Varsities reflect 'social realities' : Prabhat Patnaik

Hyderabad: Assuaging his concerns, that none of major universities listed in the top 200 global universities, noted economist Prabhat Patnaik said Universities reflect the ‘social realities’ of the country and hence the same yardstick cannot be applied to the universities across the world.

While addressing a seminar on ‘Idea of Universities’ organised by Telugu daily Nava Telangana, he said the Universities in India cannot become ‘clones’ of their counterparts in Europe and USA, as there remains a huge difference as to how Universities are perceived, after ‘commoditisation of education’. He said by depending completely on the model of Western nations, India as a result would end up as an intellectual parasite with no new idea flow.

Cautioning that the Indian Universities were facing two kinds of forces such as neo-liberal and Hindutva, Prabhat Patnaik felt that room for ‘intellectual freedom’ was being reduced, as both the forces were suppressing the liberty to question’. He said what the private universities are imparting is ‘education capsules’ manufactured in USA, where there is no scope for questioning. Similarly, the public universities are now under the prowl of self proclaimed ‘vigilantes’, who insist on imparting a particular kind of education.

Stating that the Centenary Celebrations of Osmania University would herald into the birth of a new movement, noted Educationist Chukka Ramaiah said the students who backed the Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, during the Telangana movement, would be launching agitations over the unfulfilled promise of providing jobs. While describing the OU as an intellectual tank, he said the University helped in social transformation ever since it came into existence.

He recalled being a student of the University and said hailing from a remote village he was able to take back the scientific temper and rational thinking to uneducated masses who blamed their sufferings on the wrong doing of previous birth.
Prof K Nageshwar said OU had always remained a place of intellectual thought by being an autonomous structure. He said Centenary Celebrations would reflect the idea of autonomy and alternative thinking.