The Politics of English Studies in India

Abstract

Ever since India scented the potential of a global economic order to offer unprecedented educational and employment opportunities to a large proportion of its citizens, the rhetoric of higher education has undergone a dramatic shift. Questions of relevance, employability, knowledge economy, skills and skill deficit have started to float about, influencing the perception of the goals and the usefulness of the education available to India's citizens. The closer the links with the global market, the greater have been the associations with funding and its sources. And funding, as never before, has come to determine the focus and the direction of disciplines. While the sciences had long ago succumbed to the lure of the market and developed close links with industry, often allowing this to dictate areas of study and research, the humanities had held back because, as popular assumptions went, their market value was difficult to measure—for example, they could not take out patents and could not tie up with industry.