In a bizarre case of government imposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Gujarat dispensation has drawn up a mandatory list of 82 topics that PhD students in state universities have to research for their doctoral theses. Each state university has been asked to ensure that a student selects at least five topics from the government-approved list. Not surprisingly, this intellectually whittled down catalogue includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet high-profile project Swachh Bharat Abhiyan as well as model schemes like Kanya Kelavani (encouraging the education of girls), Gunotsav (improving primary education) and MA Yojana (a health coverage scheme for the poor), run by the Gujarat government.
The list reads like a training manual for a regimen of bureaucrats rather than research material for scholars and intellectuals. If the government has its way, PhD scholars—regardless of their specific intellectual inclinations—will be forced to research utilitarian topics such as the following: “A comparative study of Sardar Patel Awas Yojna and Indira Awas Yojana”; “Education of minorities—A critical study”; “Gujarat: Good governance for growth, scientific management and development—A critical study of existing pattern and future course, Policy suggestions (sic)”; “Mutual cooperation among states action plans and comparative analysis of strategies for development—A Gujarat Model”; and “Comprehensive analysis of growth of water in seven reservoirs of Saurashtra through SAUNI Yojana.”
It would appear that the BJP government wants scholars to serve as adjuncts of state administrations, feeding into the governance and policymaking machine with their research. As a senior official in the state higher education department said, the idea is to ensure critical evaluation of the government programmes. PhD students do indeed often voluntarily choose to research the implications of landmark policies and their impact on the lives of people. For instance, West Bengal’s erstwhile Left Front government’s much talked about Operation Barga—an agrarian reform policy aimed at empowering sharecroppers—has been a popular subject of research among PhD scholars. As have been subjects that deal with policy-driven projects revolving around the environment, poverty, urban-rural dichotomy, etc. And of course, research on these important subjects often produces academic work of stellar intellectual quality even if—or more likely because—it does not serve a government agenda.
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