Political Science in India: Who Teaches What, to Whom and What for?
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Author | Rajeshwari Deshpande |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023013482790 |
| Subject Matter | Teaching—Learning Politics in India |
Military-Madrasa-Mullah Complex 97
India Quarterly, 66, 2 (2010): 133–149
A Global Threat 97
Teaching–Learning Politics in India
Political Science in India:
Who Teaches What, to
Whom and What for?
Rajeshwari Deshpande
The title of the note may sound provocative but the note is not. The proposed discussion forum in the
journal intends to begin a sincere conversation on themes related to teaching and learning political
science in India and this introductory note to the section thus tries to simply engage in a stock checking
exercise to flag off the issues and challenges in the field.
The challenges are far too many since the field of discussion is dotted with a lot of absences. Many of
these absences are about the systemic flaws and about policy inadequacies in the arena of higher educa-
tion in India and therefore may be beyond the immediate scope of this note. And yet, these larger inad-
equacies mark both, an essential backdrop and an important arena for long term interventions by
academic practitioners. The other kind of absence that again mainly results from a disjointed policy
discourse is a criminal neglect of pedagogic issues in Indian educational sphere. The teacher training
programmes in the country are in a pathetic state and the structuring of academic discipline of education
is skewed. That creates a serious impediment to healthy discussions on teaching learning activities. The
situation worsens as every year thousands of ill equipped educationists enter the job market. The third
lack is about public recognition of the importance and role of social sciences. The educational system in
India is unfairly tilted in favour of the natural and the ‘applied’ sciences and considers doing social
sciences as a worthless exercise.
In the context of all these more general challenges perhaps the most immediate concern for the current
conversation is a near complete absence of discussion on pedagogic issues within the realms of Indian
political science. It is a near complete absence that was only occasionally stirred by a few efforts in the
past. In the post emergency context, the Delhi Political Science Association launched a journal called
Teaching Politics that continued throughout the 1980s. That journal was an ambitious attempt on the part
of political science teachers to ‘promote a grass root level movement for third world orientation in the
study of political science’ (Teaching Politics, 1978). The journal was not entirely devoted to pedagogic
issues but provided an important platform for these discussions along with its publication of research
based articles. Around the same time, a few political scientists led by the Political Science department at
MS University Vadodra came up with a detailed plan of curricular development in Indian political
science. More recently, the NCERT textbooks of Political Science published during 2006–2007 must
be seen as yet another important intervention of conscientious political scientists in re-imagining
the discipline.1 The NCERT textbooks tried to develop a new understanding of politics for school
children and also tried to free them from the ‘passive learning’ processes at least to a certain extent. All
these efforts were remarkable but rare and thus only underline the need to institutionalize a more routine
conversation on issues of teaching/learning political science in general and Indian politics in particular.
In this section of the journal, we welcome short notes how we can take such initiatives forward.
Rajeshwari Deshpande is with the Department of Politics & Public Administration, University of Pune.
E-mail: rajeshwari.deshpande@gmail.com.
Studies in Indian Politics
1(1) 97–101
© 2013 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/2321023013482790
http://inp.sagepub.com
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