 After its registration as an autonomous society on 14 November 1986 and as a public trust on 15 January 1987, then Prime Minister Shri Rajiv Gandhi inaugurated the campus at Goregaon, Mumbai on 28 December 1987.Subsequently, the Institute was recognized as a deemed university under Section 3 of the UGC Act.Starting as a purely research-oriented institution, the Institute quickly developed into a full-fledged teaching cum research organisation when in 1990 it launched a Ph.D. programme in the field of development studies under agreement with Bombay University.