University world rankings

Yet again agencies like the QS came up with their list of world university rankings a few months ago. And again India doesn’t find a place in the top universities of the world while all our top politicians and middle class concerned citizens busy rant over the issue.

But such rankings in the first place are flawed as they follow certain measures that are suitable for only certain educational/cultural/ intellectual systems namely the US and western Europe...or best to say the English speaking world. An intellectual cultural system which is based within certain universities of the world with Harvard and Oxford leading the way. This is no way to undermine their credibility or intellectual contribution to World civilization but nevertheless they are the part of a system which majority of the world may not follow. We do live in a global world but a global world is always limited to certain flows and networks and it is well noted that, like in global cities literature, that such networks and flows can exclude more than what they can include.


A university like Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in India or University of Dhaka in Bangladesh may never figure in the top universities of QS world rankings as they may not publish or produce as much of what is expected by Oxford standards. Nevertheless these institutions play important roles within their national contexts responding significantly to the socio-political needs of the country. Countries have first to respond to their local/ national needs rather than responding to issues that aren't the need of the hour within their contexts. The contributions of institutions like the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Raveshaw College (now a university) in Odisha, Lingaraj College in northern Karnataka or the various Indian Institute of Technologies or any other universities in other countries cannot be undermined or totally erased given their roles in shaping the intellectual, social and political cultures of the societies in which they are based.



Again if we look at the measures of these so called world university rankings, they are biased more towards measures that universities like Oxford and Cambridge have always grown up with, within their own social contexts. Never mind that we in India had the colonial legacy of these very universities but we cannot discredit the social context which was completely different, the issues that we had to focus as post colonial states were very much different from our colonial rulers. As such we produced intellectual traditions that were specific to our societies. A person studying/ teaching in institutions like JNU may never publish in top journals of his or her discipline or never get high citations but carries within him the seeds that are very much needed to critically engage with the society at large. If the teacher has taught her lessons and is successful in putting the message across to the hundred students (yes, our classes are usually large) and the students have taken in the essence of it, then half the work is done. Never mind a university not having international students or international faculty or international exchange students which are indicators in world ranking of universities, they can always go on their own, which they have already proven. So if the institutions have achieved the objectives of their establishment and justified their existance then we don’t need to worry about the rankings. But this does not mean to promote in anyway the sick universities like in India which have lost their vision to red tapism, inbreeding, corruption of different kinds nor does it mean to say there should be no intellectual progress at all.

So do we then need to sit and cry over why we are not among top twenty or top hundred of the world. Well, we don’t have to.

New flowers, Old Trees

Years ago when I was ten, back in Belgaum, a group of men visited my house. They had a young handsome dashing man among them. They spoke to my mother. “Madam, please vote for him in the coming Muncipality elections. He is young blood and will surely bring a change”. After they had gone, my mom also said the same thing. “Oh he should win, he is young and new blood”. …I gave a thought to it, forgot it in humdrum of my ten year old life.

I grew up. In school, college and University. And politics followed me everywhere. In school, in college and in the university. The young blood and its ways of politics were rather visible. The school cabinet with the prime minister (elected). The Senate Elections in the college. The Student’s Union elections at the university. Two things ran common in these different age based spaces: young blood and culture of politics. And They in no way were ever different from the politics that we condemn- favouritism, red tapism, crime, corruption, mudslinging, violence, money etc etc.

The school Prime Minister who was elected couldn’t give a speech but was elected anyhow. The senate candidates sent a car to fetch the voters and faithfully asked, “would you like to have something cold …..and hard?” A very liberal university put forth its list of central panel candidates out for Students Union elections. At last I thought wow what an idealism is it, far away from the political pollution of the country. Egalitarian to its core! Alas, the insiders spoke and I heard…“They have no Bhumihar, Oh that is a weak panel”, “have a girl, a beautiful one, the party shall win all the four positions”, “We have a Manipuri guy, he will bring in all the Chinki (a derogatory word used for people of the North East ) votes! “Muslim and a Girl? She is the winning candidate” I was shocked to see the underlying principle on which the central panels of all the parties were formed. They spoke of casteless society even as they made caste their engineering tool for the election. They spoke of crime free campus even as they made deals in the dark for cross voting in exchange of dropping the charges against a member once the new president was in place, They spoke of unity yet designed their selves on religious divide. They spoke of intellectual debates even as used sex and beauty as a Power!

Young India Churning their new blood for serving the people of the country in near future!
This year as elections soon arrive, as they do every five years, we have a panel of hot and new blooded young men and women (with education and dreams that "oldies dont have") that the media highlights and the country looks forward to. Yet election after election, these Men and Women disappear, their Hot Blood cools, their New Blood gets Old and they too form a part of the crowd that we love to despise! With Rahul Gandhi and Varun Gandhi and many others on this wagon (of Age and education) in this elections again the whole business of Young India, New India has come back.

But are such phrases mere Euphemisms? I am afraid, I feel so.
We euphemise and euphemise it with new phrases every time. But what happens to them? The promises they hold? The expectations they (or we) create?

Many politicians start young but instead of innovations and inventions, they slip and are swallowed by the monstrous system. Or they are the products of the system itself. Or many a times they feed themselves to it in order to rise ……Varun Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and others are no different. They have their ideologies that are embedded in a larger tree whose roots have spread beyond traces.

Season after season we can get new flowers, no doubt. Yet one should not forget they belong to the same tree.....they are New flowers with same smell, same petals and same colour...

First Standard

We were in First Standard. It was a world full of strangers. A crowd in grey shirts and navy blue shorts and grey blouses and navy blue skirts. All sat in rows according to heights but not sex. A cohort of 6 year olds. A cacophony entailed when I had entered the class with my dad. My first class. Teacher Anita looked through the register and placed me in the first bench of the last row. And I became a part of the unknown crowd of strangers.

Soon the singing teacher arrived and made everyone sing. The whole class' throats swelled..."maalu maalu maalu....once a pappa met a mamma under the coconut tree, to the mamma said the pappa will you marry me...."

The boy sitting next to me asked my name. His name was Avinash.

One day in the english class, Teacher Anita taught us to write a composition titled, MY FRIEND. By then it was normative within the class social structure that two friends write each other's names. Third one not allowed. As if there could be no third friend! So those who I had known had already reserved someone's name to be put on the three lined english composition notebook with their Natraj pencil with sharpened "tok" (point) and whose other end was many a times bitten, which appeared like an unwashed paint brush!.

Having found everyone reserved, I went on a friend-hunting spree and finally found a tiny dark boy sitting behind me.

"Have you written anyone's name?"
"No" "you?"
"No"

"Can I write your name as my Friend"
"Yes"
"What is your name?"
"Sabestian"
" Mine is Kiran"
"K I R A N"
"What is the spelling of Sabestian?"

His pencil was half eaten, point blunt. His handwriting was neat. But those letters and their consequent words often fell out of the three lines in the book.

My pencil was new, its point sharp. The marks of my molars were already inscribed on the rear end. My handwriting was wayward. The letters refused to fit in those three lines. Often teacher Anita and my parents sang the same tune. UNTIDY!

"S A B E S T I A N"
"What?" I asked
He repeated slowly, " S A B E S T I A N" three times and I reproduced it on the blank line where I was supposed to write . Then we became friends.

One morning, when the rains hadn't still left us alone Teacher Solomon came in and went out. We all saw her coming in and going out. With an indifference coupled with a sense of curiosity. She was tall and wide and had long hair. She was Samson's mother too. She was the class teacher of Ist C. (we were in I st B). Teacher Anita disturbed by this indifference (we were her reflections afterall when someone visited our class, We reflected what she taught) made us stand up and in a nice voice instructed, "When a teacher enters a class, you all should stand up and wish her. GOOD MORNING TEACHER before lunch and GOOD AFTERNOON TEACHER after lunch. And when she leaves, You all should again stand up and say, THANK YOU TEACHER". We all knew what to do. And now were waiting for some teacher to drop in.

One day an unfamiliar teacher dropped in. We knew how to distinguish by the comportment of the person. The whole class stood up and went...
G O O O O D M O O O O R N I I I I I N G T E E E E E A A C H E RR R R

.....when she was leaving....we all obediently stood up and

T H H H A A A A A A A A N K Y Y Y O U U U U U U U U U
T E E E E E A A C H E R R R R!

and we all sat royally. There was a hush hush sound as usual. Teacher Anita who was at the door now talking to someone else came in and said, what is this....you wished her? she is not a teacher...she is Pranam's Mother!

There was a roar of laughter which went only up and up. The teacher melted and laughed too!

Teaching Cultural Geography

What is it like Teaching Cultural Geography?

The Teacher. And the Student.

What is the relationship between a teacher and a student?

And where does it end?

Does it seize to be one once the student or the teacher leaves the institution?

Or does it continue to live the test of Time?

Environmental Ethics: A Comment

Environmental ethics is the discipline that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents[1]. Though what is ethical is itself unresolved philosophical question because of its highly contextual nature within history, geography and culture (time, space and cultural context), it is taken to mean, having to consider an evaluation of human conduct vis a vis environment as how it is, as against, how it ought to be. What people ought to and ought not to do with the environment. As such it’s an interface between humans and environment and their impact on each other (through lenses of gender, class, race, sex and ability) at a moral level.

As a discipline environmental ethics adheres a recipe consisting of the meaning, scope and definitions of environmental ethics, its development, the theories and philosophies (like deep ecology, eco-feminism etc), challenges and the politics of environmental ethics. Further it deals with important things as small and simple as the way we look at the environment to larger issues of global warming, climate change, global diseases etc from different vantage points.

Environmental Ethics as a discipline was born in the 1970s posing challenge to the Human centred world. It questioned the moral superiority of man over nature. It grew out as a response to works that put forward the coming of a doomsday which would eventually and drastically affect the human race. Rachel Carson’s Silent Springs in 1963 that spoke about the use of pesticides and their impact on environment and public health, Lynn White Jr’s essay The Historical Roots of Ecological Crisis in which he argued that it was basically the Judeo- Christian thinking that humans are above other life forms and that the earth is basically made for the enjoyment of man that resulted in ecological crisis, Paul Ehrlich’s work The Population Bomb in 1968 and Dennis Medows’ Limits to Growth in 1972 both which spoke about population growth and environmental crisis, that the days that were to come were numbered for the human race if they did not stop and re look at their relationship with the environment.

The call for a “basic change of values” in connection to the environment reflected a need for the development of environmental ethics as a new sub-discipline of philosophy.[2] The new subdiscipline emerged in three countries – The US, Australia and Norway looking into the ethical ways in which we need to look and redefine our relationship with the environment. As time went on, new philosophies took shape from different vantage points- Deep ecology as a critique of shallow ecology that failed to look beyond pollution and resource depletion; Eco Feminism critiquing the partiarchal oppression on nature and women.

For me, given this history of the subdiscipline and situating within my own time-space- culture contexts, environmental ethics as a discipline then is just another western hegemonic discourse that was born out of the situations and panics created in the western society, and that which has been exported to us in the east. I can only wonder, which I did throughout the course, why am I studying something that isnt unfamiliar to me. Living in the Asia, where the ways of life are woven into ecologically sensitive ways and where “modernity” has only partially penetrated our minds and cultures, I felt I was studying something that I wasn’t a part of but at the same time being connected to it[3]. At times not related but still connected. When I look at our own lives I see that we grow trees but hardly use much paper for our sanitary purposes. We protect our rivers but our energy consumption is much less than the west. We cook food and many a times end up sharing it with the gods (bhog, prasad), animals (Cows, dogs, cats) and plants(manure). We appreciate mountains and at the same time meditate for alteast two minutes realising the oness that we share with nature. Everytime a river is dammed, we raise our voices, everytime a tree is cut we mark our protest and everytime an animal is in danger we try our best to rescue it. And we respect animals for their “intrinsic” value (though there might be exceptions in all these eg: the state, smugglers etc). Then do we need something like a course in Environmental Ethics?

Yet on a second thought I feel the course makes us think as to how we do take steps that aren’t right enough for the environment, how our own cultures can give better options (and solutions) than we ever thought they would (we value western medicine more than our own home bred ayurveda, and only relook at it, accept it and celebrate it when the west has accepted and acknolwedged it). Given the “rationality” of western science and technology which is highly valued as “developed”, “modern” and “sophisticated” and we as given-in subjects to these highly valued western discourses often fail to look whats available in the ground beneath our own feet. Environmental ethics does the job, it takes us back to our treasures critiquing the west and its “modern” “sophiticated” “developed” ways of life. As such even as the discipline emerges out to respond and serve the western panic of environmental crises, it reaffirms the value system of the ecologically sensitive cultures and helps us to set our minds to think whether we are doing something right or wrong (a western acknolwedgement of eco-sensitive cultures to which I am bowing? Cant help, I too am from the system!). As we become more and more western centric, more consumeristic, as more Malls and Flyovers, Burgers and Pizzas, PETAs and Fabindias, ITs and MNCs –chic, swank, modern, global, cover our skyline replacing the local, common, “traditional”, environmental ethics shall play a vital role in adressing our new (western?) problems and panics that arise out in our relationship with nature and beyond. (Art of Living has already brought Indian meditation and a “Smile” back into the lives of well educated middle and higher classes). The discipline comes to our resue there giving us options to choose from to make up for the mistakes that the west created sometimes ago and transferred them to us quietly.
The discipline is good as far as it invokes a sense of responsibility in us towards our surroundings and makes us sensitive enough to do what is ought to be done.

But somewhere deep down I feel that the West is selling our own property to us putting a chic brand tag name called Environmental Ethics.


References
[1] Stanford encyclopaedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-environmental/
[2] ibid
[3] ‘Women are closer to nature and men are closer to culture…..’says eco feminism. But I too am as close to nature as women are though I am not a woman. How do I negotiate my own sense of self to this argument which is basically an argument from the western scholars

Games Children Play

The best part this time of the year , in the back drop of the spring- the crunchy leaves and the falling red palash, the blooming flowers of different hues- is to watch the children of the labourers play in DSE campus. Its fun.

The baby with just a shirt on, who cannot walk, but just crawl, who plays his own games while his mother is busy else where;

The group of little boys and girls who play, the politics of power clearly visible: the eldest girl controlling -whats to be played and who leads and who follows....

Another group, slightly elder than the rest, tie series of strings to the lower branches of the bent tree and swing and swing and swing till those strings breakaway and they all fall with fun.

A little girl stands midst the street infront of JPs and pours water from the huge pepsi bottle into its own little red cap, spills half the water on the ground (which overflows because she cant just handle it) and then drinks from that little red cap in all happiness to quench her thirst. She does this repeatedly, till the water from the two litre pepsi bottle gets empty, even though her thirst remains unquenched. She fills the bottle and does the whole act again. A brave girl full of hopes in this hopelessly practcal world!

A little boy, who cant walk nor crawl, waddles his hands and legs in air trying to fly.

Three little kids, two on the ground rolling at the mercy of the third one who is the yongest(all not of more that four years) and who wips the other two with a leftover tyre rubber. Oh what a cruel young boy! I exclaim. They all get up in joy, smile and say, " Bandar, Bandar khel rahe hain, ha ha ha. "

Children play games and they just dont need playthings. Rather they create their own playthings, their own themes , their own games and enjoy every bit of it.

While they play, a very busy adult world- students and faculty alike, race their way towards death anticipating what next: Lectures, tests, assignments, freshers, farewell, exams, and all. Where are we running? I dont know.