What a university protests against defines it as much as what it accepts. The present protest is over the deletion of the essay by Ramanujan on the Ramayan by the Academic Council. As in every protest in the university, the agency and autonomy of teachers is cited. That is fair and legitimate.
But what about the agency and autonomy of the student, which is routinely, systematically and legitimately violated by the construction of a perfectly coercive system of 'attendance'. The requirement of 66% attendance of the total number of lectures given in a term, is a method anticipated to ensure that students attend classes. Those students who routinely earn this, are rewarded by 5 marks which is added to the marks their score in their exams. Loathsome system, but it works. On an average, this ensures that classrooms are filled with a largely mute and unwilling audience.
What it also does is that it reduces 'attendance' to a resource, and a commodity. It becomes a commodity because it has an exchange value, as it can be translated into an immediate raise of 5 marks in one's score sheet. That it is a commodity, and a scarce one too, is betrayed by the language used to invoke it.
"Attendance de dijiye" ('Give me attendance')
"Attendance mil jayegi na?" ('I will give it wont I?')
"Aaj ki laga dijiye" ("Give me today's)
The panic, the anxiety, the chase for a scarce commodity is palpable for every lecturer. This is reflected in the routine announcements to those who are 'falling short'. The university is correspondingly granted the constructed authority to those dissent and protest and refuse to attend '66%' of classes..discipline and punish? Very much indeed.And the dissent is dismissed as 'bunking'.
We need to debunk the practice of bunking...and ask ourselves the question: why are we frightened of scrapping this system...Are we frightened of a bewildered lecturer finding an empty classroom? Maybe we are.
What is not is that the we dont protests. We dont protest enough.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Distorting Diplomacy?
I was temporarily besotted by the Oxford series 'very short introductions'. They are what they say they are, a rare quality admittedly. And as a consequence, a greedy reader ambitiously imagines that from "nothingness" to "chaos", these capsules will push him sufficiently close to the shore, where he can choose whether to wade deeper into the dark sea, or admire it from afar. That is me. Or was me.
While most have been charming, I am no longer confident of the purpose of these brief, but stimulating nudges towards an area of knowledge. After the introduction, and the tight smile and quick hello, I havent seriously pursued a lengthy conversation with any of the subjects I have collided, willingly, into.
I was however, very excited, but then quickly aggrieved when I saw one on 'Diplomacy'.
'Diplomacy' has been written by Joseph M. Siracusa, whom I had not heard of, although my position in the sea of diplomacy is comparable to a submarine, submerged but with the possibility of being bouyant. When I read the one on WTO, I was pleased that it is Amrita Narlikar...but Siracusa? Not so sure really. I would have much preferred if that gorgeous mind, James der Derian had been asked to write it. Berhaal.
Siracusa disappoints, not only because, unlike Der Derian, he is not honest enough to admit that he is dealing with only 'Western, westphalian diplomacy', but because of the important diplomatic 'moments' he chooses to focus on. He looks at, a. the Diplomacy of the American Revolution, b. The Diplomacy of the Great War and Versailles, c. The night Churchill and Stalin divided Europe. But what is most unjustifiable was an entire chapter on the ANZUS treaty, one negotiated between the US and Australia. Scintillating stuff, no doubt. But an whole chapter in a work limited to 138 pages solely between Australia and the US? Inexplicable!
No, actually it is. Siracusa currently teaches at Griffith University, Australia.
While most have been charming, I am no longer confident of the purpose of these brief, but stimulating nudges towards an area of knowledge. After the introduction, and the tight smile and quick hello, I havent seriously pursued a lengthy conversation with any of the subjects I have collided, willingly, into.
I was however, very excited, but then quickly aggrieved when I saw one on 'Diplomacy'.
'Diplomacy' has been written by Joseph M. Siracusa, whom I had not heard of, although my position in the sea of diplomacy is comparable to a submarine, submerged but with the possibility of being bouyant. When I read the one on WTO, I was pleased that it is Amrita Narlikar...but Siracusa? Not so sure really. I would have much preferred if that gorgeous mind, James der Derian had been asked to write it. Berhaal.
Siracusa disappoints, not only because, unlike Der Derian, he is not honest enough to admit that he is dealing with only 'Western, westphalian diplomacy', but because of the important diplomatic 'moments' he chooses to focus on. He looks at, a. the Diplomacy of the American Revolution, b. The Diplomacy of the Great War and Versailles, c. The night Churchill and Stalin divided Europe. But what is most unjustifiable was an entire chapter on the ANZUS treaty, one negotiated between the US and Australia. Scintillating stuff, no doubt. But an whole chapter in a work limited to 138 pages solely between Australia and the US? Inexplicable!
No, actually it is. Siracusa currently teaches at Griffith University, Australia.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
The Third World Syllabus: Old, Wheezing Xerox Machines
How does one explain the enormity of the Treaty of Westphalia to classroom of students for whom 'Teen Murti Library' is in a 'VIP area'? For whom Europe is a stain, with a struggling to shrug off a boot?
This is not to suggest that tourists have remarkably grey, grey cells, or that to travel is to know. One needs to swiftly pass through the darkness of Ghosh's 'The Shadow Lines' to be reminded what Yuddhishter quietly observed: to travel and to move are two entirely different things. They frequently are conjoined, but part again amicably. But to move, often becomes the defining motto. For the tourist, to move is to get away. And for students, and teachers for whom 'to move' often means to get on with the syllabus. And for an excellent examination of the distinctions between travelling and toursism see Wanda Vrasti's essay here http://www.politicsandculture.org/2010/08/10/wanda-vrasti-the-politics-economics-and-ethics-of-independent-travel-rewriting-the-ethnography-of-the-travel-trope-2/). How does one move on from the alien and strange syllabus of International Relations and World History? One where wars are being waged in a moment and time and land lost in the past? Disembodied and ruptured from one's own train of memory?
The tragedy is that Europe, the World, Latin America, The Past, and Memory are all taught coldly, through a really dry map called the syllabus. And as Pouliot points out, there was a time when maps and syllabi's were not standardised pieces of paper printed in a machine, but had lovely tiny details: where can the traveller stop for a drink of water, which tree is really shady and where will one come across that tempting bunch of berries, which one MUST not eat? Such maps and syllabi no longer exist.
What one has instead is a dry, informative and universal roapmap. Where does one begin with International Relations? With the First World War. Where does one end? with the post cold war period. And in this entire universe which the student enters, a world which INTERSECTS with the history of South Asia at several points, but those points are severed and bled dry. So the fact that India Gate was built for those soldiers who fought during the war is not a part of international relations, or that the end of the Ottoman Empire seeped into the nationalist discourse is not...and that rich debate between Bose and Nehru on the issue of 'what is right for an empire, is not right for the colony' is passed over.
Its a pity. Because Europe again, and the world again, is taught as a world out there. compact and coherent. but for how much longer can one ignore those leaky taps, whose waters dismiss sovereignty and territory with a quick wave? And why isnt Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence a text in IR to demonstrate the leakiness and weariness of the true 'age of empires'.
This is not to suggest that tourists have remarkably grey, grey cells, or that to travel is to know. One needs to swiftly pass through the darkness of Ghosh's 'The Shadow Lines' to be reminded what Yuddhishter quietly observed: to travel and to move are two entirely different things. They frequently are conjoined, but part again amicably. But to move, often becomes the defining motto. For the tourist, to move is to get away. And for students, and teachers for whom 'to move' often means to get on with the syllabus. And for an excellent examination of the distinctions between travelling and toursism see Wanda Vrasti's essay here http://www.politicsandculture.org/2010/08/10/wanda-vrasti-the-politics-economics-and-ethics-of-independent-travel-rewriting-the-ethnography-of-the-travel-trope-2/). How does one move on from the alien and strange syllabus of International Relations and World History? One where wars are being waged in a moment and time and land lost in the past? Disembodied and ruptured from one's own train of memory?
The tragedy is that Europe, the World, Latin America, The Past, and Memory are all taught coldly, through a really dry map called the syllabus. And as Pouliot points out, there was a time when maps and syllabi's were not standardised pieces of paper printed in a machine, but had lovely tiny details: where can the traveller stop for a drink of water, which tree is really shady and where will one come across that tempting bunch of berries, which one MUST not eat? Such maps and syllabi no longer exist.
What one has instead is a dry, informative and universal roapmap. Where does one begin with International Relations? With the First World War. Where does one end? with the post cold war period. And in this entire universe which the student enters, a world which INTERSECTS with the history of South Asia at several points, but those points are severed and bled dry. So the fact that India Gate was built for those soldiers who fought during the war is not a part of international relations, or that the end of the Ottoman Empire seeped into the nationalist discourse is not...and that rich debate between Bose and Nehru on the issue of 'what is right for an empire, is not right for the colony' is passed over.
Its a pity. Because Europe again, and the world again, is taught as a world out there. compact and coherent. but for how much longer can one ignore those leaky taps, whose waters dismiss sovereignty and territory with a quick wave? And why isnt Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence a text in IR to demonstrate the leakiness and weariness of the true 'age of empires'.
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