Revitalising higher education

His next class act

While our army of the unemployable increases we suffer from crippling shortages of not just engineers, doctors and managers, but also of nurses, welders, electricians, plumbers, masons, carpenters, teachers and of course social scientists. Engineering, management and medicine at least have their IITs, IIMs and AIIMS. What brand name can Indian social sciences and the liberal arts boast of? They, in fact, have a bigger problem than lack of resources: lack of intellectual freedom, diversity of thought and opinion. The few social science centres that we have, therefore, produce clones. Usually these are clones of professors steeped in the heady ideologies of the ’70s incapable or unwilling to notice that the “revolution” has passed them by. JNU is a perfect example.