We have been following the AIIMS drama with great interest, partly because it is slowly becoming a microcosm of the TN communal politics. What we have is a showdown between an MBBS Doctor (quota beneficiary) turned Minister (profiled here) and a widely respected visionary (profiled on the RealityCheck blog here).Dr. Ramadoss is running amock through the AIIMS campuses like a pitbull in heat with his instrument in his hand, penetrating every soft spot he finds.
What does the Government have against centres of excellence in education? Going by the systematic campaign of vendetta and vilification unleashed against select centres of learning by powerful Ministers of the UPA Government, it would seem that the ruling alliance has decided to launch an Indian version of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. During that so-called Revolution, China's then supreme leader let loose thousands of illiterate lumpens masquerading as Red Guards on institutions of higher learning, humiliated scholars and men of culture, made bonfires of rare books and ancient manuscripts and directed university students to pack their bags and go to villages under the slogan "learn from the peasants".
Welcome to the 21st Century, India.
3 comments:
barb-
The amazing thing is the same bunch was also in the NDA government for six long years. They never uttered anything controversial in those years.
If you let these guys have their way, they are of course going to do what they know to do best.
Thanks a lot for the story about the roadside tea shop owner. They really hate these people who make it on their own against all odds.
The comparison to Mao Zedong's era is so apt. Mao was another guy who hated "merit." he hated specialists and his whole vision behind the Great Leap was to show that the world did not need speciliasts. It needed yeoman farmer generalists growing rice adn smelting iron in their backyard. Given the rash of articles that are popping up attacking the notion of "merit," one is in Mao's China.
Amartya Sen is one of the most spineless chameleons around. He hunts with the hounds and runs with the hares. He has mastered that art. He has always been careful to keep his pure academic work fairly palatable to mainstream by always casting his work within the mainstream paradigm and never challening or questioning it. On the other hadn, his fluff work, which is what gets touted in chatterati circles consists of finding justification for communism/socialism or any form state intervention without ever calling out those egregious cases where state intervention has horribly failed. Of course, he has a tendency to suppress information when making his point. he was outed in his latest book when he goes on and on about Maimondies the Jew who fled "christian" eruope to "muslim" egyot according to Sen. The truth is that he fled a hardcore muslim spain for a less muslim Egypt. He was also outed by a Chinese when he made some preposterous claims about life in Mao's China.
Sen gets away with a lot because i) in person he is genial, friendly, and courteous ii) he seems to concerned about issues that all "feeling" human beings should be iii) the mainstream economics profession has some members who have pangs of guilt about the way the profession has gone and to assuage that guilt they champion Sen (a palatable option). Recall that Sen got his Nobel in the aftermath of LTCM crisis, when the economics profession was having collective guilty pangs about giving Scholes and Merton the Nobel the year earlier (Scholes and Merton were partners in LTCM).
Do you say that there should be pay for work not done
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