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INTRODUCTION TO GOVERNANCE IN INDIA

BACKGROUND NOTE TO THE UG SIXTH SEMESTER HUMANITIES COURSE

IISC JANUARY- APRIL

Dr.Uday Balakrishnan, Visiting Faculty Centre for Contemporary Studies runs the 6th Semester Humanities

programme for UG Students at the Indian Institute of Science- Bangalore.

The columnist Frank Bruni, writing in the Times in 2014 said ‘If you want to feel much older, teach a college course. I am doing that now … and hardly a class goes by when I don’t make an allusion that prompts my students to stare at me as if I just dropped from the Palaeozoic era…..’ Frame of Reference by John McPhee New Yorker March 9,2015

While designing and implementing the sixth semester programme for young post 1990 born students one had to be acutely conscious of the danger of belonging to the Palaeozoic era especially since ‘common points of reference ‘ John McPhee alludes to in his article quoted above have actually dwindled and ‘the personal niche ‘ has indeed ‘supplanted the public square!’ In fact the biggest challenge in implementing this programme has been the need to constantly alert oneself to be contemporary without ignoring the historical context and also brief the ‘experts’ called to interact with such a young group accordingly – something they all admirably kept in mind to make sessions lively and highly interactive! Uday Balakrishnan

RESPONDING TO A NEED: A NEW PUBLIC POLICY PROGRAMME FOR UNDERGRADUATES

The sixth semester of the humanities programme for Undergraduate Science students at

IISc. is on issues in Public Policy under the overarching title–Introduction to

Governance In India. This programme is now into its third avatar.

The basic premise of this course the need to be critically

analytical rather than be subjectively judgemental of

issues influencing public policy in our country be they

reservations, elections, security, education or foreign

policy among several others. The students in the course

are not only encouraged but are also required to explore

and discuss these issues individually and in groups and

share their learnings with the class. A special feature of

this programme is the opportunity it opens out for the

class to interact with those actually involved in policy

making and execution at the highest levels.

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Governance is a vast area and the 6th Semester humanities programme is limited to weekends

between January and April of every year. The choice of topics for the classes/Group

Presentations therefore need to be topical enough yet adequately linked to the past to

improve understanding. Thus for example it was important for the 2014 class to discuss the

42nd Amendment to the Indian Constitution - the impact of which is felt to this day - and to

contrast JP’s movement for ‘Total Revolution’ from the seventies with the more contemporary

and then topical one of the anti-corruption agitation led by Anna Hazare and how it morphed

into the AAP movement under Arvind Kejriwal. For the 2015 class, in view of the heightened

internal and external challenges to the Indian State, it was considered essential to engage the

students on India’s struggle to Stay Together linked to an expert talk on National Security

and the State.

GROUP ASSIGNMENTS& CLASSROOM SESSIONS

One important component of the programme is the Group Assignment leading to Group

Presentation (GP). For this, the class of 2014&2015 were divided into groups for as

many Group Assignments. The students surprised everyone with their well-researched

and crisp in-depth presentations supported by excellent visuals.

(See ANNEXURE - PART -1)

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENTS

At an individual level the students in the first programme (Jan-April 2014) were given

two written assignments i.e. one to briefly ( 300 words) yet critically evaluate their

group presentation and a second one to take a critical look at a specified Government of

India website1 and evaluate (in about 700 words) the same for content, presentation

and ease of understanding. This format was modified for the 2015 course asking the

1One for each student was identified.

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students to give their take on the ‘One thing they would like to see change in the country

and why’ in a long essay with lower word limit of 750 words. In the time available to the

students a single long essay was just about what they could handle and this format is

retained for the course2. (See extracts from some of the essays ANNEXURE -PART 3)

IMPORTANCE OF EXPERTS AND OBSERVERS.

Many of the classes had more than one external expert. Often these

comprised one or more senior Officers from the State or Central

Governments along with well-known members of the academic

community closely connected with policy formulation,

implementation and review. There was an advantage of having

such groups as the students were exposed to different experts’

points of view.(Refer to ANNEXURE – PART-2)

IMPETUS FOR INTERACTIVE LEARNING AND THE SOCRATIC METHOD

Although the course runs through a full semester, experience has shown

that the total number of classroom interactions cannot exceed twelve or

fourteen at the most. By the sixth semester the students are well into their

demanding science courses and there is only a limited time they can devote

to the humanities programme. The challenge therefore has been to make

each one count by making it engaging and very participative.

IN THE CLASSROOM

Classes were held on Saturdays and very rarely on Sundays. The

schedules were decided in consultation with the students who were

highly accommodative, often agreeing to evening classes starting at 5.30

pm frequently concluding close to dinner time. A typical classroom

session lasted about 120 minutes. This included an introduction to the

topic followed by the Group presentation, the invited expert’s interactive

talk all leading to a Q&A session with the Group which made the presentation as well as

the expert of the day. As this is proving to be difficult to manage it is proposed to

finalize classroom schedules, Group and individual assignments in consultation with

students entering the 6th semester by mid December 2015. The 2016 6th semester

course is under ‘construction’! Annexure Part 4.

2Annexure 1 gives list of external experts who participated.

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ANNEXURE

PART -1

The Group Presentations (GP) topics and the associated Classroom Session (CS) - in

red italics) for 2014, 2015 6th Semester Humanities course are listed below:

A. 2014 JAN-APRIL SEMESTER

1. GP: Examining the 42nd amendment of the Indian Constitution which made far-

reaching changes to the Constitution during the Emergency (1975-77) under the

Prime Ministership of Indira Gandhi.

CS: Overview of the Indian Constitution.

2. GP: Evaluating the 15th Lok Sabha (2009-2014) the most disrupted one since

India became a republic.

CS: How the Indian Parliament works.

3. GP: Is IT cutting through red tape or increasing it?

CS: Understanding India’s bureaucracy and making it work for you.

4. GP: Ambedkar and the empowerment of the historically discriminated in Hindu

society – an appreciation.

CS: Affirmative action in India.

5. GP: Is democracy handicapping development in India?

CS: Development as a political process – the Amartya Sen- Jagdish Bhagwathi

debates.

6. GP: Challenging the State – a short account of people’s struggles since

independence.

CS: Important aspects of India’s internal and external security.

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7. Comparing the 2G, CWG and Coal scams.

CS: Corruption and the Indian State.

8. GP: Contrasting the JP Movement’s Total Revolution with Anna Hazare/AAP

movements.

CS: The Alternative- the AAP phenomena – challenging an established

political model.

9. GP: Challenging isolation in an increasingly globalizing and interdependent

world.

CS: International interdependence – an appreciation of the UN system.

1- B-2014 JAN-APRIL SEMESTER

1. GP: India’s struggle to stay together

CS: National security and the State

2. GP: Is India’s higher civil service in need of a transformation?

CS: The bureaucracy in India

3. The challenge of putting UID to use in India.

CS: UIDAI- The concept and implementation of the programme.

4. GP: Should we have an Income Tax?

CS: Your money and mine- how the government of India is funded and how it

becomes accountable

5. GP: Is India’s evolution from a Union of States to a quasi-federal one good for the

country?

CS: India’s evolving federalism

6. GP: Evaluating the Swacch Bharat Mission.

CS: Our environmental mess

7. GP: Does the State need to specifically empower its citizens to better protect

their rights?

CS: Empowering the citizen.

8. GP: Special States special Status – Article 370 and special safeguards for the NE

States.

CS: The Indian constitution

9. GP: Before and after TN Seshan – The evolution of the Election Commission of

India.

CS: The electoral process

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10. GP: Doing Away with Parliament –should India opt for the Presidential form of

democracy?

CS: How the Parliament works

11. GP: The same beaten path or new infrastructure paradigm for the future?

CS: Infrastructure –key to development

Additionally apart from an Introductory session we had sessions on (1) Delivering

growth – UPA & NDA - Differing approaches followed by a discussion on Making the

best of India’s demographic dividend (2) Ecology Growth & Democracy in India.

PART-2

EXTERNAL RESOURCE

2A. The 2014 6th Semester programme:

1. Justice J. Chelameshwar – Judge Supreme Court of India

2. Mr.Hormis Tharakan Former Chief of R&AW

3. Mr.IMG Khan former Member UPSC

4. Ms.Usha Mathur Former Secretary Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs GOI

5. Dr.PJ.Dilip Kumar former Special Secretary & Director General Forests GOI

6. Dr.DS.Ravindran Head Karnataka Government’s IT initiative

7. Mr.MP Joseph former country Head International Labour Organization

Cambodia and currently Special Adviser on Labour to the Government of Kerala

8. Dr. Lawrence Surendra Developmental Expert, Ex UN University Tokyo.

9. Professor Vinod Vyasulu Economist IIIT Bangalore

2B: The 2015 6th Semester programme:

1. Mr.N.Gopalaswami – Former Chief Election Commissioner of India

2. Mr.KS. Sripathi former Chief Secretary and Chief Information Commissioner

Tamilnadu.

3. Mr.R.Srikumar former DGP of Karnataka, Joint Director CBI, Vigilance

Commissioner at the CVC.

4. Mr.Jairam Ramesh MP former Union Minister & MP

5. Dr.Rajeev Gowda MP former Professor IIM Bangalore

6. Dr.MG Chandrakanta Professor of Economics at the UAS Bangalore

7. Dr.RS Deshpande ex-Director ISEC Bangalore

8. Mr.KK Sharma former ADG UADAI

9. Mr.Rajender Kumar former ADG UADAI

10. MR.CK Ramachandran Development Expert World Bank and Adviser to

Government of Bihar , Orissa etc

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11. Mr. Anthony Tharakan formerly of the Indian Railways and now runs a Coffee

&spices plantation in Coorg and Kerala.

12. Mr. Rajan Singh former Commissioner of Police Trivandrum, later at Wharton

then with McKinsey New York, and now on his own startup in Trivandrum

13. Mr.Setumadhavan Senior formerly of the IA&AS Adviser to Indian and foreign

governments

14. Professor Vinod Vyasulu -IIIT Bangalore

15. Dr. Lawrence Rajendra from Sorbonne - Ex UN University Tokyo, Mysore

University.

16. Dr. PJ Dilip Kumar former Director General of Forests GOI

17. Ms. Radha Uday, former Financial Adviser, Indian Railways

18. Meera Srivastava, Joint Director Direct Taxation Regional Training Institute

Bangalore

*Several of those invited came in pairs to give different perspectives of the same issue.

The Jan-April, 2016 semester’s programme also incorporates some of the

best minds to involve the students in a dialogue on some of the important

contemporary issues in India. Their expert perspectives help to ensure a

well-oiled programme for the semester.

________________________________________________________________________________________

PART-3

EXTRACTS FROM LONG ESSAYS – 2012 BATCH

The primary intention of the course was to enlighten students on teething

issues facing the country at present. The awareness in due course would

translate into critical analysis of these problems and the provision of

solutions for the same. It is to this effect, that it is quite evident from the

excerpts below on the impact it has had over the years.

These extracts (select few) illustrate the range of concerns of the students of

the 2012 batch. A host of issues were highlighted in the essays written by the

students with the state of education in India given more emphasis. It was a

pleasure to go through them.

1. Poverty, occupations, place of habitation, all contribute to backwardness and such factors

should also be considered as a criterion for reservation. India is growing at a tremendous rate, in

the present scenario the wrong people are getting the attention that others deserve which is a lot

of investment that is sure to get a poor outcome.

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__________________

2. Let me inform you about certain startling facts. India is going to experience a paradox of nearly

90 million people joining the workforce but most of them will lack required skills and the mind

set for productive employment according to a report in DNA. India has about 550 million people

under the age of 25 years out of which only 11% are enrolled in tertiary institutions compared to

the world average of 23%.

The above example just shows the effect of the quality of human capital n income inequality. So if

the government does not improve education system particularly in rural areas the rich will

become richer and the poor will get poorer.

_____________________

3. In the process of ensuring the religious rights of a Majority, are we not creating a hostile

environment for others and to be true are we not tactfully slowly smothering the very own

democracy that we take pride in ?

______________________

4. Many Indians students learn to idolize Dr A P J Abdul Kalam as a role model from their school

days and nurture dreams to join ISRO as a scientist to contribute to India’s scientific growth, but

the moment they pass out from an engineering college, joining a government lab is heavily

discouraged and joining an American MNC to earn crores is seen as the ideal thing to do. This

hypocritical behaviour, which has become a part of our daily activities, is a major cause of various

social problems.

____________________

5. These have a big impact on kids, an impact which can be seen from the joy in their face. I have

personal experience in this. So, it would be great if there are enough parks and grounds in every

locality and if the parents spend time taking their kids to these places. It does not make sense

without the latter. It makes a huge difference in their growth. In short: in future, I don’t want my

children to wait in queue to play ball with a machine in a mall. I would rather like to see them

chase a butterfly in the park with a curious smile.

______________________

6. We need a system where no Indian die of hunger, which is the ultimate target of NFSA. The Act

along with the clause ‘food for all’ emphasizes the word ‘nutritious’ as a prefix. A nutritious diet

can create a healthy society and a healthy society can make a wealthy nation. The way it all leaks

include (1) The intervention of middle men prevents the effective reach of Minimum Support

prices given to farmers (2) The Unhygienic conditions in storage go downs destroys the materials

(3) Overcharging and Black Marketing (4) Unauthorized ration cards and their misuse etc.

_______________________

7. Despite efforts to incorporate all sections of the population into the Indian education system,

through mechanisms such as positive discrimination and non-formal education, large numbers of

young people are still without schooling.

_______________________

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8. However, real progress in science occurs through small sciences carried out in little

laboratories in areas like biology, chemistry, and physics and so on. These areas of small science

require much more support. [It is believed that India's investment in scientific research and

development is a fifth of China's and one-twentieth of US's funding in the same] We have to build

many outstanding institutions so that good young people have places to work in the right

environment. This is required urgently if India has to compete with our neighbouring nations and

education system in India has to change.

_______________________

9. As our PM Narendra Modi said, the issue of reservation could be dealt with by creating more

opportunities, that, no one would care about reservation anymore. But this is easier said than

done. The humungous task of creating more vacancies, job opportunities and seats in higher

educational institutions, taking all its consequences into account, is not an easy job. Let us work

towards and hope for a better India, as Swami Vivekananda rightly said,

“Do you love your country? Then come, let us struggle for higher and better things; Look not

back, no, not even if you see the dearest and nearest cry. Look not back, but forward!”

_______________________

10. While I agree that it is essential to be critical and to constantly look for avenues of

improvement, being overly critical has its downside. It creates a feeling that we cannot move

forward and that we are in some way incompetent to deal with our problems. To tackle the

problems we face today, a great sense of confidence in our ability is absolutely essential which

cannot grow in the current atmosphere of negativity. Unless we believe that we have done well in

the past, how can we ever believe that we can do better in the future? So, if there is one thing I

would like to change, it is our perception of our country and ourselves as citizens.

______________________

11. We hesitate find odds out of helping someone, blindly believe in fake superstitions, have a

Hippocratic attitude, a big gender imbalance and we keep saying lines like “yaha sab chalta hai”

(everything is okay here) and “is desh ka kuch naii ho sakta” (no good can happen in this

country), we dream of working in MNCs in US and UK etc., but do not bother to use our skills for

the good of our country.

______________________

12. It is high time to encourage a breed of superstar teachers. The internet has created this

possibility – the performance of a teacher now need not be restricted to a small classroom. Now

the performance of a teacher can be opened up for the world to see. The better teacher will be

more popular, and acquire more students. That’s the way of the future. Read here about why I

think that we are closing on to the age of rock star teachers.

_______________________

13. We do have a low-cost high-throughput education system. What we need is a little

organization. Organization to improve the parameters of rankings, to set up education agencies

for promoting higher education in and outside India and to reduce complexity and increase

transparency.

_______________________

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14. The twenty first century is going to be defined by connectivity. The efficiency of

administrative framework and the competitiveness of business processes shall depend on the

speed and reliability of communication network. Moreover, to train the future workforce and

bridge the digital divide the next generation will have to have ready access to internet and

computational facilities. As such, given choice I would ensure broadband connectivity to every

village and town of India.

_________________________

15. You might be wondering why the article is titled “The sixth river” If you ask a Punjabi living in

the land of five rivers, he will promptly say that this sixth river is "The River of alcohol and

drugs". But a Punjabi whose heart beats for Punjab and those Punjabis who are a catalyst of

positivism and welfare of this land are its symbolic sixth river. Now, it is up to the people and the

government of Punjab to decide in what direction they want this sixth river to flow.

__________________________

16. The purpose of education is not to give the proverbial fish; it is to equip learners with

adequate tools and skill-set (the fishing rode, if you want to stick to the metaphor), to build their

capacity and enable them to become who they want to be. Rather than being this, the education

system in India has become one of ‘indoctrination’ with its focus on imparting facts and

information rather than building essential skills like critical thinking and rational analysis, and

enhancing student’s ability to learn new things he wants on his own.

Facts from history are learned by rote with very little analysis of context and why they matter,

students are made to note down answers and questions given by the teachers so that you can

reproduce them faithfully for an exam. Passing this exam i.e. SSLC or +2 has become more

important than gaining of knowledge or enhancement of capabilities itself; failure is looked upon

with so much stigma that people pass even when they don’t really know what they’re supposed

to (I can vouch for this from my experience at IISc).

__________________________

17. However, despite being the second most populous country and having the largest adolescent

population in the world, we simply refuse to talk to our kids about sex. Studies have shown that

vast majority of parents do not accept the responsibility for providing sex education to their

children. Most adolescents resort to sources like movies, literature, internet, or their friends, in

order to learn about sexual matters. Therefore, it came as no surprise when a survey of college

students conducted by the All India Educational and Vocational Guidance Association, reported

that 54% of males and 42% of females did not adequately know about sex, and alarmingly, only

45% of young women and 37% of young men were aware that intercourse could lead to

pregnancy!

__________________________

18. Two major differences surface which tend to be the stumbling blocks to our attaining

excellence: First, Indian universities lack in ‘critical mass’ of students; and secondly, the existing

affiliation system of colleges to universities is the bottleneck for their autonomy and freedom to

grow with innovations. There are many more other issues like faculty, infrastructure,

laboratories, library and a conducive ambience, which need to be addressed for our universities

to attain global parity.

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_________________________

19. “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.

Intelligence plus character that is the true goal of true education”- Martin Luther King

As education have the power to change the world, it can transform our ideas. So, if our education

system is strong and effective we will be able to take our nation at the height of success. Two

recent studies that incorporate the inquiry model are described. Both studies conclude that well

planned, personalized and coordinated professional learning using a collaborative inquiry

approach has a profound influence on district culture, school and student learning. Education is

an essential prerequisite of modernization. It enables people to know to know the world beyond

their surroundings and transform them to become humanist in outlook world view.

__________________________

20. The step of privatizing IR while tempting has its demerits as well. A privately owned railway

would mean termination of any loss making services. An example of this is the Northeast Frontier

Railway, servicing the seven sisters, which has an operating ratio of 1.85. It could, though not

necessarily, mean a rise in fares which would make travel expensive and unaffordable to the

common man. A lack of government control would mean loss of job security to the 15 lakh people

IR currently employs.

_______________________

21. I would like to see Indians appreciate our cultural and spiritual heritage. It is so sad to see

how we, Indians are blindly following the western culture in name of modernization. In this rat

race we are leaving our culture and spiritual values which we cannot find anywhere in this

creation. The profound wisdom of Bhagvad Gita and other scriptures is not at all taken seriously.

All our education system is flooded with scientific, literature and arts books, which makes us

more and more literate, but do they really make us educated is questionable. Our education

system is becoming more fact oriented and less value oriented.

________________________

22. In a country like India where there has been a lot of artificial discriminations made by the

society based on sex and given the fact of increasing cases of rape, molestation and female

foeticide, I think India requires a more friendly environment amongst boys and girls (or men and

women) in the society. Now as any member of the society grows up, his/her mentality builds up

on the surroundings and the people he/she interacts with.

If Co-education is introduced more and more into the system, pupils will have a chance to

interact with opposite sex more often and would get much more time and scope to understand

them. On the other hand the concept of single-sex school is by itself seems to be sexist. Because

the society includes both the sexes and each one necessarily requires to confront the opposite sex

in most of the time in his/her life.

_________________________

23. But the mere presence of all these religions has created a unique problem in our country.

Somehow we have failed to live together as a peaceful country. Everyone is so much into their

own religion and trying to prove it to be superior to others that we have lost the basic sense of

humanity in this mad race of religion superiority. So to answer the question about one thing that

I would like to see change in India, it would be this very attitude of our people, which leads to

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communal clashes hence crippling India in so many ways.

_________________________

24. The biggest Indian start-up facing is the nemesis of prospective in laws, Nemesis of doting

parents and then self –inflicting concern for you to have job and a wife as a single channel of

nirvana that a human being can possibly have. Whether the job is shitty like a hell, I mean, what

they are really thinking. Really. What are their chances? First they have to survive most outdated

education system that there is. If they come to 23-24, they are expected to marry and settle down

by 27.

________________________

25. If the sole objective of the reservation is to lend a helping hand to the backward communities, then so be it. But one has to be very careful while choosing the word ‘backward communities’. In

a democratic India, even in 21st

century, why should we define ‘backward castes’ according to ‘castes’ itself? The incentive was to remove caste-based distinctions, not recreate and embrace it, was it not? A more logical and efficient way to determine the beneficiaries of the reservation system should be the financial status of people. If there is one thing that I would like to see changed, it would be the attitude of the people

towards problems. Most of the Indians don’t mind turning a blind eye to a problem if it does not

concern them, something that bothers me a lot. The ‘chalta hai’ and ‘jugaad’ ways of India are

something that needs immediate change as I shall explain below.

_________________________

26. First of all as parents or elders we should set an example of high thinking and good moral

conduct. Moral values and samskar should be inculcated into their unspoiled minds from the very

beginning. After all they become the future citizens. Elders should take a vow not to take or give

bribes, seek or provide undue favours and sincerely discharge their duties. People usually blame

the politicians, but if go to vote and vote the right candidates, the system can considerably

improve.

“HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY”

_________________________

27. I guess, there are a lot of things to change in this whole education system, but the first thing to

do is to see that each child is different with his/her own abilities and interests. And even though

they are kids, we elders should learn to respect them. Teachers should try to motivate them and

make learning fun. It is important to know that the foundation is really important for the whole

building to stand through time. And so, it is at the primary education that decides what a student

will end up doing in his life, go find answers to his curiosity or end up not knowing how to write

his own name. It’s not so difficult to implement, but yes, it is definitely going to take time to work.

As goes the famous saying, “Be the change you want to see in the world”, I see my fellow students

feel the same way and I have hopes that change will come.

________________________

28. The problem is really in the infrastructure. As the framework document it notes:

“Inappropriate classroom design may drastically affect the teacher’s productive output and

classroom management”. Yet, there are no benches to sit, no blackboards to write, defunct toilets,

and I’ve even been in a roofless classroom! If this is the case with schools in urban and rural

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Bangalore, one can only imagine the situation elsewhere. The system has miserably failed in

creating an atmosphere that encourages learning. Every parent I have met has the same refrain:

the mid-day meal is the only reason their wards go to school. Can there be a bigger failure than

this? A place to fill children’s minds has become a place for them to fill their stomachs. The

pathetic infrastructure manifests apathy in the children, which then results in indifference in the

teachers. As Sugata Mitra has shown in her famous Hole in the Wall experiment, a conducive

atmosphere is the most important thing for children to learn. Thus, infrastructure is the first

thing that needs to be in place.

_________________________

29. So, if the trainer really has so much power over a child’s mind, he should wield it with the

utmost care. And what really has the maximum authority over a child’s mind? I believe the

answer is cartoons. The enthusiasm towards enjoying these shows quickly wane out as a child

reaches about ten years of age. The new cartoons are uninspiring and unappealing. While it is

true that growth of Indian animation industry should be encouraged and creating these shows

might be doing exactly that, but only these shows should not be allowed to satisfy the intellectual

needs of a child. Changing the population will need to change our children. And as a large section

of a young child’s education does come from the cartoon industry we really need to cater serious

and sensible shows to our children.

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PART-4

.

WHAT IS PROPOSED FOR THE 2016 6TH SEMESTER PROGRAMME (JAN-

APRIL 2016)*

The 2016 6th Semester programme is still under preparation. Under the overarching

theme of INDIA- MANAGING THE MEGA STATE, the various issues to be addressed

include:

1. The role of the media in a democracy.

2. The system of justice in India.

3. Centre-State relations

4. Security challenges to the Indian State

5. The increasing importance of India’s NE

6. Religion and the Secular State

7. The Panchayat Raj system

* The list is tentative and will be finalized shortly

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

I have many to thank for making such a programme possible – Professor Raghavendra Gadagkar

for inspiring and encouraging me, Professor Chandan Dasgupta, Professor Umesh Varshney

,Dr.Bitasta. the UG Office , my colleagues in CCS and most of all the wonderful students – each so

irreverent, questioning , thinking and debating and writing with confidence and enthusiasm.

and dare I say hope?

A particular word of thanks to my friend of many decades and former Director General of Forests

GOI Dr .PJ Dilip Kumar. Simply put, this course would not have shaped up the way it did but for

his close involvement in its design and much, much more!

* A majority of the images appearing in this note have been taken by SIDDHARTH KANKARIA

Student 7th Semester UG Programme IISc.

UDAY BALAKRISHNAN Dr. Uday Balakrishnan is a former officer of the Indian Postal Service 1975 batch. He is a former

Registrar of the Indian Institute of Science and retired as Member Postal Services Board and

Chairman Investment Board of the Rs.20,000 crore Postal Insurance Fund in 2010.

Uday has worked across India, in various capacities in the Government of India, in and out of the

Postal Organisation. He has been in charge of the National Child Labour elimination programme

and has also worked as the Chief Vigilance Officer of the Ministry of Labour. He has also served as

Welfare Commissioner and been in charge of Women, migrant and unorganized labour. He has

also been a consultant to the International Labour Organization in India and overseas. His

articles have appeared in leading newspapers and journals and he has contributed chapters to

edited volumes by well known publishers, on Christianity in India (co-authored) and Gandhi – a

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Reappraisal , due for publication in 2016. His work in progress is a book – India Making of the

Mega State.

Uday has been twice Visiting Fellow at the Central European University Budapest and has been

invited by the Jawaharlal Nehru University-New Delhi. Wissenschaftskolleg – Berlin, the

Parmenides Foundation, , the Ruhr University – Bochum, and the National Institute of Advanced

Study Bangalore among several others. He was also Principal Adviser to the internationally

acclaimed art exhibition, Kochi Muziris Biennale 2014 edition. Dr. Balakrishnan set up the

archives of the Indian Institute of Science and co-created the 2008 exhibition on Etikoppaka, a

village inspired by Gandhi held in the Open Society Archives Budapest.