This book examines various ideational, attitudinal and intellectual impasses that are becoming glaringly apparent on several fronts, and which have held back India's balanced, steady and uniform development and transformation post-independence. It argues that all of these ideational and attitudinal aberrations stem from one basic fact, namely that India, throughout the entire period since the onset of modern industrial secular civilization at the global level, has somehow managed to evade the core ideas and values of the western Enlightenment movement, leaving unfinished the crucial task of modernizing and secularizing the mindsets and outlooks of its people on a mass scale - a task that has historically and globally been the backbone of sustained modern material development with socio-political stability. Further, it suggests that this enormous failure is crucially linked to key shortcomings in Indian mainstream thinking, and the imaginations and visions in general, and as such is also linked with confused educational ideas and content - particularly at the elementary level - since the country gained independence. The book maintains that Indian curricula and educational content at the school level has been consciously designed to guard against the core values and ideas of the Enlightenment, which could have made the typical Indian mind more rational, reasonable, mature and secular, resulting in much lower degrees of unreason, raw sentiments and emotions than have been hitherto entrenched in it. The book further sketches the genesis and impact of the currently dominant neoliberal ideas and thinking that have invaded the entire educational universe and its philosophy around the world. Lastly, it examines and assesses the latter's far-reaching ramifications for current Indian educational philosophy, pedagogy and practices, and proposes concrete remedial directions for public policy and action.

This monograph critically analyses the historical evolution of ideas, perceptions and principles on higher education and unravels a few of its interlinked aspects - content, quality, standard, massification, privatization and commercialization. It presents both original and penetrative critique of neoliberal ideas and policies reigning higher education since World War II. The volume argues that with the proliferation of 'academic capitalism' the academic quality of higher education has been inevitably compromised and it has thereby heralded a comprehensive 'intellectual retrogression'. The book offers a meticulous evaluation of global research reflecting on impeccable evidence of decline in academic learning - in its effort, quality, standards and overall intellectual level and rigour. Finally, it illuminates why it is dangerous to continue clinging ideationally to neoliberal reign in education and thereby evading or effacing some of the lasting and universal wisdoms and precepts of the educational reign preceding neoliberal marketoriented predominancy. The book will be of interest to students, teachers and researchers of education, higher education, sociology of education, economics and politics of education. It will also be useful for academicians, higher education administration, policymakers, schoolteachers and those interested in debates and issues around higher education.

There has been, of late, a growing realisation that the pace and pattern of economic development of a country can hardly be understood and explained comprehensively in terms of the straitjacket of economics discipline alone. India is a prime example of the importance of the part played by a country's history, culture, sociology, and socio-cultural-religious norms, values, and institutions in its development process. This book, with its assorted essays of varying depths of scholarship and insightful reflections, attempts to drive home this point more forcefully than ever before. In its search for the non-economic roots of India's overall sloth and murky progress in its broad-based economic and human development, the book illuminates major oddities deep inside a unique mental make-up full of perceptual and ideational dilemmas, many of which are arguably shaped by the long-lasting and dominant influence of what could be called the Brahminical lines of thinking and discourse. With India's hazy and dodgy world of perceptions as a backdrop, the book also addresses - through its intelligent essays - the deep and sometimes dire ramifications of the historic advent and the dramatic advance of neoliberal market ideology today.

This book examines various ideational, attitudinal and intellectual impasses that are becoming glaringly apparent on several fronts, and which have held back India's balanced, steady and uniform development and transformation post-independence. It argues that all of these ideational and attitudinal aberrations stem from one basic fact, namely that India, throughout the entire period since the onset of modern industrial secular civilization at the global level, has somehow managed to evade the core ideas and values of the western Enlightenment movement, leaving unfinished the crucial task of modernizing and secularizing the mindsets and outlooks of its people on a mass scale - a task that has historically and globally been the backbone of sustained modern material development with socio-political stability. Further, it suggests that this enormous failure is crucially linked to key shortcomings in Indian mainstream thinking, and the imaginations and visions in general, and as such is also linked with confused educational ideas and content - particularly at the elementary level - since the country gained independence. The book maintains that Indian curricula and educational content at the school level has been consciously designed to guard against the core values and ideas of the Enlightenment, which could have made the typical Indian mind more rational, reasonable, mature and secular, resulting in much lower degrees of unreason, raw sentiments and emotions than have been hitherto entrenched in it. The book further sketches the genesis and impact of the currently dominant neoliberal ideas and thinking that have invaded the entire educational universe and its philosophy around the world. Lastly, it examines and assesses the latter's far-reaching ramifications for current Indian educational philosophy, pedagogy and practices, and proposes concrete remedial directions for public policy and action.

There has been, of late, a growing realisation that the pace and pattern of economic development of a country can hardly be understood and explained comprehensively in terms of the straitjacket of economics discipline alone. India is a prime example of the importance of the part played by a country's history, culture, sociology, and socio-cultural-religious norms, values, and institutions in its development process. This book, with its assorted essays of varying depths of scholarship and insightful reflections, attempts to drive home this point more forcefully than ever before. In its search for the non-economic roots of India's overall sloth and murky progress in its broad-based economic and human development, the book illuminates major oddities deep inside a unique mental make-up full of perceptual and ideational dilemmas, many of which are arguably shaped by the long-lasting and dominant influence of what could be called the Brahminical lines of thinking and discourse. With India's hazy and dodgy world of perceptions as a backdrop, the book also addresses - through its intelligent essays - the deep and sometimes dire ramifications of the historic advent and the dramatic advance of neoliberal market ideology today.