34.
• Modular WBS for cost control in multi-project organization in R Grubbstrom (Ed.), Proceedings of the 14th ICPR, Osaka Institute of Technology, Osaka, Vol I, 1997, 10-13.
• A control system framework for portfolios of multi-locational projects in R Grubbstrom (Ed.), Proceedings o the 14th ICPR, Osaka Institute of Technology & Elsevier, Osaka, Vol I, 1997, 14-17.
• Creating a learning project organization: a methodological approach in Antoni Creus Sole (Ed.), Ingeniena de Proyectos, Universitat Politechnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, 1996, 26-32.
• Project control with forward planning in Pentii Seppala (Ed) From experience to innovation: Organization Design and Management, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, 1997, 124-6.
• Design of a behavioural comparator for the process control model in Pentii Seppala (Ed) From experience to innovation: Organization Design and Management, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, 1997, 400-02.
• Managing cross cultural differences in international projects, 27 Annual Seminar/Symposium, Project management Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, Oct 7-9, 1997.
• A framework for evaluating ERP projects, in MT Hillery and HJ Lewis (Ed.), Manufacturing for a Global Market, University of Limerick, Limerick, 1999, 725-8.
• An approach for controlling IT/IS projects, in MT Hillery and HJ Lewis (Ed.), Manufacturing for a Global Market, University of Limerick, Limerick, 1999, 1179-82.
• The relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and strategic management, SMJ, 1999, 19:421:444.
• Risk analysis and management in projects portfolio situation, in A Mital (Ed.), Proc. of 9th International Conf. on Production Research, Vol.1, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 1987, 619-625.
• Project management information control system in a multi-project organisation, Proc. of the 37th Computers & Industrial Engineering, Alexiandria, Egypt, 2007, 37-41.
• A cybernetic system for high goal performance: An experiment with organization design, Proc. of 9th Asia Pacific Management Conference, Osaka, Japan, Vol. 1, 2003, 531-540.

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