2 Crisis in sociology in India

Anurekha Chari Wagh

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is the Debate all about?

2. The Sociology in Crisis Debate

3. Conclusion

What is the debate all about?

Scholars over the years have discussed, analysed and engaged intermittently over Sociology as a discipline in India. Debating about the relevance of the discipline, its subject matter, its growth and trajectory have become matter of course. Scholars in India have critically reflected one’s own disciplinary trajectories and there has also been a serious engagement with its teaching and pedagogical practices, its research process and its growth and its disciplinary margins. Furthermore, formal discussions within workshops, meetings, seminars and conferences and informal conversations over teas/coffees, generally reflect a sense of despair, anguish and concern over the state of sociology in India. Our aim, in this module is to bring together the engagements of scholars in India, with their analysis and arguments with regard to the crisis in sociology in India.

In this module, when we discuss about the crisis in sociology in India it will engage with four important issues. The first, how does one conceptualise the term crisis?; second who are the scholars in India who have engaged with one another with regard to the crisis?; third putting together these debates can we build a framework to analyse the crisis and fourth, where do we go after anaysing the nature of crisis? A reflection on the analysis will address the above concerns.

The Sociology in Crisis Debate:

Scholars who engaged with the issue of crisis in Sociology include Y. B Damle and M.N Srinivas and M.N Panini in the 1070s, T.K Oommen in the 1980s, Veena Das, Anantha Giri, Satish Deshpande, C B Venkatesh Murthy, Sharmila Rege, Sujata Patel and Ramesh Bairy in the 1990s. and 2000s. Their engagements with regard to the issues concerning sociological practices in India form a core of the debate with regard to sociology in India.

Veena Das : Crisis in Sociology

Veena Das (1993), in her article ‘Sociological Research in India: The state of Crisis’, commences her article by pointing out that the crisis in sociological research exists at three levels, namely, the University, University Grants Commission and that of the Indian Sociological Society, each of whose role is understood in a framework, constructed by the practice of politics. Since research is based on patient progress of the respective student’s academic standards, the aspect of more significance is competence rather than of brilliance, which is not ascribed but has to be achieved. Das moves on to cite that her personal experience as a professor at the University of Delhi for the past twenty five years, as the interviewer of students from various universities, as a member of the selection committee for lecturers, research associates in Universities and UGC, makes her notice a sharp increase in the number of lecturers, doctoral students and research associates hailing from State and Central Universities, many of whom have accomplished an M.Phil. However, the boom is not substantiated by excellence and competency on the part of the researchers, and the reasons that the author cites for such a tragic scenario range from lack of systematic reading leading to lack of efficiency, ignorance of elementary facts, elaboration on generalities, inability to explicate the basic arguments of the reference lists of dissertations, lack of emphasis on library research coupled with incompetent fieldwork and surveys, publication of substandard materials through subsidy, and plagiarism. But, she does not omit the mention of the existence of competent scholars, carrying out well-designed research, and contributing to the academics extensively in order to provide plurality of perspectives to understand Indian society, the proper utilization of which necessitates appropriate institutional framework.

Das (1993), thereafter explains the concept of crisis which, according to her, refers to, for the purpose of policy-making, the act of treating all institutions equally without considering their respective academic record that is plagued by substandard research. The factors amounting to the crisis situation can be traced at all three levels. At the level of Universities, incompetence in teaching and research- failing to keep pace with the discipline’s growth, coupled with utilization of out-dated reading materials, lack of initiative on the part of students to acquire proficiency in the English language- being encouraged by sustaining regional languages as the medium of instruction in many universities, improper policy for recruitment and promotion, along with the role of political patronage in the process, the evaluation of PhD dissertations by incompetent examiners, and the perception of appointment of examiners from abroad as means colonial subjugation of one’s mind, evaluation on the basis of reciprocity instead of determining academic standard, and lack of examiners for evaluation of PhD dissertations in the regional languages comprise a significant bases for the crisis at the University level.

At the next level, the decision- making body of UGC itself perpetuates faulty notions about social science research, and there exists a correlation between the students and the supervisors, the pressure to obtain a PhD and to gather credits for producing PhD students respectively, the situation being difficult to be solved by national evaluation schemes. The situation therefore necessitates consolidation of resources to cater to the needs of competent students and appointing competent supervisors. Additional shortcomings at this level include recruitment of scholars with poor research skills, thereby calling for the modification of the process of appointment, which can be practised through establishment of search committees and professional help. The professional bodies do not fulfill their duty to redress the situation, whose role lies not in increasing the number of jobs, but ensuring the practice is in lines with the ethical principles. One can situate the role of ISS in this context, whose responsibility is the preparation of a report on the state of social research in India that can serve as a foundation for the task of uplifting and improving the state of the present scenario.

Anant Giri: Community of Discourse as answer to the Crisis?

The first scholar to engage with Veena Das’s questions and concerns was Anant Giri (1993). In his article titled ‘Creating a Community of Discourse in Sociology in India’, he strongly argues for indegenisation by critiquing Das for ‘uncritical meteropolitanism’. Giri in his article presents four major issues concerning meteropolitanism of Das. One, Das takes for granted the discursive field of sociology. Giri argues that sociologists have not questioned the accepted paradigms of sociological research and neither have they created a curriculum of sociology and anthropology that takes into consideration our own cultural predicament and especially an Indian point of view. Next, according to Giri, Das has depended very much on the English language. According to Giri, one must understand that every student of sociology in India may not be well versed with English, so one must encourage writing in Indian languages, especially mother tongues. Three, Giri believes that one should build a ‘community of discourse’. How does one conceptualise this community of discourse’? According to Giri, to build such a community requires ‘egoless’ interaction and communication with among the peers. Before making a critique of the Indian Sociological Society as an institution, one should analyse how many of the leading practitioners of the discipline are involved with it. Finally, one should encourage publishing, especially efforts at local levels. In its core Giri’s arguments were pushing towards an argument where he states emphatically that before critiquing this ‘other’, there is a need to reflect on the ‘self’.

What does analysis of Giri’s article convey? In the following section I will deal with the critique offered by the scholars who were part of the debate. But for me the arguments, especially the conceptualization of creating a community of discourse, were paradoxical. Why? Because while Giri was critiquing Das for her ‘uncritical meteropolitanism’, he himself takes an uncritical stand by making sweeping statements such as ‘need to take seriously our own cultural predicament’ and ‘India culture’, w ithout contextualising what ‘our’ refers to and when one states ‘Indian culture’, what does it actually imply? In such a diverse country like India, the statements such as the one stated above are problematic unless they are contextualized.

G B Venkatesha Murthy: Bringing the stalwarts into the debate

Going further in the debate, one has the response of G B Venkatesha Murthy (1993). This short piece titled ‘Crisis in Sociological Research’, is important because Murthy brought into the nineties discussion of ‘crisis’; the arguments made by Y.B Damle, M.N Srinivas and M.N. Panini and T.K Oommen made in the 70s and 80s. It is important because it does reflect the fact that sociology in India, through the works cited above, did have its moments of reflexivity, though admittedly, very few. . Based on their works Murthy argues that there are three important reasons leading towards building of crisis in sociology, mostly based on the fact that the problem lies with the ‘kind of students’ who have taken up sociology as their discipline. The first is the perception of sociology as a soft discipline, thereby not attracting good intelligent students; second, mediocre students apply for a sociology course because they do not get admissions anywhere else, thus sociology attracts the residue and third, the admission policy is not rigorous, it is full of gaps so that classrooms are filled with uninterested mediocre students.

Murthy in his article, starts with citing Y.B Damle, who stated – ‘It is well known that in India the majority of the brighter students are attracted to science, technology and professional courses. Even in the arts, social sciences and humanities, the brighter ones tend to choose either mathematics or economics. Obviously, those who choose sociology are not necessarily the best, nor do they necessarily have any clear notion of why they choose the subject, which has definite implications for their interest and performance’ (Damle 1974, pp 343-48; cited in Murthy 1993). Based on the above analysis, Murthy states that students choose sociology as a subject of last resort, not really interested in the development of the discipline. Further, by drawing on Srinivas and Panini (1973), Murthy also reflected on the admission process, where he argued that there has been no attempt to restrict admissions on the qualification and aptitude of the students, the admission process is full of gaps, which in turn has impacted sociological research negatively. Further Murthy, citing Srinivas (1973) argued that along with the substandard quality of students, the teachers appointed are also not of quality because in recent times, appointments are made with regard to considerations of caste, region and linguistic parameters, and not on ‘merit’, which has accelerated the deplorable condition of sociological research and teaching. This point of Srinivas, which is reiterated by Murthy was made in relation to the reservation policy of the state and thus needs to be engaged with1. If this is the state then how does one deal with it?

To address the problems faced by sociological research, Murthy now refers to the arguments made by Oommen (1983), that in order to bring about positive change within sociology, three interrelated processes must be followed; one, restructuring of the education policy, two, established academics must mentor young scholars and three, a need to develop the aptitude, commitment and academic skills of young scholars. Evaluating Murthy’s analysis reveals that in his analysis all the problems associated with the discipline are related to students and there is no critical analysis of either the system of higher education and/or the teachers who are part of the structure.

Satish Deshpande: Contextualising the Debate

Satish Deshpande (1993) refers to the disciplinary fatigue of sociology as a discipline. According to him Veena Das’s questions and concerns with regard to crisis in Sociology are important and need to be engaged with. The fact that there have been few responses to her concerns with regard to the crisis plaguing the discipline needs to be addressed. For Deshpande the problem with Das’s analysis was that though it raised important issues, the argument lacked conceptual clarity. A close analysis of the article reveals that we need to be aware that not only sociology but all social sciences, the university system and the Indian educational system that are suffering from this crisis. So it is important to understand then, the specificity of the crisis affecting sociology in order to engage with it. In addition, we need to recognize that the issues articulated by Das, such as lack of commitment, islands of excellence and lack of competencies among students are issues faced by social sciences in general. Therefore to analyse the specificity of sociology, Deshpande states that we need to locate it in the genealogy of Sociology in India; especially in the process of discipline formation that is within the transition from a colonial to a post colonial regime.

1 Students are requested to refer to the module titled ‘Quotas and Social Justice’.

The argument that emerges from reading Deshpande is that post independence disciplines had a clear cut responsibility chalked out. In this context history had taken up the responsibility of restructuring the past of the nation in making and Economics had become the mainstay of Nehruvian socialism. Compared to them sociology appeared as an ambiguous and a disabling identity.

If one takes this argument of Deshpande and reflects on the way the discipline has been established then one comes out with feeling that the process of growth and institutionalization of sociology as a soft discipline which did not require serious intellectual endeavour was slowly but steadily becoming established. The field of sociology was perceived to be ambiguous, very vast including every day aspects of our life and society so it was believed that sociological analysis was equivalent to having an opinion. This feeling was established very strongly in the manner in which it was taught, learnt and disseminated. Furthermore, the subject area of the discipline being everyday experience, students perceived sociology as equivalent to common sense. Students and teachers feel that they know everything there is to know about society-especially sociology of India – caste, village, joint family, because they live and experience it. And further there is a belief that by theorizing these simple things facts of living in society, sociology makes them unnecessarily complicated. Therefore the major task to be dealt with by sociologists is to question the illusion of understanding created by common sense in everyday practices.

Going back to Deshpande’s arguments with regard to crisis, due to the ambiguity in defining itself, sociology as a discipline faced what he refers to as ‘identity crisis’. This identity crisis was strengthened, given the fact that sociology in India addressed issues of religion, caste, class, custom, manners, culture and issues which was closer to ethnography than to the established version of the mainstream discipline in western sociology2. A very well known sociologist Andre Beteille stated that ‘when he is in India he is referred to as a sociologist, while when he is in the west he is introduced as an Anthropologist’.

Thus an analysis of Deshpande’s argument regarding identity crisis of sociology could be understood within the very core that makes up the discipline. What does that actually mean? What I am driving at is, reading Deshpande gives an idea that at the time when the Indian state/nation was trying its best to establish itself as a modern nation state, based on Nationalistic fervor, the young state driving ahead and planning for the future, a discipline like sociology could be problematic unless trimmed of its radical edge. If sociology was engaged in critical enquiry such as engaging with issues of hierarchy and inequality within caste, understanding the politics of nationalism, examining customs based on violence and difference, analysing culture, then as a discipline it would be critiquing the nation rather than building it. With few exceptions sociology in India was institutionalized within the largely Parsonian model of positivism which was the dominant discourse of the time. What became defined as Sociology in India was uncritical, descriptive and fractured observations of ‘Indian’ customs, culture, language, religion, family and was celebrated for its ‘uniqueness’. So it is no wonder that students, teachers and in general sociologists in India (largely) do not ask any questions, and forget about critical questioning. For me as a teacher of sociology, teaching sociology of India for the past five years, the moment of crisis is when in the class I wait futilely for a question to be asked of me by the students.

2The students are requested to refer to the first module of the paper titled ‘Colonialism, Anthropology and Sociology, which deals extensively on this issue.

After establishing a probable analysis as to why sociology is undergoing a crisis, Deshpande goes on to explain what can be done to deal with the crisis. He has stated five ways through which the crisis within sociology could be dealt with. One, he argues that what one needs is self-reflexivity both with the discipline, but also with oneself, that is a practicing sociologist. To explain the reflexivity exercise with oneself, Deshpande used the example of the argument of Veena Das with regard to inferior quality of available text books within sociology. According to Deshpande rather than lamenting about the quality of text books, one should write and develop good text books, which unfortunately is not on the agenda of well established good scholars.

Two, there is a need for training, monitoring and encouraging of young teachers by the established scholars thereby creating sustainable support structures. Three, rather than demanding for more centralization (which was the argument of Veena Das as mentioned above), Deshpande calls for decentralization of resources to regional and state universities so as to strengthen their base. Fourth, there is a need to develop a sense of accountability within the leading centres referred to as ‘National’. According to him without such accountability, ‘centralized structures run the risk of breeding narcissist elites accountable to no one’. Fifth, is to ask the question as to why sociology did not become ‘the’ discipline in the eighties. Deshpande argued that during the 1980s, the Indian state faced critical problems that were social in nature, such as secessionist movements, based on ethnic and religious identities, caste questions in supposedly casteless middle class society and the growth and prevalence of communalism. Except for very few scholars, sociology as a discipline did not engage with these concerns. Deshpande writes of this as ‘sociology did not rise to the occasion and except for the few interventions, as discipline sociology failed’. In this answer, Deshpande believes lies the reason towards understanding the crisis inflicting sociology.

Sharmila Rege: Relooking at the debate

Sharmila Rege (1994) joins the debate and argues that the crisis in sociological research and teaching has to be located in three interrelated issues; the syllabi, responses of the discipline to the challenges to it from within and outside the academia and pedagogical practices. Sociology has not dealt with these issues effectively thereby leading to a state of crisis. It is important to analyse each of these issues. According to Rege, discussions with students reveal that they opt for sociology because it is assumed to be a soft discipline, notes are easily available and it is a preparing ground for civil services. As far as the syllabi are concerned, the issue is that the syllabi and the content such as the basic concepts and sociological theories and thought taught and discussed in the class have hardly any inter-linkages with the lived contexts of the students and the teachers. More often than not both the students and teachers feel disconnected with the subject.

Rege argues that women’s studies have posed an important challenge to sociology, especially with regard to its content and methodology. Such questioning was very important in radically pushing the boundaries of the discipline. Which are the issues within sociology that has been challenged by women’s studies? Women’s studies according to Rege (1994), has directed attention to the invisibility of women within sociological research and literature. The problem lies with the very structuring of sociological methods. Feminist methods which include consciousness raising through research, challenging the dichotomy of object and subject of research and raising complex questions of power in writing and process of research, have posed questions to sociological methodology on various methodological techniques. Rege argues that feminist methodology further demands a shift from ‘woman’s standpoint’ to a standpoint that bears in mind the complex collusions and contestations between class, castes, gender and communities. Unfortunately, by and large, methodology practiced within sociology has not addressed or engaged with feminist methodology let alone use it.

The response to the challenge has been extremely bureaucratic by nature. Rege argues that that there have been two kinds of responses; one setting the women’s studies centre within established mainstream departments and the second, having optional courses such as ‘Women and Society’, which does not bring about structural changes. Such a response allows the mainstream foundational courses to remain unchallenged3.

Rege, while reflecting on the state of pedagogy, draws heavily on the feminist pedagogical practices and discourses. According to her, feminist pedagogical practices legitimize personal experiences, recognize both teachers and students, they bring ‘texts’ of their own to the classroom and that ‘common vocabularies’ are not ‘given’ but have to be developed. Thus it is not easy, as it pushes us from positions of authority to vulnerability. Sociology has not been able to develop and nurture such pedagogical practices in the classroom which pushes students to feel disconnected with the discipline thereby leading to a state of crisis. In order to deal effectively with such crisis it is important to ground self reflexivity, and critical impulses have to be rooted in conscious praxis in the classroom. Such a process will go a long way to tackle issues of crisis affecting the discipline.

Sujata Patel: Linking the Macro and Micro worlds

Engaging with the debate, Sujata Patel, presented a paper titled ‘Challenges to Indian Sociology’ as the theme paper at the All India Sociological Conference at Hyderabad, November 23 to 25, 1997. It is an important argument that provides a larger macro framework to the issues with regard to crisis in Sociology that one has been discussing in this module. In her paper, Patel (1997) raises three interrelated questions. The first, what is this crisis?, Second how do we map its discursive space and finally, how does this mapping help us to formulate the challenge that we face in Sociology? Patel, a historical sociologist, draws connections between the macro and micro, and states that such concerns with the state of the discipline was always part of the legacy of sociology.

3 Interested students can read up the module number 5, titled ‘Challenges to Sociology from Gender and Dalit Studies’, which discuss in detail the nature of challenges and the responses of Sociology to it.

Drawing on the specific critical work of Alvin Gouldner4, ‘Crisis of Western Sociology’ 1970, Patel argues that if one wants to analyse the crisis in sociology, then one has to understand the interlinkages between the macro-micro worlds structuring the discipline. What would then be the macro and micro worlds? According to Patel (1997) the macro worlds would include areas of enquiry such as: policies of higher education, fiscal policies (impact of such policies especially funding for higher education), political agenda for and of higher education and changing relationship of particular subjects with career options in the context of changing economy. The micro on the other hand includes areas such as the classroom, its social morphology, the pedagogic techniques and the ideologies determining the process of learning.

According to Patel (1997) the interlinking of the macro and micro processes defines and structures the discipline. If one maps out the discipline the picture that emerges is as follows, the discipline grew extensively in the post independence period but over the last few years there has been a leveling down of it. This leveling down is accompanied by changing profiles of students. What does this mean? According to her, the university and colleges see the increasing presence of women and men from deprived communities such as tribes and Dalits, who raise questions of language, representation, culture and knowledge. Questions such as, what is taught? In which language it is being taught? Whether such knowledge is relevant? How do we define sociological literature? Questions, Patel argues that shakes the very identity of the discipline itself. But the issue is whether the discipline addresses these concerns.

Adding to these questions is the gradual but steady erosion of relevance. Patel (1994) argues that initially when sociology was institutionalized in the post independence period it had taken up the role of understanding the new society that was being constructed and the identity that was been established through works on caste, tradition, modernity, social change, development and such. But in recent times one can perceive a much fractured discipline that does not seem to have a clear cut agenda for it. Thus for Patel (1997), the crisis is not only institutional but also ideological, relating to the structures of higher education, the economy, the political as well as that of the paradigm of the discipline.

Sociology, according to Patel (1997), is posed with an epistemic challenge which includes two critical movements, feminist and environmental. How far the discipline has interpolated these challenges in research and teaching is subject to scrutiny. For sociology to reach its full potential and deal with crisis, what one needs is critical reflexivity, which has to be developed in the classrooms. This reflexivity has to be reflected both in our methodological as well as pedagogical tools.

Heutkar Jha: Elitist vs Vernacular Sociology

Alvin Gouldner in his much celebrated book ‘Crisis of Western Sociology’ 1970 explores the reasons how and why academic sociology became associated with conservatism in the period after world war, when it was institutionalized in the United States. The overwhelming institutionalization of the Parsonian school of structural functionalism failed to take cognizance and engage with questions facing society such as that of race and inequality. The criticisms and transformation of society became divorced from the analysis and theories about society. Therefore western sociology did not engage with the social reality and thus faced a crisis (Gouldner 1970, cited in Patel 1997).

Building on the debate, by theorizing on the need to place the argument of crisis within the uneven development and institutionalization of the discipline within regions, is the article by Hetuka Jha (2005). In the article titled ‘Indian Sociology in Crisis: the Need for Regional Orientation’, Jha argued that the crisis debate needs to be contextualized within the ‘regional question’. What did it exactly refer to? And how was it different from the earlier scholars who argued that we need to understand the crisis in terms of practices of sociology within substandard parameters in many sociology departments spread over the country? Jha (2005), developed a conceptual framework of ‘elite sociology vis-a vis vernacular sociology’, which he believed would help one to understand the crisis facing sociology in India. Jha argued that the state in the post independence period followed a strategy of expansion of higher education system. Under this strategy a number of universities and colleges were established in different states and in most of them sociology was introduced as a subject. There has been a massive growth of colleges, universities and research institutions where either sociology is taught or researched or both. According to Jha, while this may refer to the growing popularity of the discipline, this expansion does not really reflect that sociological knowledge and understanding of Indian society has also grown in vigour and rigour. The much obvious argument of Jha is that mere expansion and growth of professional sociology cannot ensure the generation of valid and reliable knowledge and understanding of society. In fact, it is this unplanned expansion without ensuring maintenance of standards, that has landed sociology in crisis.

Historical analysis would reveal that in the pre independence period the chief centres of doing sociology included Calcutta, Lucknow and Bombay. This legacy was challenged in the post independence period, when Delhi started emerging as a great centre of learning. This issue was not so much the emergence of Delhi and other ‘national’ centres’ (refer to Veena Das analysis in this module). Thus sociology which was established in the first quarter of the 20th Century and by 2001- sociology was taught in more than a hundred universities – increasingly research centres and departments of sociology were established. The questions asked by Jha (2005) were the following: Does this mean that there is a ‘growing popularity’ of sociology? And the expansion, does it imply that sociological knowledge and understanding has become more vigorous and rigorous? Jha argues that though the popularity has increased, one needs to realize that mere expansion of sociological centres- cannot ensure generation of valid and reliable knowledge and understanding. Furthermore, such an expansion has led to a ‘crisis’- regional crisis.

Sociology started flourishing in the elitist centres, where the medium of instruction was solely English, which Jha (2005) referred to as the practice of ‘Elitist Sociology’. In most of the other Universities and colleges established in the states, one could see the pursuance of ‘vernacular sociology’- where the medium of instruction includes local or regional languages referred by Jha (2005) as ‘Vernacular Sociology’. According to Jha the reason for such a discrepancy was the policy of higher education followed by the Indian state. Based on the Government of India Act 1919- educational policy was devolved to the provincial ministries. The takeover of education by the provincial (state) governments after 1921 was associated with educational expansion at all levels. The British officials, though they reacted against this expansion, could not stop it 5. According to Jha (2005) two important arguments were being stated that in order to maintain and promote the quality of education, one must oppose its expansion and at the same time it was asserted that the quality of education and learning depended completely on the proficiency in English. The equation that was being emphasized was that quality of education was equivalent to proficiency in the English language. The image of education/learning through English medium as one of superior quality, and, therefore preferable, was thus institutionalised during the colonial rule and carried on post independence.

How did this happen? Jha (2005) argues that after Independence there were two strategies with regard to Higher Education. On one hand Central Government established many Universities and research centres and on the other hand, higher education policy was placed in the purview of the State Governments. Such a policy, according to Jha (2005), led to the emergence of two kinds of universities and centres of learning; one, high quality equaled with Central Universities and the other, low quality associated with ‘regional’ State Universities. State governments established Universities and over the years one has seen a considerable increase in the number of State Universities all over India. In addition, owing to the great variations between states, there were considerable differences between state Universities with regard to resources, political will, pressures and demands. Further, there is also wide range of differences between the State and Central Universities with regard to issues such as excessive political and bureaucratic control, mismanagement, and acute shortage of funds and resources. As compared to State universities, Central universities are centrally funded, there is a presence of superior standards of campus life, high encouragement to research by faculty, great infrastructural facility and better life chances for the research and faculty in academic departments.

The difference is greater when we analyse the issue of language. Jha (2005) refers to the first tier Central Universities in which English is the only medium of instruction- emergence of these universities seems to have facilitated the growth of elitist sociology. The second tier consists of State Universities where local/regional languages are generally used for teaching. With the rise in the number of State Universities, vernacular sociology has grown in size. Then it is important to contextualize what are the challenges while teaching in regional ‘vernacular’ sociology departments. It includes, scarcity of good text books – many regional languages books have concepts which are misleading and confusing, students dependence on spurious and inauthentic ‘guide books’ –leading to dilution of standards, students generally dependent on classroom notes (dictated by the teacher in respective languages)- quality of which is dubious adding on to this is the poor and inadequate physical facilities in many of departments and colleges.

Deb (1998), while writing about the challenges of teaching in a regional university stated that it is difficult to maintain certain academic standards, there is a need for the teachers to be creative in their efforts at reading and writing. Additionally, teachers have to make immense efforts at making students feel passionately for the subject but the authority structure works against the interests of the discipline. Such a feeling was also reiterated by N Jayaram (1998), in his article ‘Challenges to Indian Sociology’, he argued that there has been lamentable decline in standards of M. Phil dissertations and Ph. D theses. Further, according to him, one has to recognize that teaching sociology in Indian languages to students is a challenge which needs to be addressed.

5 In his report of 1929, Philip Hartog wrote ‘‘there has been an appreciable increase in the number of Universities, but their standards have been lowered…. Many of the students are unable to follow the lectures owing to their defective knowledge of English’ (1929: 107 and 346 cited in Jha 2005: 397-98)

Ramesh Bairy: Rethinking the Debate

Bairy (2004) argues that now there is a need to rethink the debate with regard to the crisis. Rather than addressing the hopelessness and despair plaguing sociology, what one needs to be done is to accept the fact that things have gone wrong, and now we need to think positively about it. For Bairy, in the whole debate the voice of the students was absent,especially the voices of undergraduate students. It is important to remember that the students have lot of stake in the discipline, and are therefore crucial to the sociological imagination. Bairy argues in favour of relooking at the idea of ‘instrumentality’, this for him has to be analysed. It is important for sociology to be restructured so that it becomes relevant to policy and applied research. Such a restructuring could renew vigour among the students, and consequently the discipline itself.

The question is not about replacing the ‘pure/fundamental’ research with ‘utilitarian sociological research’. It is not about replacing one with another, but bringing together both the approaches to work with one another. Utilitarian sociology has great value for a society like India that is facing multiple challenges. Bairy argues that the ideal way of re-imaging a post-graduate course in sociology will be to, after a sufficient and thorough grounding in theory and methodology, offer different specialisations translated into concrete skills. Sociologists should explore multiple ways in which sociological skills could be used in diverse spheres such as media, civil services, NGO and Industry, especially corporate social responsibility. We need to remember that one of the primary needs of education is to ensure honourable livelihood options. Thus, a sociologists challenge lies in making sociology, that is taught at undergraduate level, translate itself into a specific set of concrete skills that are in demand, while of course, keeping the students options open to pursue a higher specialised degree in sociology.

Conclusion

Here it is important to tie the strings of the debate discussed until now so that one does not lose sense of the arguments made so far. Reading and analyzing the arguments presented above one can state the following. The crisis in sociology is a concern that needs much attention. The issue refers not only to the quality of students and their lack of commitment, but also to the lack of critical reflection among academicians themselves. Further the issue is not only of lack of resources but also about the distribution of these resources. It also has to do with the question of language, the space granted to some categories of privileged language, for example English. Additionally the crisis is closely related with the manner in which identity discourses are engaged with. It is also important to link the crisis with not only the micro processes but also the larger, structural, macro processes. The crisis lies not only on relying on western theories, concepts but also in uncritical application of framework of the indigenous. It is important to realize that it is not only the institutional structures which can contribute to the making of the crisis but also the students and academics within them.

A discipline is always dynamic and is in a continuous process of making and unmaking, in particular sociology, as it engages with society which is forever in a dynamic mode. Thus in contexts when sociology fails to address the challenges, movements in the society, it becomes irrelevant to its disciplinary meaning. So it is not surprising that it suffers from crisis as it is caught up it in its own irrelevance. The challenge, I believe, for sociology is to always push its boundaries because the moment the boundaries become permanent the discipline is dead. It is thus a combination of many factors that define the crisis.

DID YOU KNOW?

1. The website – http://www.unipune.ac.in/snc/cssh/Archieves.html- under Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, Savitribai Phule Pune University has documents on History of Sociology of India and History of Sociology of the World. This set of documents were collected by Sujata Patel and Sharmila Rege, erstwhile faculty members of the department of Sociology, Savitribai Phule Pune University.

WEB LINKS:

http://www.academia.edu/8716290/At_Crossroads_Sociology_in_India

http://www.unipune.ac.in/snc/cssh/HistorySociology/A%20DOCUMENTS%20ON%20HISTORY%20OF

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/23620940?sid=21105811841243&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&uid

http://www.india-seminar.com/2000/495/495%20further%20reading.htm

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4376593?sid=21105811841243&uid=4&uid=3739576&uid=2&uid=

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