Sunday Posts

That India opted to be democratic, and remained so, goes to the credit of Pandit Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. Nehru was a democratic man, in rhetoric and in practise, and despite his enormous popularity and stature inside and outside the country, he successfully avoided the entrapment of 'Big Man' syndrome, which afflicted so many of his contemporary leaders of new nations. It was a great exercise of imagination, and logistics (Ramchandra Guha talks about this in his masterly India After Gandhi) to get an enormous, diverse, largely poor and mostly illiterate country on the democratic path. It defied most theories about democracy that political scientists propound - that democracy is mostly a rich country thing - and became the crowing glory for India, and indeed a very convenient excuse for all its failings. At a time when Indian democracy, along with democracies all around the world, is facing existential dangers from the forces of globalisation and the after...

Employability is the mantra of the day, because we sure have a jobs problem. Governments are making universities, in fact education system as a whole, the scapegoat for millions of unemployed that they have to deal with. The conclusion is straightforward: There must be an education problem if so many people can't find jobs even after getting educated. And, hence, increasingly, public policy is making employability the centre-piece of the higher education agenda. I shall argue that this oversimplifies the problem and diverts our attention. I am not suggesting that the education model does not need looking at: Indeed, we need to revisit what the universities do in the context of the modern world. But, employability is not a problem created by the universities and colleges, it is a structural issue and everyone knows this. To start with, there are not enough jobs available. It is very good to say that there are vacancies for Rocket Scientists and Brain Surgeons while there is une...