Discrimination, gender: Here is what DU students won’t learn if new Economics paper is axed

Saumyajit Bhattacharya, Associate Professor, Kirori Mal College, said, “Economics of Discrimination is a new paper covering crucial aspects of discrimination such as caste, race, and gender. This is very topical and has a contemporary reading list. It is ironic that in the same AC meeting in which the V-C has taken interest in a course on the economics of Dr BR Ambedkar, a course on economics of discrimination, which includes writings of Dr Ambedkar, along with contemporary academic writings, is being eliminated.”

Bhattacharya said the committee which was set up by V-C to review the syllabus has probably recommended merging two of three components — Economy, State and Society, and Production Relations and Globalisation — into one and recommended that the third be deleted altogether.

“It talks about behavioural responses of different stakeholders of society like the rich and the poor, male, female, people who belong to higher and marginalised sections, the queer communities… this is a paper that is taught in almost all the best universities in the world… students should be taught a paper like this, particularly from the lens of the marginalised…,” said Nandini Dutta, Associate Professor, Miranda House.

Dutta reiterated that discrimination is not being taught and that this is not a case of repetition.

The recommendations are to be taken up for consideration in the Standing Committee meeting on Academic Affairs on June 14.

Shriprakash Singh, Director of South Campus and standing committee member, said he wasn’t aware of discussions on merging two papers and removing one. “We are meeting on June 14 and concerns of the house will emerge and come to light. Our opinion is to teach students successful models across the world… we go by the opinion of the house, if it thinks the paper should be dropped, we will communicate that to the department; the HoD of the department will go back, discuss it, and come up with the resolution.”

Professor Surender Kumar, Head of the Department of Economics, said he had no comment on the matter.

Speaking about the other two papers, Archana Aggarwal, Associate Professor, Hindu College, who has taught these for 15 years, said, “Economy, State and Society has been taught for about 40 years… It deals with trying to understand how societies have changed and why. It is also an analysis of capitalism which includes study about monopoly, production. In this paper, we study economic historians, Marxist theory, Schumpeter… all other papers in economics, except for these two, take capitalism for granted; these try to explain how capitalism came about, which is certainly not a repetition.”

Teachers said it is impractical to merge the two papers. “The first paper is explaining the basis of capitalism and how it works, the second is about contemporary capitalism, so both thematically in terms of content can’t be merged,” Aggarwal said.