ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Reimagining India’s Social Science Research Policy

A pioneering study by 31 social scientists, across nine research institutes, on the status of social science in India revealed progress as the country ranked 13th in research output among the 26 most productive countries. But it also revealed weakness in respect of research capacity, quantity, quality, and funding. In research output, India was ahead of China and Brazil in 1995, but China took over in 2007. In quality, although ahead of China, India remained short of Brazil. It revealed that the improvements through the national policy are imperative if the social sciences are to play their emancipatory role in knowledge creation and enlightenment.

 

Buying into the Aakash Dream

The low-cost Aakash tablet and its previous iterations in India have gone through several phases of technological changes and ideological experiments. Did the government prioritise familiarity and literacy about personal technological devices over the promise of quality mass education generated by low-cost devices? 

Education Reforms: Inspired Incompetence

Professional ethics and standards are irrelevant for a dispensation concerned only with the instrumentality of education as a means of social control and ideological propagation. Why the system proved so weak and vulnerable to this kind of summary manipulation is a question that reflects on the character of the Indian state's encounter with modernity.

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