Illiberal Education

The recent resignation of an economist from Ashoka University following the political backlash to his research paper on manipulation in the 2019 elections raises crucial questions about the state of higher education

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AS they say in India,” the economist Pranab Bardhan wrote in an influential paper on corruption, “in the US corruption is in the process of ‘making’ laws, in India it’s mostly in ‘breaking’ laws.” While Bardhan cites legally approved paths of US campaign finance that would be illegal in most countries, this makes me think of the great historic justifications of imperialism, territorial aggression and global wars that western powers have traditionally carried out in the name of progress, peace and prosperity. Hindutva groups in India have been trying hard to glorify their distorted historiography, but I don’t think it has gathered even a fraction of the legitimacy that say, the idea of Empire still enjoys in British public opinion.  

There is supreme irony in the way the structural forces of history and deliberately orchestrated attempts at suppression are standing out in ironic opposition to each other in western and Indian universities right now. Historical realities, partly to do with demography but also with finance, have led to severe erosions in universities in the US and the UK. In India, where precisely those things are in the country’s favour, individuals and politicians are going a great job in squandering away what could have been a golden period of higher education in the country.