Eminent economist Prabhat Patnaik has flagged a “lumpenisation” of public higher education system in the country by the Union government and those who are close to it.
He was here on Wednesday to open a three-day seminar on education organised by the AKG Centre for Study and Research, Thiruvananthapuram, and the Keluettan Centre for Study and Research, Kozhikode, ahead of the International Congress on Kerala Studies to be held next year.
Mr. Patnaik pointed out that there had been an enormous amount of arbitrary interference in what the student was supposed to know and not to know. “One is these changes that are happening in textbooks. [Charles] Darwin’s theory does not figure, the Mughal empire does not figure. Poverty as a category in India does not figure. No discussion of Moulana Abul Kalam Azad, who played such an illustrious role in the freedom struggle,” he said.
