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.