Who needs the social sciences?
This is not an op-ed on the pros and cons of HECs devolution/dissolution.
I refuse to give into opining expediency and follow the rest of this countrys English language writers by chipping in with my own two cents about a matter I know little about.
Oh yes, I have little hesitation in admitting that my personal clarity over the entire affair is close to zero an admission that a number of people on twitter, Facebook, and the opinion pages of our English language dailies would do well to make. You see, the obfuscation of this HEC saga is largely a product of an overly hyperactive media/social media space. With public platforms more accessible than at any time in the past, every side wants to shout their argument the loudest not realising that an argument in complete isolation from its opposing viewpoint is primarily useless.
In any case, you get the picture.
The government has taken a decision, public action has made the President take notice, and now were at a situation where it seems things might just go either way. (Although I personally think the devolution will take place regardless of whether its the right thing to do or not).
Anyway, amongst all the talk and, frankly speaking, annoying chatter, there is something that really needs to be spelt out for the partisans amongst us.
The HEC has never actually undergone an objective evaluation something that would give people on either side concrete reasons to argue with.
By objective, I dont mean third-party, or multilateral sponsored, but rather a review of its performance on the basis of not just quantitative proclamations like No. of PhDs or No. of scholarships given but also on the basis of the quality of knowledge being disseminated because of HEC-led interventions. If my idea of producing more PhDs was to give a free-reign to students who would indulge in dissertation topics like how Pakistan has yet to recover from the debris of the Ottoman Empire, I would rather just spend that money elsewhere.
Regardless of all this, the thing that irked me off the most was that on a recent TV show, a certain pasty faced senator from the anti-devolution brigade stated that Dekhain jee, HEC kay bannay say pehlay iss mulk mein PhD sirf Geography aur Social Studies jaisee cheezon mein ho rahee thee (Before the HEC came into being, the only fields where PhD studies were being done were Geography and Social Studies).
He went on to say how the HEC ensured the addition of valuable research in the authentic fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology, material sciences etc. Now I know, throwing a hissy fit on the words of an irrelevant senator is not good for my blood-pressure or for my vow to stay sensible, but I honestly feel that this twisted preference for real studies over airy-fairy studies has gone on for far too long.
When I finally become Emperor (after due democratic process of course), one of the first things I would do is to carry out a public service campaign on the importance of impartial and objective social science education in a country like Pakistan.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that a developing country such as ours needs managerial and technical human resource. These individuals, in turn, would help in driving the economy, create an enabling environment for growth, become the engines of modernity, end poverty, bring world peace etc. People cite Indias IITs and IIMs as the most convenient example, But what they fail to see are the JNUs and the Presidency Colleges, and the St. Stephens and St Xaviers colleges which are now capable of producing social scientists with terminal degrees in their fields with the ability to get tenured at the best universities in the world.
The problem, especially in our case, is that the drive towards prosperity and stability can never be a linear, technical process. Given the existence of multiple fractures, many of them primordial, within society, scientific rationalism, as Weber very eloquently put it, simply falls short in giving us the answer of how we can actually resolve difference, or how do we live our life. For 63 years, the process of identity resolution has come up short in giving us a viable answer. Our development processes have been exclusionary, our state systems oppressive, and our society increasingly paranoid. No number of nanotechnologists, with all due credit to their expertise, can solve this condition.
For me the real watershed moment in higher education would be when we start generating ideas that can actually solve our countrys very real socio-cultural problems. My inherent bias aside, I genuinely believe that the difference between a stable, coherent, and progressive polity, and with what we have right now, is the state of affairs of our own social science education. Till such time we drop this rather uninformed preference for the technical over the ideational, well remain stuck in our current myriad.
The writer did two degrees in the social sciences and hasnt starved yet. He blogs at http://recycled-thought.blogspot.com. Write to him at [email protected]
