I fear for India and its future.

These days I carry a lot of guilt. The reason is that I go to work everyday find that there are no classes, I sit around doing some other work that is there to be done in the department and I come back home. The rate at which things are going, the time when I will forget teaching is not too far away. I carry guilt because of the salary I take. What I get as salary is comparable to what some people get in the corporate sphere. The difference is in the amount of work that we put in. While I put in none, the people who earn the equivalent of what I earn have their noses rubbed into the ground with work. Every week numbers are crunched and performance evaluated for them. For us in the university system, there is no such thing. We are the freest people in the true sense of the term. We get our salary on time and we have no accountability. We don't have to teach, we don't even have to turn up for work everyday (some of us do that once in a week if we have a bit of conscience left and some turn up once in a month or so), we don't have to answer anyone for anything and yet at the end of the month we get our salaries. No wonder then most of us have other things to do by the side. Some of us own marriage halls, farms, hotels and restaurants and other kind of businesses. When we don't have anything like this then we turn revolutionaries, ready to bite the hand that feeds us.

And we are good at forming Joint Action Committees with students and non-teaching staff. In a truly revolutionary way we march hand in glove with our comrades from the student community and the non-teaching staff community and ensure that there is no work for anyone to do. The joint action committees are the bane of the university system. When students are drawn into the politics of teachers and vice-versa, where is the sanctity of the student-teacher relationship? By walking together shoulder to shoulder we have destroyed the possibility of ever setting an example to students. Do not get me wrong here. There is nothing wrong with being friendly with students and being supportive when they need you in matters of academics. What I am against is using the students to settle scores with fellow faculty members or using their revolutionary potential for the satisfaction of one's own greedy needs. In matters of learning and education a teacher and student should be together, but not for things that I have specified above. These days the transactions between students and teachers are about things which are anything but academic.

Universities were supposed to be free spaces, where people could do free thinking without the fear of anything and without any limitations being imposed upon them. Today they are free spaces where anyone can do anything except that which they are supposed to do. Unaccountability is the word to describe what happens and I am ashamed to say that this is reaching criminal proportions. Consider the fact that we are paid by the tax payers money and you will see why I have used the term criminal. Expenditures on universities is in thousands of crores and if they are nowhere near what is expected of them and in many instances are against what is expected of them, then is it not criminal?

Many of the teachers in my own university are aware of this. But since most of them want to be another power centre they do not wish to change anything. But they are also very clever people. Many of them have ensured that their off spring do not study the subjects that they teach and also have sent them to still functional universities and colleges in other parts of the country so that they their children can study peacefully and uninterruptedly while they the teachers with their assured salaries and unaccountability wreak havoc on the university, education system and politics of the state. The other day I was chatting with some colleagues about appointment of Vice-Chancellors. I said that the appointments were too political and that people from within the university should not become Vice-Chancellor of that university since it is difficult to function. Someone said that nobody would allow a person from outside of the university to be appointed as Vice-Chancellor and even if such a person is appointed he would not be allowed to function. I was aghast. Have we reached the level where we dictate things such as the appointment of VCs? I was told that there is nothing wrong with this thinking since we are living in a democratic system. I then suggested that we should simply have nominations for Vice-Chancellorships and have a VC elected by the teachers, other staff and students of the university. They thought I was trivialising a serious issue. But I am sure you now know why I fear for India and its future.

P.S. My usual disclaimer. Not proof read and hence mistakes of grammar and spelling will abound. Please read around them. Thank you.

What is the future for India with the education system completely collapsed?

I have to say that these days I am worried. Going to the campus and not having much to do is not only demoralizing but also very bad on my conscience. Everyday I ask myself, what is it for that I am being paid? Today as university teachers we draw salaries that are somewhat comparable to the ones drawn in the corporate world. I know the amount of pressure that the corporate world puts its people through on a person whose pay is comparable to mine. Here we seem to not accountable to anyone. I have been saying that most of the teachers in the university system and definitely in my university have no business being there. I find it difficult to digest the fact that they form Joint Action Committees with students and together they subvert and sabotage the system.

I cannot simply understand the logic of joint action committees. I can only say that they are a part of the pragmatic politics that are the norm of the day. Everyone is willing to form a joint action committee with anyone else if they can meet the goals that they want. Ethics and social responsibility are words that are totally alien to most people. It is as if the dictum of ends justify means is somehow self justifying. And this in the land of Gandhi who said that there was no way in which ends and means could be separated. A legitimate end is one that follows only morally sustainable means. With joint action committees involving the teachers and the students already the moral basis is dissolved, since morally and ethically students and teachers can come together on one platform only for issues that further education and learning. I know of so many instances teachers who have incited students against others have faced the wrath of the same set of students. Yet no one seems to be willing to learn lessons and so the tradition continues aided and abetted by the pragmatism of the politics of today.

It is sad to see that universities, especially mine seemed to have forgotten that they have been set up to impart education and knowledge. A university is only as good as its staff and students. In our case it is obvious that both teachers and staff are unwilling to treat education even as an incidental thing in the satisfaction of their self interests. To say that in all this education is a casualty is understating of an understatement. Teachers see the income they get in the form of salaries as a karmic due and therefore do not feel the necessity to work in order to justify them. They therefore move on to other things such as real estate, restaurants, farms, retail stores to supplement their income. And since these demand their presence on a regular basis they are to found here rather than in universities. With full salary fully assured and with no accountability of any variety they are happy to turn revolutionaries fighting for fissiparous causes.

P.S: I had written this post a while ago and as I was writing my internet connection was lost. I forgot about and only remembered it now. As it is with all self aggrandizing people I did not have the heart to just delete this post. So here it is, out of sync with the other posts. But bear with me please.

Politics of pragmatism and the death of integrity

I must say that looking at the last few days, politics have now reached a stage where they have become repulsive. In the land of Gandhi, where fasting was linked with Satyagraha which in itself was the anger that came out of moral integrity for the upholding of truth, today fasting is linked to farce. Last year Mr. K. Chandrashekar Rao of the TRS went on a fast. He is apparently diabetic, hypertensive apart from some more chronic ailments. Yet the man was able to 'fast'for 12 days or more. Chandrababu Naidu 'fasted'for a week a few days ago. Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy, son of former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Dr. Rajashekar Reddy 'fasted'along with one lakh people. Now the Congress Party legislators from Telangana are 'fasting' for a cause. The cause is the Telangana separation. In the Osmania University, at the drop of a hat, students go on an indefinite 'fast'. Somehow I cannot understand why there is a shortage of onions and vegetables with so many people fasting all the time. The situation should have been that of a glut in the vegetable markets.

I could understand the various fasts taken up by members of opposition parties. What beats me and boggles my completely is the protest fasts undertaken by the members of the ruling Congress Party. This must be the height of democracy, where the ruling party is protesting against itself. Or is this the height of irony, or idiocy or the complete lack of integrity? As the 31st of December, 2010 draws ever closer and the Sri Krishna Committee report on the verge of being presented political parties are waiting in the wings to see which way the wind blows and to fly in that direction. So all parties other than the TRS have two factions. Telangana men and Andhra men. If the verdict seems like a separate Telangana then the K. Keshav Rao faction in the Congress Party and the Nagam Janardana Reddy group in the the Telugu Desam Party will swing into action for it while, Lagadapati Rajgopal from the Congress and Yerran Naidu from the Telugu Desam party will fight it. The situation will get reversed if the committee is for the maintenance of a United Andhra Pradesh.

Meanwhile students are still bearing the brunt of all this. For some days now there has been a problem with students of MBA and MCA standing divided over the question of writing exams. On the campus of the Osmania University there have been two groups one for writing exams and the other for boycotting them and these have indulged in a shouting match. Finally, the politicians who matter decided to end this kiddish wrangling and brought in a mature decision. They threatened students and colleges with dire consequences if exams were conducted. So finally the issue has been put to rest. In this near chaotic situation everybody and anybody can call for a bandh and cripple the system. On the Osmania University campus groups of students of up to ten go around shouting slogans and getting the classes suspended.

What ails the State of Andhra Pradesh and the country is this politics of pragmatism. No body stands for anything. No ideology, no morality and no integrity. All that people want is power, so that they can make truck loads of money. With politics becoming a bottomless pit, I wonder what is in store for the people of this state and country?

P.S. Not proof read and hence mistakes of grammar and spelling may be excused.

Thoughts on what will be.

The Sri Krishna Committee is going to submit its report at anytime now. The thing is that I have started writing this blog because of the events surrounding the separate Telangana agitation. People think that the Committee's report will now decide the issue this way or that. Before I write further, I will make it my position on the issue clear. I have said then and I am saying now that I do not stand for the division of the State of Andhra Pradesh. I have commented at length as to why I feel this way. I am from Telangana and this region is very, very dear to me. But I do not think that the kind of politics that are prevalent now will result in the realization of the aspirations of common people of Telangana. It is very clear that the issue has taken on many other dimensions and most of those are those which do not portend to the well being of either the people of this region or of India. India stands to lose with the kind of politics that this articulation of the problem will unleash on the people.

I believe I am objective and therefore let me make another thing very clear. Have the people of Telangana lost something because of being dominated by the Andhra region's people. YES. Is the solution proposed to it the answer. NO. This is a complex question that brooks no easy answers. Knee jerk reactions and jingoism will not get anyone anywhere. In fact, the mess now is the result of such practices in the past. Let me draw an analogy here. If somebody is being sucked down by quicksand the instinctive thing to do would be to thrash around. But that hastens the process of being sucked in and drowned. This situation too is similar. This is the time to sit with a level head and deliberate on the way forward. True liberal democracy is premised in the notion of deliberation and overcoming of obstacles by the use of the faculties of reason and logic. Today in all the shouting that is going on from both sides of the line dividing the people any voice of rationality and logicality is lost. Sanity is lost in the noise of posturing emanating from both sides. The whole thing is now rooted in collective egos of both the sides. Even a small step back is being considered as a defeat and therefore the issue is stalemated. A third person arbitrating in a fight between two will only be able to encourage the two sides to take another look at their positions. But the resolution will only be possible only when the two locked in the dispute want to find it. I have no hope of anything like that happening here. Even if the position is that the State of Andhra Pradesh will remain as it is (a position that is on the face of it consistent with what I want) the people of both regions have already lost a lot and none of that will be retrieved in the future. It will only accelerate the process of deteriorating relations between the two peoples who stand divided. The only solution to this is therefore opening a dialogue between the two sides. Deliberation and acceptance of wrong positions and wrong doing will only be the way forward. Any other way is a way downward and therefore not desirable.

In all this my sympathies with the students of Telangana. I do not think that the students of Andhra has lost as much as those here and therefore I am not extending my sympathies there. People have died here for the cause, lost academic opportunities and opportunities in life and all this in my opinion for nothing. They to me symbolise the character of Boxer the horse in the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell. Needless to say everyone knows who the pigs are. To sum up my feelings for the students I quote two different sets of lyrics written by Roger Waters, my favourite poet and musician. The first set of lines are from "Us and Them" a song from the Dark Side of the Moon.

Forward he cried from the rear, and the front ranks died.

The Generals sat, while the lines on the map moved from side to side (Roger Waters)

The other lyric is a bit longer but equally important

You know that I care what happens to you,

And I know that you care for me too,

So I don't feel alone, on the way to the stone,

Now that I've found somewhere safe to bury my bone,

Any fool knows a dog needs a home, a shelter from pigs on the wing. (Roger Waters)

This lyric is from "Animals" almost a continuation of the Animal Farm by Orwell. I live in hope, otherwise why live at all? I hope that all of us do what is appropriate for us to do. Deliberate and not fall prey to pigs on the wing.

P.S. Not proof read. Mistakes may be excused.

Whither Values?

Robert Browning the poet had an axe to grind. He was extremely unhappy with William Wordsworth. His grievance was the Wordsworth who once stood by the French Revolution had gone back and become a part of the establishment. I too have an axe to grind, but for reasons that are the exact obverse of Robert Browning's. I see that teachers (read University Lecturers and Professors) who have become a part of the establishment firmly have turned revolutionaries. I have no problem with revolutions when they are required. But when revolutions are sought to be created for the furtherance of very personally derived agendas then I have a problem. Let me get to the point without too much ado. I went to my University as I would every day. I found that there was a "Chalo Warangal" programme of the TRS party for the Telangana Garjana which was being organized there. There were more vehicles at the university than there were students. I now conflate this with what I read in the Hindu newspaper of today. It quotes students who on the condition of anonymity complained that they were not willing to boycott end semester examinations and that they wanted their academic schedule to go ahead. They wanted to put politics and agitations on hand and academics on the other, with the former not interfering with the latter. They believed that they needed to get on with the studies, finish them and look for employment. They also said that mainly Ph.D scholars who had nothing to lose since they do not have a semester bound programme were trying to disrupt the academic schedule. I have no reasons to doubt them. In fact in the past I have been told that they were encouraged by some teachers also to boycott exams and continue with the agitation rather than with studies. That brings me to the point of revolutions and revolutionaries.

Herbert Marcuse while examining the causes for the Marxist revolutions not happening, claimed that only students and the lumpen proletariat had a revolutionary potential since they had nothing to lose. The lumpen proletariat bit maybe right but not the students bit. He should have said University Teachers had the potential to be revolutionaries. Having been assured of salaries, pension and a total lack of accountability to anyone or anything, university teachers are the true revolutionaries. They can go and look beyond where any student dares to go. Today's Hindu while talking about the discussions in the Andhra Pradesh State Legislature on the subject of the new bill for the appointment of Vice-Chancellors (which empowers the Governor of the State and the University Grants Commission of India in the appointment process) quotes Chukka Ramaiah (a renowned educationist, apparently for overseeing the coaching of generations of students for the IIT-JEE exam) claims that the appointment of Vice-Chancellors of Universities in the Andhra Pradesh should be the sole prerogative of the State Government since a democratically elected government was accountable to people so would a Vice-Chancellor appointed by the government!!!! I still cannot believe he said that. The Universities in the State of Andhra Pradesh without exception have gone to seed, because of Vice-Chancellors who have been political appointees. Governments have fallen but never have Vice-Chancellors faced the wrath of the people. In fact, a few names of Vice-Chancellors who have curried favour with all political parties and different governments come to mind, but I shall refrain from actually naming them here. Mudslinging is not the purpose of why I write. But the Vice-Chancellors of the above mentioned category have sometimes had tenures of a decade or two (no exaggeration here) when the humble politicians who have appointed them fell out of power in a period of five years.

What stumps me totally is that even a few private college managements who are sympathetic to the Telangana agitation have closed colleges and postponed exams scheduled for today. Strikingly the students wanted to get on with it since some of them are from out of Hyderabad and had reserved tickets to leave on a particular day but the postponement now affects their travel plans. Fortunately the teachers or the management have no such problems. I think it is time that scholars of Marxism and revolutions re-examined the traditional ideas and come back with new theories. In the meanwhile I am impressed with this whole thing of taking salary from the government only to fight it. I think the Idea mobile ads can use this and say "What an idea Sirji".

P.S: Not proof read. Apologies for the many errors of spelling and grammar that you will find.

Compounded confusions and confounded realities

I have delayed this post because I had some trepidations of how reactions would be to something that involves questions about caste and that too about the scheduled castes. I wish I was not so political about my life but it seems that I am. As a preface to what I have to say I will quote Steven Spielberg. This is not a verbatim quote but more a paraphrased recollection of what he once very famously said. After the success of "Saving Private Ryan" (a movie that has moved me to streaming tears every time I have seen it) Spielberg was asked about his motivation behind the making of such a film. To that he said that he wanted the present generation of people to remember that their present is secure because it is built on the sacrifices of this generation's forefathers and especially during the two World Wars. A very profound thing to say and this is true even in the Indian context since the Independence of this country has been a result of a selfless sacrifice of an entire generation (maybe many) of Indian people. But today we seem to have no sense of proportion of the nature and magnitude of sacrifice made by our preceding generations and that is why we shamelessly quarrel over territory and other identities.

Let me get to the point that I am trying to make. I am bemused by the senseless and thoughtless actions of my brothers in this part of the world. The issue of Telangana has now been vitiated by considerations of caste more than anything else. I have posted about that in the past. The talk of "dorala Telangana" (Telangana of the feudal landlords) versus "prajala Telangana" (Telangana of the people) has been on for sometime now. The naivette (or is that maliciousness) of leaders seems to have no end. I have asked before and I have asked again as to how an agitation for a separate Telangana can be seen as a freedom movement and how you can treat people of your country and region as enemies. Are there no people belonging to the scheduled castes and tribes and other backward classes in Andhra and Rayalseema? Why should not people fight casteism instead of asking for a separate region and then try to neuter the power of the upper castes? I still have no answer to this question. Equally important is the fact that there are contradictory tendencies in the articulation of region and caste questions. The brother belonging to the Madiga caste want a division of the State of Andhra Pradesh and in the list of Scheduled castes. My Mala brethren do not wish to have the latter division but are game for the former kind of division. It is not as if there are no intellectuals in these groupings. They have a rich tradition of them. I am utterly confused by the intellectuals also towing the line of the political opportunists. Where is the question of building a society based in equality and a nation based in integrity in the discourse of a separate Telangana and a social justice Telangana? Is there no deliverance from social evils and only the furtherance of particular political gains? Have we become incapable of seeing ourselves as Indians rationally and are we just caught up in the jingoism of a politics based in the pursuit of meaningless identities?

When India became independent, the British said that the nation wouldn't last for more than five years. We have lasted sixty three years. Good so far. But the pursuit of fissiparous tendencies and vision less politics could mean that the British prediction may come true even though it will not be true in the timelines proposed. Are we going to throw away the freedom given to us by the sacrifice of our preceding generations? Are we going to divide ourselves so that someone else can yet again come and rule us? I don't feel too confident about the future. Do we do something about this or do we say que sera sera?

P.S. Not proof read. Mistakes may please be excused.

Whither Social Sciences? Part Trois

For a change I am not taking too much of a break between my posts. What has prompted me to do this is a few conversations that I have been having with a few of my colleagues, "academicians" if you like. I know that the tone of my posts has changed considerably. I can see my early posts were more in the nature of academic presentations which were neutral to emotions. Now they have turned polemical and I think what has happened is justified because the change in the tone has happened involuntarily and probably because I feel indignant about what has been happening ever since the separate Telangana agitation has happened. I don't really want to temper my feeling of indignation since it seems to me that it is not misplaced at all. The question then what has this go to do with the whithering of social sciences? My indignation is not because of the posturing of politicians or because of the antics of goons or because of the inability of students to weed out the chaff from the grain. It is because of the attitude of teachers. I somehow think that the term cannot be applied to these individuals who are no better than petty politicians trying pass of intellectuals. Most of them cannot talk about any aspect of social sciences for more than thirty or forty seconds meaningfully.

The "intellectuals" of the universities in the Telangana region can make uneducated politicians seem like towering visionaries. For those of you who read my earlier posts what I am saying now will be familiar. I have claimed in the past the most of the teaching faculty have come into the profession have done so because they have been brought in by someone who was distributing favours. Most of these people are petty in their thinking and have as much intelligence as sheep and are quite happy to follow the leader. Since they have aspirations of becoming something that they are incapable of and since they want to be facilitators between politicians and those who need the politicians, they are quite happy to tow the line of the politicians. They in fact, brazenly try to ingratiate themselves to the politicians by providing them platforms to speak in academic institutions such as the universities and colleges and shout slogans along with the followers of the politicians. They have no understanding of any issues of any kind and that is the case with Telangana too.

The world today emphasizes the necessity for a vibrant social science community that has the wherewithal to understand complex social issues and present them in a cogent manner to the students and society in general. This is mostly the case if developed countries such as the USA, UK and other European countries. The social scientists there are conscientious and work with the idea to understand their society and politics better. Even those who have agitated against the State have done so after they have understood the functioning of the State. In my university and other universities in the state, this is a bit too much to expect. Social scientists have not studied even the social science texts of the 5th grade in school properly. Some of them have written text books themselves and these are works of pure fiction. In their ignorance therefore it is easy to overlook questions pertaining to nativity. The Telangana agitation is based in the issue of "sons of the soil" (I use this expression wisely, since daughters have no part in anything). Academicians are competing with each other to show that they are sons of the soil and anybody else is a "settler". The coining of this term astounds me in this context. Nowhere in the world do people call their own countrymen settlers if they move from one region to the other in the same country. But here in Telangana it is done. People from any other part of the world are welcome but not if they are from the Coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh or the Rayalseema region. Some one who lives a few kilometres away from the Telangana region moves about 2o or 30 kms and is immediately a settler. Anywhere else in the world, this would be a matter of shame but not here. Neighbours shame but owners pride. With social science in this wonderful condition and with legions of uneducated students pouring out into the world, I wonder what the future is.

P.S. Many of the "sons of the soil" have members of their family who have moved on to the USA, but don't see themselves as "settlers". In fact, one of them even told me that there they feel like they own the piece of land on which they are. How is that for hypocrisy?

Post not proof read. Bear with me, as usual.

Whither Social Sciences? Part deux

I suppose there is no point in apologising for the long delays and gaps between posts but then I honestly tell you that I have been busy, perhaps for the first time in the twenty years of my working life. I would like to share with you stories of what happened and what kept me so busy but then that would be akin to giving away the official secrets of my employer. However, I cannot stop myself from saying that when we were speaking to a team from the UGC some of my colleagues from the sciences spectacularly made fools of themselves. That brings me back to the point that I have been making for a long time now, inbreeding weakens the gene. By cleverly coining the Osmania for Osmanians slogan and sticking to it steadfastly for a few decades, we have managed to successfully convert ourselves into very small frogs in very, very small wells. Ironically however, we have also built up massive egos thinking that our hole is the world. Today we are paying for that. Even though I am repeating myself, this is the reason why there is a separate Telangana agitation and that too in the university alone. We all have seen our highly qualified students making themselves completely ineligible for any kind of employment. It sickens me to see that there are Ph.D holders who do not even know what is there in their theses. These theses are products of the ever growing "service industry" and the concept of "outsourcing". The wonderful liaisons between serving academicians means that theses are passed without anybody actually reading them. On the lines of various mafias, we also have an academic mafia that will survive only when the system is subverted successfully and hence these mafiosi are always on the look out for opportunities of subversion. The unholy link with the political parties and joint action committees with students are all products of this great enterprise of the academic mafia. While qualified people are rotting somewhere or have left the shores of the country, the mafia controls the education system. Amen to that.

But that is only a part of what I want to say in this post. The take over of the system by the mafia has meant that the ranks of teachers have swelled with people pursuing their own agendas. Now that caste has become a political variable what better than to use it to leverage things for personal benefit? Most social scientists (if you can call them that) in the southern part of the country have turned out to be casteists. All their "work" is centred around their own caste. The special thing about this is the fact that everybody is now in the race to prove how their caste is the most backward. In this process a new and sharp schism is beginning to take root between the Scheduled Castes and the Other Backward Classes. It is pertinent to note here that OBC stands for Other Backward Classes but for all practical purposes people have converted the expansion of the the abbreviation to Other Backward Castes. We all know that the implication of class is completely different from that of caste. So here is a case of misappropriation of terminology which has deep social implications. The contradictions between the SC and the OBC are sharpening because of the perception among the SCs that there are many OBCs who are traditionally rich and powerful and that more are emerging as powerful because of the patronage that they enjoy from upper caste political parties and the political system itself. The OBCs have been quietly retaliating by saying that the general stock of many Scheduled Castes is better than that of many Other Backward Castes (in fact, they have dropped the O and now are just Backward Castes or BCs). There is now an attempt to build the case of MBCs or Most Backward Castes who are worse off than the Scheduled Castes. They also claim that Scheduled Castes are smaller in number and have enjoyed reservations constitutionally for a much longer period. Needless to say the Scheduled Castes do not agree with this version. In all this social science "research" is non existent but is made to look as if it is active by simply quoting ones own caste history (mostly unwritten) or by talking to members of the caste. Since it is politically wrong and physically unsafe to contradict any of this, upper caste social scientists have migrated to working on stuff that is pertinent to them. Since Phule and Ambedkar are now the exclusive preserve of the BCs and SCs respectively, Gandhi is being rediscovered along with Nehru, Rajagopalachari etc. The upper caste social scientists too are a divided lot with those having right wing affinities having usurped the right to speak about Vallabhai Patel and Bhagat Singh and the Bengali intellectuals comfortably nestled in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya's and Aurobindo and Subhash Chandra Bose. This to me is an indication that there is no focussed research on anything contemporary in society and that social scientists are clinging to straws from the past which will neither add to or subtract from what is happening in contemporary society.

P.S: The Social Scientists of my University and State ensure that their progeny rarely study social sciences and certainly not in our university. Most of them send their sons and daughters to other states to pursue more "meaningful" education with greater possibilities of employment. Meanwhile here they are contented to form Joint Action Committees with students and playing with their futures and ultimately destroying their lives.

As usual I have not proof read this. Mistakes may therefore by excused.

Whither social sciences?

I don't know how ethical I am being here by posting this but I feel an important aspect of education in Andhra Pradesh has seen complete neglect and I came face to face with this. I was asked to speak to lecturers who teach political science at the plus two level. The experience I had was even to a cynic like me, very shocking. I went expecting that the teachers would be lackadaisical, not pay attention to what I would be saying to them. When I reached the place I was told to expect hostility and that already three teachers had been booed when they tried to speak to them. When the resource persons spoke in English they were asked to switch to Telugu. I entered into a room full of people shouting at each other and when the person from the hosts side tried to introduce me to the audience, there were shouts of "we are government servants and we are getting substandard coffee and food". Through this the host valiantly tried to continue introducing me but that only led to greater push back from the "teachers"who wanted to settle the issue once and for all. (The issue being lack of proper coffee and food). I was asked to get to the podium in the midst of this mayhem and I obliged.

As my lecture on secularism proceeded (I was asked to speak about the various meanings of secularism) slowly a silence dawned in the room. Before the optimists among you jump to the conclusion that this had something to do with my ability to bring order among the unruly or my ability to soothe the "government servants"whose ego was bruised, I would like to state that peace descended since most of the "teachers"left the room in complete disgust after I started speaking in English. A handful were left and more than half of the handful that were left were drawn into deep sleep by the sonorousness of my voice. A few grudgingly heard what I was saying while about four seemed to actually listen to what I had to say. Four out of sixty five, I guess things could be worse.

I am sure you have got the point that I am trying to make. These are teachers and their behaviour was such. Every year, many students pass through the classes and lectures of these teachers, one of whom spelt Karl Marx as Karal Marks. We in the University inherit these students and push them out with postgraduate degrees without making any changes in them or their behaviour. I noticed that there was also a parallel course for teachers of mathematics and they seemed orderly in their behaviour and also saw some discussions in their room. So this is obviously a malady plaguing the social sciences because what we see in the university is similar to this. So do I then conclude that social sciences have whithered away and produce teachers and students who are anti-social in their disposition? You decide and tell me.

P.S: As usual my disclaimer. I have not proof read what I have written so I maybe excused. Thank You.

Is democracy another term for goonocracy?

Contrary to popular perceptions, the Ancient Greeks didn't care too much for democracy. Even though the word is derived from the Greek language, its meaning for people such as Plato was more mob rule than people's rule. Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science (I can see him twisting in his grave at this description of mine), put Plato at the top of the enemies of open society. For long academicians, especially those who believed in the linear conception of history, and also in the interpretative method have quite severely castigated Popper for being insensitive to the cultural differences that history creates and talking about an open society in the context of Ancient Greece while it was more of a modern construct. This is not the appropriate forum to discuss the rightness or wrongness of Karl Popper in his uncharitable description of Plato. However, I have invoked his argument for a specific purpose. For once I shall accept his characterization of Plato without question. So Plato is the enemy of open society. He was "totalitarian" in his thinking. He had no respect for this sacred cow called democracy. Now I shall mount my own critique of Karl Popper for scoffing at Plato for being an enemy of democracy and open society. Here I shall firmly stand on the side of Plato and agree with his idea that democracy is mobocracy. And why have I become like this?

A couple of days ago I read in the newspapers of some of the actions of the pro-Telangana "students". Yes those very ones who have been beaten brutally in public by the police and consequently earned the "right" to behave as they please. Some of these people who apparently are on a higher moral plane than people like me, have decided that they have had enough of Andhra Pradesh and that the Government of Andhra Pradesh should not celebrate the formation of the State. (I am quite at a loss to understand why a State Government should mourn the existence of itself though). As a mark of protest and and as a guarantee to validate their claims, these leaders broke into the premises of the Potti Sree Ramulu Telugu University, doused Potti Sree Ramulu's statue with kerosene or petrol and tried to set it on fire. A security guard alerted to the authorities and this bid was foiled, albeit the statue of the said man was damaged. Then the Osmania University Students JAC created and burnt the effigy of same man, as a symbolic freeing of Telangana from the clutches of the Andhra colonists. Some of the leaders then decided to even burn up the statue of Telugu Thalli statue. Hence the police is sparing no efforts to keep anyone away from the statue.

Here I have a couple of questions.

1. How did Potti Sree Ramulu contribute to the betrayal of Telangana or to its colonization by the Andhra capitalists and land grabbers? Do these "students" and "research scholars" even know what Potti Sree Ramulu did? I am sure they don't, otherwise why would they apportion blame on him for things that he is not remotely responsible.

2. What is the language spoken by people in the Telangana region? I was under the stupid impression that it was Telugu. And if it is Telugu why are there intentions of destroying something which is nothing more than a symbol of the Telugu language. Like the Bharat Mata or Maa Bharthi.

3. I wonder how many people will not be angered by terrorists if they set fire to a statue or effigy of Bharat Mata. If people who set fire to Bharat Mata are anti-national, what are people who do the same here to Telugu thalli and Potti Sree Ramulu?

4. And why are not people indignant about these things? Is it fear or have we simply become so comfortably numb that these things do not mean anything to anyone anymore?

If fear is the key to understanding this mute spectating by people then Plato must be right that democracy is nothing but mob rule or in this case goonocracy. That in itself would not have been so bad, if it wasn't for the fact that these goons are "vidyavanthulu", "intellectuals", "research scholars" etc. I am now trying to imagine how the uneducated will be then. Wait a minute, I think I know the answer. They will be much more enlightened, since they are not goons masquerading as something else.

It brings a tear to my eye that a man who has given up his life after an arduous 40 day fast has this done to him. Rest in peace Sri Potti Sree Ramulu, we are not worthy of your legacy.

P.S. I have not proof read this post, due to paucity of time. All errors may please be forgiven, thank you.

Justification for Violence - Shocking

My intention was originally to continue my posts about education being a categorical imperative, but as is normally the case I have been busy and when not busy inertia has kept me away from writing the blog. This time around there has been a reason that has brought me back to the blog and that too with a sense of indignation. I am going to narrate an incident that happened on Facebook and how that has shocked and horrified me. My initial reaction to that was to fight back on that thread itself, then I thought I should let it pass, since the people involved in it are all my very good friends. But a certain sense of righteous indignation persists and therefore I have decided to write about it in my blog. I will not reveal any names, I am still good friends with them and will continue to be, and I assure that this incident despite the indignation in me, has brought no rancor or changed my feelings towards my friends.

I am sure you are all aware that last week or perhaps the week before that there was this incident on one of the Telugu news channels. This incident justifies my opinion that TV channels have been trying to make merry and increase their TRPs by focusing on the Telangana agitation again and again. One of the Telugu news channels called two protagonists of the separate Telangana agitation for a discussion. Both are young men and very "educated". They were representing two views on the issue and this was obviously an inconvenience to each other. Suddenly in the middle of the discussion of the leaders turns around and hits the other and all hell breaks lose with both fighting but the aggressor clearly having an upper hand. In spite of the anchor's plea for a break, the telecast goes on for about 30 seconds, long enough for people to see the fisticuffs and hear abuse such as "nee amma"and "lanja kodaka". These were two that I could make out, there were more. (Those who have missed this can do a search on Youtube and get the clips). The clip was posted on Facebook by one friend and there was some banter about what the leadership was going to be and what that meant for the future of a separate Telangana. One of the friends started getting a little serious in defending the actions of the persons involved in the incident on live TV but put a disclaimer saying that this was not condoning what had been seen on live TV. His argument was that the present leadership is equally bad, so no need for any special castigation of the new leadership. Then comes the bomb. A long term protagonist of the separate Telangana agitation (and a very good friend of mine) writes that the person who started the fisticuffs was "brutally beaten by the police in front of TV cameras"then taken to the police station and given "more of the same treatment there". He also pointed out that this person was hard working and supported his family by working in National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and is a good student who was eloquent in Telugu though not the same in English. Here it may be pertinent to point out that the said leader is a Ph.D student in English at the Osmania University. The post justifies that Osmania University has big contingent of "rural"students who should be seen in a different light. The other friend who was gingerly defending this in the beginning decided to go to the defence of this person with the argument that Osmania University was a university of rural and "dalit"students who have impeccable moral rectitude. That may be the case.

I have two questions coming out of this.

1. Is there a justification for misbehaving in public (on live TV) because you have been beaten up yourself by someone else? I must tell you here that I once knew someone who wanted to throw garbage from the top floor because when this person lived on the lower floor in another apartment in another city people did the same to him. Another person did not want to pay rent to his flat owner because his tenant in another city was not paying him rent on time. Is this logical or is it just me having a problem?

2. By invoking the rural and the dalit categories are we saying that we do not judge them by standards that are normally applicable to people for behaviour in public? Are these people different? I wonder if the dalits and the rural people will agree with this.

I also anticipate that the arguments of my friends will be that the points raised by me are not to be taken seriously and that they were for information only. My request to people then is do not talk about issues that have no bearing on the discussion in question. It can mislead and portray a picture that is not true.

I will be back with some more posts very soon. Hope I can keep up that promise. I have typed this in a huge hurry so mistakes may be forgiven.

Xenophobia of a different variety

I have been falling behind with my posts and I am very sorry about that. Sometimes the situation concerning the things that are of interest seems so hopeless that I feel what is the point in going on about those things. But recently I have yet again seen incidents which make me feel that it is my social responsibility to express my disgust at some of the things that are happening in the name of Telangana. Yes it is time to revisit the issue. For sometime now I have been noticing some unbelievable things both in the Osmania University and in the State of Andhra Pradesh. Let me start with what I have seen in the Osmania University. After the conducting of entrance examinations for various post-graduate courses and announcing of results and filling of seats it was found that a "non-local" had topped the entrance examination in Political Science. It was impossible to deny him admission since he was the topper and had no one above him. When his "status" of "non-local" was discovered he was first confronted by colleagues in my department (I work in and for the dept of Political Science) who gently tried to ask him as to how and why he landed up in Osmania University. The man says he did so because he wanted to be in Hyderabad and the Osmania University since they would offer him the best possible opportunity to learn things and further a career. Slowly the "teachers" in the dept started to "counsel" the chappie about the dangers of being in OU at a time when the separate Telangana agitation was on. If this is not xenophobia what is? People from within the country and state have now become outsiders or aliens. Quite an unparalleled situation.

Another instance for your consideration. A few days ago the Dean of the faculty of Eduction had invited examiners from various parts of Andhra Pradesh to examine scripts of the Bachelor of Education examination. One morning a group of students lands up at the building where the evaluations were being conducted, identifies teachers from the Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra (combinedly called Seem-Andhra) areas, asks them to stop evaluating papers since the outsiders were deliberately giving less marks to students from the Telangana region. In the process some of them were man handled and mildly beaten. Amazing is it not? But to make things even more intriguing is the fact that "Prof" Kodandram (Reddy), I put the Reddy in brackets because he has dropped that from his name, instead of chiding the students for beating up teachers, supports them and talks about the ills that the Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema people have perpetrated on the people of Telangana. There is no condemnation of the incident either from his side. I can only say that this thing amazes me.

The media plays a tremendous role in the furtherance of all this. Yesterday there was a call for celebration of Telangana Vimochana (liberation) day. There were all kinds of problems with that. The Muslim leaders such as Asaduddin Owaisi have warned that such a celebration would alienate the Muslims and project them in the wrong light while the ABVP which is the student wing of BJP insisted on calling it a liberation day for obvious reasons. Then the moderates, read that as people from TRS, have decided to call it the Telangana Vileena (merger) day. But they were categorical that the merger was into the Indian Union but not into Andhra Pradesh. Then the caste forums of BC, SC and ST have called this the Telangana Vidrohana (betrayel) day because on this day the oppressed people of Telangana were betrayed by merging of the region into Andhra Pradesh. The caste and the religion basis of the movement is clear that it is not all about region but other issues. The media (read that as TV crews) picked up the best spots and sat in front of the Arts College in Osmania University waiting for some trouble to brew so that they can get free software which they will run and re-run for hours and hours.

The sad part is the politics of this whole thing. The second point of this post talks about how students attacked teachers from the non-Telangana areas. How did they come to know of the existence of these people on the Osmania campus? They were informed by the teachers of the Osmania University who found an opportunity to settle scores with a colleague of theirs, who happens to be the Dean of the faculty of Education. It was found that he had his roots in Rayalaseema and apparently since they had a difference of opinion with him they tried to teach him a lesson by getting students to attack the non-local teachers who had come to the university at the invitation of the Dean. When the students who had perpetrated this crime were identified, the Don of TRS, K. Chandrashekhar Rao admonishes that if the students were arrested, then there would be blood bath in Telangana. These days KCR talks about blood baths at the drop of a hat. I wonder what kind of people staying in the USA are funding his political campaign? I want to ask them if they were comfortable funding this kind of activity?

Telangana today represents a peculiar xenophobia. Neo-Nazis, Skinhead, Dot Busters etc have targetted people who have come from far flung areas of the world but not people who lived in their country. I am not supporting them too by the way. I draw the parallel to show how parochial thinking, casteism and sectarianism are creating a new kind of xenophobia where a person living less than a few hundred kilometres from Telangana is considered a foreigner who comes to Telangana to colonise it. Sad, but that seems to be the way this country is moving.

P.S. I have not had the time to proof read what I have written so errors of spelling and grammar which will be plentiful maybe excused. Thank you.

Leave them kids alone.

I am fully aware that yet again I have fallen behind by not posting for a while. There have been good reasons for that. I have been busy with a few things at work. I will continue to post about Education being a categorical imperative, but for the time being let me write about something which totally shocked me yesterday. Once again we will have to revisit the Telangana issue in order to understand my angst about what happened yesterday. I have the honour of working at the Arts College on Osmania University Campus which somehow has become the main arena for all things sensational. It seems to be the only place where people think they can do something about Telangana and therefore on a daily basis there are a couple of outdoor broadcast vans on the OU campus and these belong to the increasing number of Telugu news channels that lean on the Telangana issue to provide some software for them, with no expenditure. You may be aware that in the last few days there have been a spate suicides on the part of people starting from the age group of 16 to 28 and apparently all of them died because Telangana was not being formed soon enough. This has lead to some students meeting on the OU campus where a call went out to all students to NOT commit suicide. A few days later, i.e yesterday a meeting was organized to have students take a pledge that they will not commit suicide for Telangana. What I saw was what shocked me.

In the space in front of the Arts college, stood a number of outdoor broadcasting vans of some TV channels. And there in whatever space was available were students brought in the droves by the organizers. What shocked me was that most of them were possibly below the age of ten and the others were definitely below the age of fifteen. They were all in school uniforms of different schools. I wondered if this is the age group of people who commit suicide for Telangana. Do they even know what the issue is? What saddened me even more was that after the pledge was taken these little ones were made to shout slogans of Jai Telangana in front of the TV cameras. What is this? Shades of LTTE? Are we now recruiting babes in arms for the furtherance of politics? Is it really necessity to involve small children for the realization of a separate Telangana? I personally think not. But you decide for yourself. And somehow I have a sneaking suspicion that this is recruitment of people for the cadres of political parties for the future. We have really started catching them young by the look of it.

Education - A categorical imperative - III

I will start this post of mine with an anecdote which is not only hilarious but also demonstrative of how a proper lack of knowledge of languages can hurt the cause of understanding and enlightenment. A few years ago, 2006 actually, there was an outbreak of a viral fever in the Hyderabad, India, the city which is my home. The virus was imported into India from Africa and has a Swahili name - Chikun Gunya. I believe it translates to unbearable pain. The proliferation of news channels on TV has meant that they will pick up the "hottest" subject and beat it to death and beyond. In one of these channels onto which I stumbled by accident I saw a doctor explaining the problems associated with Chikun Gunya fever. Somehow in Andhra Pradesh Chikun Gunya was corrupted to Chicken Gunya. During the course of the interview that the doctor was facing, the interviewer posed the question as to why this fever had this name Chicken Gunya, that is. The doctor without batting an eyelid said that people who have this fever have extreme pain and therefore they have "gooni", Telugu for hunched and since they walk completely hunched they look like a chicken. Therefore the name Chicken Gunya. Over a period of time not only did this explanation gain currency but also was often confused with Avian Flu that was around that time. Chicken is a bird so chicken gunya is avian or bird flu!! The net result of this was that people who had simple fevers were afraid that they had the possibly fatal avian flu and when they were cured of their fever told everyone that they had survived bird flu.

I have given this anecdote here for two reasons. The first is because to show the horrible effects of bad translations. The second is to show that in the present world it is impossible to stop the process of new disease imports. You wonder as to what that has to do with anything that I have to say. The answer is simple. If diseases are global then there has to a global knowledge base to cure those diseases. In order to have a proper ability to share this knowledge, a global language called English is necessary. It is by avoiding English that we can end up being globally irrelevant. This is not to argue that English is superior or that Indian languages are inferior. It is simply to establish that is a Globalised world it is not possible to survive effectively without English. That is the reason why the Chinese are also beginning to teach English to their students from the Kindergarten itself. India on the other hand is going backwards. English was almost an English language, especially in the southern parts of the country. Today however, jingoism and a false sense of pride over one's own tongue have meant that we are a on a downward spiral.

Regional media for education were introduced in India in tearing hurry and that has led to the destruction of the education system. There can be no argument over the fact that socially, politically and medically relevant knowledge has to treat the world as its constituency. When the world is the constituency for knowledge, the language used for understanding this should have the flexibility and openness to describe and analyze situations and diseases etc. Now local languages are precisely that. Since every language evolves from within a culture its structures and vocabulary pertain that culture. English too was a local language once. But with colonialism and with the spread of English to most parts of the world and because it was the language of the powerful, English became the language which was better equipped than most to deal with new and emerging forms of knowledge. These developments meant that for a local Indian language to be enriched it needed translations from English. However, the problem with that is that it requires persons who have a good grasp and control over both the languages, English and the other language into which things are being translated. It also means that the translator will have to be knowledgeable of technical terms and the technicalities of the languages concerned. A tall order. For a nation in a hurry to establish itself as the equal of all others such an exercise proved to be time consuming. Instead, of then saying that English would be the language of instruction till such time that bodies of knowledge were adequately translated into Indian languages, to satisfy the jingoistic concerns of some, regional media of instruction were introduced taking education to where it is today. And all those who have been educated in the regional media and are hopeless about their future are a big constituency of lumpen elements whose services can be hired by politicians for whatever purposes they have in their minds. Otherwise how does one explain educational institutions becoming breeding grounds for all activities political, revolutionary or otherwise.

In a democracy where vote banks are of the utmost importance, it is quite necessary to satisfy the will of the people. The huge pool of the lumpen students is readily available for demonstrating the strength of the issue. So we have a situation where education institutions instead of enlightening people are serving the cause of the dark side of politics. The need therefore is to have English as the medium of instruction and starting teaching meaningful things to students. Otherwise, China will take over from us as the second biggest English speaking country in the world and usurp our position in the service industry which is the biggest employer of Indians.

Education - A categorical imperative - II

My last post ended with a hortatory line and someone asked me if I was doing something myself or only asking other people to do things. I would like to assure all concerned I am doing my bit for the cause and if I were to start writing about the things that I do, this blog will turn into an advertisement for myself, something that I am not very keen about. In my many years as a student of the social sciences, I have observed that in the case of India, the social sciences have atrophied completely. With the exception of a few pockets such as Delhi and Kolkata, the social sciences never even had the opportunity to be properly grounded. Even in the case of Kolkata, the social sciences have not been oriented towards what is considered to their true nature, that of being a liberal art. But those are small issues that I do not intend to focus my attention too much on. Nevertheless, I did make that statement about the Kolkata version of the social sciences not conforming to the liberal arts with a reason. In the Western world one saw the social sciences incepting in an atmosphere that was conducive to free thinking. Free thinking was the desire of the individual to define and organize oneself on rational grounds in a way which would facilitate that individual's realization of the true potential of the self. Into this scenario were born the social sciences which took advantage of the liberality of a society that allowed the individual to do what I have talked about in the preceding sentences. The social sciences then were an extension of the liberal arts and at best a slightly more pompous version of the arts. All things considered pretensions apart the subject matter of the social sciences and the liberal arts is the same. Therefore that which is considered to be "social scientific" knowledge is one that still deals with the question of the individual and his/her place in society. Karl Marx, in his attempt to ground the study of human society in what he called "objective material conditions" created an epistemological break by seeking to eliminate the one variable for whose sake the study was being carried out - the human being. But by and large the agenda that even the Marxists and Marx had was very much consistent with that of the liberal arts. I know that you are thinking that this is a lecture on what the social sciences are and wondering about what the post itself. I have deliberately done this in order to demonstrate that whatever be their pomposity, the social sciences came into being for a purpose, and when we teach social sciences in India, we do that without even knowing what that purpose is and how it came into being.

The state of social science education in India is poor. There are many reasons for this but the most significant of them is the fact that the social sciences have got lost in an ocean of stupidity. After the attaining of independence the spirit was such that people took pride in their own culture and justifiably so. But when this pride in one's own culture is stretched to illogical levels, it only becomes jingoism that is completely devoid of any meaningful content. And that is what happened with the education system in India and especially so the social science education. One may ask why the social sciences especially? If that is your question you will find the answer to that in the following sentences. Most of the time when certain words find circulation in the sphere of public speech they begin to loose their true import and meaning. After a while they remain merely words with no specific content or meaning and therefore they become vacuous. Nevertheless they continue to circulate in the public sphere with people talking at each other than to each other. Education, the term or the word, has sadly met the same fate. People today talk about education without having the faintest idea about what is involved in it. For most education is a degree that one receives, to some it is a sacred cow and if you are in Andhra Pradesh it is a business opportunity. None of these correspond to what education is or should be. Armed with this inability to properly define education we have successfully created stereotypes about what it is and therefore we think that one who has 95% marks is educated or one who has a good job is educated and so forth. The furtherance of these stereotypes has created a mess that is now very difficult to clean up. In all this the very elementary purpose of education - that of enlightenment - has been forgotten. Compounding the situation are the pursuit of money and material happiness.

In this process the social sciences have suffered more and disciplines such as history have been reduced to the documenting of fictitious and peurile things. They have also become weapons in the hands of bigots. So why did this happen. The answer is simple. The social sciences when they were born in the West had a form that was consistent with the content. It has remained more or less like that till date. However, in India it is a different story. We have taken the form and have tried to stuff it with whatever we thought was the appropriate content. This parody of sorts happened because of the desire to study in one's own tongue and when there is no body of knowledge to support that ambition or aspiration, things are bound to go wrong. The true pursuit of social science entails either a translation of all Western content into whichever language that one wished to study in or the creation of an alternative body of knowledge. In India's case neither has happened and as a result people study the same book in their mother tongue, from class eleven to Ph. D. This means that higher qualifications are awarded for studying the same book. What is even better is that in spite of the ten odd years that go into the study of the same book, the students are still at a loss to explain what it contains. Social scientific education is a necessity in any society, for it is the tool that one can use to have an audit of the functions of society, politics and governance. Not only can it audit, it can also provide with good alternatives to bad policies and programmes. It is also a necessity for a good and enlightened democracy. In the case of India, the necessity for proper social sciences is even more heightened for obvious reasons. A society that has become fissiparous and threatens to fall apart needs good social sciences. And that is missing. Are the other sciences any better? The answer will be yes, but only a little. The other sciences are armed with mathematics and numbers which are considered to be lingua pura and therefore they are not bogged down so much by the problems of language. It is therefore completely a categorical imperative in order create a proper social scientific knowledge and once again create the globally competitive Indian. I will talk about more of the same in my next post.

Education - A categorical imperative - II

My last post ended with a hortatory line and someone asked me if I was doing something myself or only asking other people to do things. I would like to assure all concerned I am doing my bit for the cause and if I were to start writing about the things that I do, this blog will turn into an advertisement for myself, something that I am not very keen about. In my many years as a student of the social sciences, I have observed that in the case of India, the social sciences have atrophied completely. With the exception of a few pockets such as Delhi and Kolkata, the social sciences never even had the opportunity to be properly grounded. Even in the case of Kolkata, the social sciences have not been oriented towards what is considered to their true nature, that of being a liberal art. But those are small issues that I do not intend to focus my attention too much on. Nevertheless, I did make that statement about the Kolkata version of the social sciences not conforming to the liberal arts with a reason. In the Western world one saw the social sciences incepting in an atmosphere that was conducive to free thinking. Free thinking was the desire of the individual to define and organize oneself on rational grounds in a way which would facilitate that individual's realization of the true potential of the self. Into this scenario were born the social sciences which took advantage of the liberality of a society that allowed the individual to do what I have talked about in the preceding sentences. The social sciences then were an extension of the liberal arts and at best a slightly more pompous version of the arts. All things considered pretensions apart the subject matter of the social sciences and the liberal arts is the same. Therefore that which is considered to be "social scientific" knowledge is one that still deals with the question of the individual and his/her place in society. Karl Marx, in his attempt to ground the study of human society in what he called "objective material conditions" created an epistemological break by seeking to eliminate the one variable for whose sake the study was being carried out - the human being. But by and large the agenda that even the Marxists and Marx had was very much consistent with that of the liberal arts. I know that you are thinking that this is a lecture on what the social sciences are and wondering about what the post itself. I have deliberately done this in order to demonstrate that whatever be their pomposity, the social sciences came into being for a purpose, and when we teach social sciences in India, we do that without even knowing what that purpose is and how it came into being.

The state of social science education in India is poor. There are many reasons for this but the most significant of them is the fact that the social sciences have got lost in an ocean of stupidity. After the attaining of independence the spirit was such that people took pride in their own culture and justifiably so. But when this pride in one's own culture is stretched to illogical levels, it only becomes jingoism that is completely devoid of any meaningful content. And that is what happened with the education system in India and especially so the social science education. One may ask why the social sciences especially? If that is your question you will find the answer to that in the following sentences. Most of the time when certain words find circulation in the sphere of public speech they begin to loose their true import and meaning. After a while they remain merely words with no specific content or meaning and therefore they become vacuous. Nevertheless they continue to circulate in the public sphere with people talking at each other than to each other. Education, the term or the word, has sadly met the same fate. People today talk about education without having the faintest idea about what is involved in it. For most education is a degree that one receives, to some it is a sacred cow and if you are in Andhra Pradesh it is a business opportunity. None of these correspond to what education is or should be. Armed with this inability to properly define education we have successfully created stereotypes about what it is and therefore we think that one who has 95% marks is educated or one who has a good job is educated and so forth. The furtherance of these stereotypes has created a mess that is now very difficult to clean up. In all this the very elementary purpose of education - that of enlightenment - has been forgotten. Compounding the situation are the pursuit of money and material happiness.

In this process the social sciences have suffered more and disciplines such as history have been reduced to the documenting of fictitious and peurile things. They have also become weapons in the hands of bigots. So why did this happen. The answer is simple. The social sciences when they were born in the West had a form that was consistent with the content. It has remained more or less like that till date. However, in India it is a different story. We have taken the form and have tried to stuff it with whatever we thought was the appropriate content. This parody of sorts happened because of the desire to study in one's own tongue and when there is no body of knowledge to support that ambition or aspiration, things are bound to go wrong. The true pursuit of social science entails either a translation of all Western content into whichever language that one wished to study in or the creation of an alternative body of knowledge. In India's case neither has happened and as a result people study the same book in their mother tongue, from class eleven to Ph. D. This means that higher qualifications are awarded for studying the same book. What is even better is that in spite of the ten odd years that go into the study of the same book, the students are still at a loss to explain what it contains. Social scientific education is a necessity in any society, for it is the tool that one can use to have an audit of the functions of society, politics and governance. Not only can it audit, it can also provide with good alternatives to bad policies and programmes. It is also a necessity for a good and enlightened democracy. In the case of India, the necessity for proper social sciences is even more heightened for obvious reasons. A society that has become fissiparous and threatens to fall apart needs good social sciences. And that is missing. Are the other sciences any better? The answer will be yes, but only a little. The other sciences are armed with mathematics and numbers which are considered to be lingua pura and therefore they are not bogged down so much by the problems of language. It is therefore completely a categorical imperative in order create a proper social scientific knowledge and once again create the globally competitive Indian. I will talk about more of the same in my next post.

Education - A categorical Imperative

My last post on this blog ended with a question. I asked myself and all those who read this blog if we are just passengers being carried away by the immutable laws of physics into a world which will see us back in a position of inferiority vis a vis other countries. I have my answer and I hope the answer of those who read this blog is similar too. I want to believe that something can be done and that it must be done and that is the reason why I say it is a categorical imperative. All problems affecting this country today are those that go back to the lack of a good system of education. Let me draw a parallel here. The old USSR imploded mainly because it tried to something which was not sustainable. To understand what I am saying better, let us look at the structure of what was the USSR. There were sixteen republics and they lynch pin among them was Russia. A feudal colonial power that brought the fifteen other republics under its control through the usual violent means. In the post Second World War days, especially under the rule of Stalin, Russia pursued its imperial intents under the garb of World Communism. The fifteen other republics were already co-opted into the process by being part of the USSR. At this point I would like to state though there was supposed to be the use of the principle of self determination used in the formation of the USSR, it is well known that most became a part of it since they were not allowed any other option. Russia tried to take on the best imperial powers such as the West European nations and the USA in their own back yard. It believed that through military might the rest of the world could be brought down on its knees. So it accelerated the arms race and in the process spent its precious resources on military might while at the same time starving the people of the USSR literally. The collapse of the Soviet economy was that which led to the implosion and every republic went its peacefully, except Georgia and Chechenya.

For those among you who are wondering as to what this bit of Russian history has to do with the present post, I am drawing a parallel between the Indian education system's present plight with that of the economy of the erstwhile USSR. What makes the parallel possible is the underlying cause which is unrealistic ambition and a foolish determination to prove to the world that you are among the best when actually the basic frame work to getting there does not exist. Russia and the USSR tried to become the most powerful without having the economic strength that is necessary to satisfy such an ambition. India too is trying to climb up the ladder to becoming a brain power while in effect, every step that it takes on this ladder is pulling the ladder down. And that is happening because the basics of what should be good education are not in place. Even though this may entail a repetition of some issues that I have written in other posts, I will go ahead and say that the first big mistake was in expanding the education system without considering the hurdles that it would create. The second big mistake was the government's pursuit of socialism and therefore its inability to invest properly in the educational sector. The setting up of all the huge public sector where there were six supervisors for one worker saw a drain on the resources. This meant that the government had no money to nurture an education system which will feed the developmental process for a long time to come. The result was the almost complete abandoning of the primary education sector and concentrating on the higher education sector. The government was building the IIT's and the IIM's and at the same time creating schools that no one went to at the primary level, simply because there was no infrastructure such as buildings, black boards, teachers etc. The primary and secondary education sector went into the hands of the private sector which in order to sustain itself and to grow required to charge a fee, which millions of poor Indians could not afford to pay. Education was accessible only to the affluent and most who belonged to this category came from the upper castes who had built a base for themselves right from the days of British Imperialism.

This led to the creation of an educated elite, one that generally abhorred the other Indians who represented for them everything that they did not want to be. A couple of generations which emerged out of this primary education system went on to fulfill the aspirations of the IITs and the IIMs as institutions. They were able to churn out students who could compete globally and on equal terms with the rest of the world. At this juncture two things need to looked at. This globally competitive Indian did not see his/her future in India. America for them was the new land of milk and honey and therefore they went that way. Products of the elitist education system who paid for their primary and secondary education and also for a very subsidized higher education did not invest their abilities back in India. So there is in effect no growth in the number of properly educated people contributing back to the system that they came from. As generations of good teachers retired from schools and with not many to replace them the primary and secondary sectors of paid and private schools has also started suffering from the lack of good teachers. Therefore contributions from the private primary sector has also started slow down to a trickle and today it only succeeds in putting out disinterested, illiterate nuveau riche elites, who wannabe but cannot be.

The Universities as I had said in another post also have no talent available and I read with dismay and horror the news that the Central Government in India is not setting up some of the new Central Universities that it proposed to, due to the lack of employable talent. It did not say there were no people holding the required certificates. It only said that the certificate holders (including Ph. Ds) were unemployable. There are two ways of looking at this, horror (for obvious reasons) and relief, because it means that there is a realization that there is no necessity to employ and feed people who will only be a burden on the system. I shall talk more about this in my next post.

But I do appeal to people here in India and abroad who maybe reading this post. Please do not donate money as a fulfillment of your philanthropic objective. Please donate your ability. Do not try to change the existing institutions. They have rotted. Try and create new ones which avoid the trappings of the old. Thank You. I hope someone is reading this and deciding to do something about it.

Leadership Crisis in India - Going on

In my previous post was talking about the changes in society of the urban areas and the consequent change in politics. In one of the ending sentences of the last post I used this expression micro-regionalism. Micro-regionalism is in fact the outcome of the changed politics. The prime example of this is Telangana. In most of the literature that is available today the demand for a separate Telangana is commonly referred to as sub-regionalism. I disagree with this taxonomy because sub-regionalism accepts that a certain region is a part of a larger region. If Telangana is the sub-region of Andhra Pradesh, then a demand for a separation cannot be logically sustained since the sub aspect refers to the lack of independent existence of the same. Micro-regionalism on the other hand conveys the desire of the people to draw out identities based in culture from smaller and smaller geographies and the phrase (micro-regionalism) also denotes a lack of commonality between the different geographies. This micro-regionalism which began due to an insecurity created by an improper and inefficient education system percolates to all aspects of society and politics. The net result of the change is that there is a dissolution of the symbols of commonality that were once used in order to build more and more homogeneous communities. The emphasis shifts to difference. Let me explain this through an example.

If one were to take the case of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata they can be (and have been) used to build threads of a common culture based in the idea that the epics symbolize the collective past and history of an entire people. This actively happened during the freedom movement. What happened during this period and later also the disputes of this imaginary. The example of this can be found in the Justice Party and the DK movement which evolved into the DMK and AIADMK later on. I have talked about that in one of my previous posts when I talked about how the differences between the Telugu/Tamil Brahmin and the Tamilian non-Brahmin found articulation as a racial difference. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been rejected as Aryan (Brahmin) creation and foisted upon the Dravidian (non-Brahmin) with the intention to dominate and subjugate. If one were to take into consideration of the recent debate and controversy between the DMK and the BJP over the Ramar Sethu one finds the echoes of this past. The DMK wants the demolition of that natural barrier while the BJP wants to preserve the bridge constructed by Rama and his Vanara army.

I am now arguing that the acts of construction and dissolution are both deliberate and always have a political agenda behind them. The intellectually impoverished society, a result of a farcical education system, in conjunction with the migration of the originally educated elite whom I had called the OUI contributed to the emergence of a lumpen political leadership which is a result of a society that itself has become largely lumpenised. This leadership has the sole purpose of capturing of political power with the view of self aggrandizement and monetary gain. It is common to see political leaders having made thousands of crores in deals and there is no protest based in indignation from the general society, which means that this is now an accepted way of life. Development is just a by product of the politician's greed. The new politician may hold degrees but has no education and consequently no idea of what good can be done for the country and how it can be done. Appointments to all crucial positions such as Vice Chancellors of Universities have become political and the Vice Chancellors, themselves products of the failed education system, contribute to the farcical aspects of the education system thereby rendering it more and more meaningless. Today there are still some leaders like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who have vision. Therefore there is still some enlightened development which percolates to the lower levels of political leadership. But once this generation of leaders ceases to exist, then only politics of pragmatism will remain and tear the fabric of the country apart, rendering meaningless the sacrifices of the previous generations. Here let me quote my favourite poet/musician, Roger Waters. He talked about what happened in England after the second World War. "But when the fight was over, we spent what they had made". We are also on the verge of spending everything that was made for us by our freedom fighting generation. Separate Telangana, Gorkhaland, Vidarbha, Harith Pradesh, Maharashtra Navnirman Samithi, caste based politics and political parties, illiterate and uneducated teachers in schools, colleges and universities are all symptoms of a deep malady that will kill Indian society and the nation itself. Yet we only behave like we are passengers to laws of physics. The question is are we?

Leadership Crisis in India - Yet, yet again.

In my last post I was talking about how there has been a change in the nature of population of cities in India, especially those in the Southern part of the country due to the large scale migration that took place due to reasons already cited. Let me now explain the nature of the change briefly. The spaces created by the migrating suave and urban Indian were replaced by a first generation of rural Indians who hitherto visited the urban areas, if at all, only to meet their relatives or to go sight seeing. These people do not possess either the suaveness of the original urban dweller or their liberal open mindedness. Before this statement is interpreted as racist let me explain in detail what I mean. One of the big differences in the mindset between the original urban Indian - OUI for brevity (I use this rather inelegant expression due to the lack of a better one) and later urban Indian LUI - also for brevity (again inelegance due to the same reason) is that the two went through different patterns of education. The OUI had access to good schools that were manned by well educated teachers who as a rule went beyond the brief of their work and successfully inculcated a globally and more importantly a necessary for India value system that enabled generations of students to put aside differences of caste and religion. This student also went on to become somebody who respected the idea of every one being capable of merit and that only merit should be the criteria for success or failure. This meant that they did not believe that lower castes or people of certain religions were doomed to be failures or that they did not deserve to succeed.

The rural education system that produced the LUI (and continues to produce the likes in the rural setting still) was a different situation altogether. The unwillingness on the part of the successful professionals, including teachers, to relocate to rural areas even for small periods decided that teachers should be recruited from the region itself. Herein lay the problem. The rural areas did not have the same percentage of literate populations and therefore in most cases seventh class and tenth class pass persons were recruited to teach the levels below them. The hope was that with time the teachers would also upgrade themselves with higher degrees and better learning. That did not happen simply because the "teachers" were contented with their jobs. From 1947 rural Indian schools have been a farce with neither teacher or student interested in true education. Students have been pushed to higher levels of study so as to not attract the attention of auditors who would question the logic of spending large amounts of money without there being any positive fall out of that. There are schools with no black boards, and there are schools that do not have buildings or there are schools with all these but with no classes happening since neither the teacher nor the student was willing to go to school. Degrees and certificates have gradually become pieces of paper with no significance. The fall out of this is "qualified" students who have carried on with prejudices born out of caste, creed and religion. These were untouched by any form of enlightenment and simply furthered stupid stereotypes in their daily lives. The quintessential LUI (yes there is one) is nothing but the extension of the rural Indian - lets call this one RI since we are abbreviating everything. This means that cities which are formally urban are actually substantially rural and carrying with them all the problems derived out of an improper education system and continuing prejudices. This has also led to a change in the composition of higher learning centres which today unfortunately have become breeding grounds for casteism and intolerance. The recruitment of local people for teachers and other jobs and that with lack of education contributed to the birth of micro regionalism which was essentially for the purposes of protecting their own interests. Needless to say these social changes have led to a new kind of politics and newer problems of leadership, which I shall speak about in my next post.

Leadership Crisis in India - Yet again

I seem to be apologizing most of the time for the delay in my posts. This time again I have been late. So apologies yet again. Now that the apology bit has been taken care of, I will get on with what I had promised at the end of the last post. I was examining what went wrong with liberal democracy in India and why. Without wasting time and say that what went wrong with Indian democracy is that over the years it has been lumpenized. And the reason for this? An education system that was not fully grown at the time of Independence and one that simply did not grow systematically. The government has focused a little too much on higher education with very little or no focus on primary education. India definitely has world class institutions in higher education such as the IIT's and the IIM's and some blue chip central universities such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi and recently the University of Hyderabad and few more. In the initial years, say up till the late 1970's and the early 1980's there were students to uphold the greatness of these institutions and be their ambassadors globally. But from the 1980's onwards the picture has been changing gradually. The reason for the changes can be seen in what I said in one of the previous sentences, students who became global ambassadors. The problems really emanated when these people found that there were takers for their skills and qualities in other globally renowned institutions, especially those in the United States of America. Not only did these people go to the US of A for further education but they also settled down there since there was a market that could employ their skills and compensate more than adequately not only in monetary but also in terms of appreciation of their work. So when in the 1980's the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi expressed concern about brain drain, he was right.

These people who started migrating were those who belonged to the upper castes and those whose parents and grand parents had benefited from the education system put in place by the British, a system that made a certain form of knowledge based in the sciences globally relevant. A trigger for this migration of such people was the following of the "socialist" pattern of economy and governance which was ushered in by the Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This saw a great percentage of employment opportunities in the government sector, where the situation increasingly saw no reward for those who worked better than others. It was a system that could not distinguish the donkey from the horse. Not only did the USA offer better salaries and recognition, it also offered a better life style and greater creature comforts. India offered the opposite of all this in the wake of its pursuit of the rhetoric of socialism. This meant that those who left India came back only for the annual vacation. However, there were still a few people left and these came from the same upper caste background but were financially a little worse off than those who had already started migrating. These people too had skill sets that were globally relevant and the Y2K problem ensured that these people too had opportunities to migrate, which they did very diligently. The urban areas, especially in the South of India, began seeing a change in the nature and substance of their population and this holds the key to the problem of leadership. More of that in the next post which I hope will be sooner than what has been in the past.