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.
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