Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

One of the challenges of an organizational structure built on the rhetoric of meritocracy is its inability to put checks and balances in place to hold accountable the structures of power that are accumulated through claims to meritocracy. The logic of meritocracy works precisely on the acceptance of inequality as natural to a structure that is built on merit, with merit standing in as a signifier of capability. Inequalities are justified to the extent that they are based on differentials in merit. Inequalities in differential labour, differential assigned workloads, differential pay structures can all be justified to the extent that they can be justified by some claim to merit. The powers that be in meritocratic structures determine the rules of the game to justify these inequalities. Now all of this would work in a meritocratic system if the system was devoid of the workings of power and the traps to equal access that are put up by structural differences in access to opportun

In global education, established universities are seeking partnerships with India to build their brand presence in the country. Noting the large market for education in India, multiple international institutions are exploring building partnerships. For these institutions, while building linkages with India, it is vital to make note of India's most recent round of attacks on academic freedom. Partnerships and collaborative works with Indian universities stands threatened in a climate that is actively seeking to thwart academic freedom, silence thoughts, and turn education into a skills-mill. While the skills-mill approach may sound enticing for a global partnership, the drawback of such a skills-focused approach is its lack of engagement with critical thought. Education in many ways in India now is being modeled into a factory for producing obedient workers for the global neoliberal economy. Add to this training in obedience an unhealthy dose of nationalism filled with

unequalacademiclabor> In 2004, I wrote 15 peer reviewed articles drawing upon quantitative large-scale survey data that I had "not" gathered. I had not done the field work for this research (mostly conducted by large survey companies). Also, in 2004, I published 14 peer-reviewed journal articles, mostly in top tier disciplinary and sub-disciplinary journals. Once again, most of these articles were quantitative articles, drawing upon quantitative analysis of data I had not myself gathered. A couple of these pieces are among my most highly cited pieces, one of them putting forth a theory I had developed on the basis of my quantitative analysis. Something else also happened in 2004. It was the year that I published my first ethnography in the journal Communication Theory. The piece titled "The unheard voices of Santalis" was drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork started in 1998. Dutta‐Bergman, M. J. (2004). The unheard voices of Santalis: Commun

The emergence of the Sangh in post-liberalization India rides on the participation of tech-savvy men and women, empowered yuppies in tech centers, Internet-empowered corporate executives with MBAs, and now-arrived NRIs in US, UK, Singapore etc. who see the Sangh as a tool for returning their lost dignity. The Sangh is the ride to the market, Indian ishtyle. These are the Sanghi net warriors. The trolls that inundate the Internet. The Twitterati feeding cycles of Sanghi propaganda. The likes of Shilpi Tiwari. Tech savvy. Sanghi minded. And full of hatred for the "other." Particularly salient in these groups is the presence of the tech-savvy, professional Sangh woman. The Sangh woman is convent educated, professionally trained, tech-empowered, and consumer savvy. She had heard of feminism and enfranchisement and is vocal about gender rights. She has found her joy ride to the tech centers of Noida and Bangalore. Or perhaps a ride to Silicon Valley. The tech sav

In its most recent version of attack on educational institutions, the BJP-led Indian state has targeted the hallowed Jawaharlal Nehru University of India, branding the University as anti-national. The initial round of police attack on the University has been followed up with attacks by RSS and BJP affiliated goons on University students and faculty associated with the University. A section of the mainstream media associated with the agenda of the Hindu Right, Times Now and Zee TV have catalyzed the attacks through the media trials of students and the broader University, repeat-broadcasted through 24/7 cycles and captured in hashtags and sound bytes. At the heart of the recent spate of attacks on the University is an event organized by a group of students on February 9 that raised questions about the legitimacy of the juridical process that led to the hanging of Afzal Guru, alleged to be associated with the attack on the Indian parliament in December, 2001. The media stories

The current moment of attack of the Indian State on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has been catalyzed by an active role of a section of the mainstream Indian media in fanning the flames of nationalism to feed a witch hunt. Police have entered the University to arrest students on charges of sedition, claiming that the students participated in anti-national activities. Students at JNU who had come together to organize a cultural evening to draw attention to the absence of juridical process in the hanging of Afzal Guru, an accused in the Indian parliament attacks of 2001, are in the midst of a national storm that have labeled them as separatists and as anti-national. And the media are key players in this story. Kanhaiya Kumar, President of the JNU Students' Union, has been arrested under the outdated sedition law that was ironically the very instrument used by British colonialists to thwart India's right to self-rule. The mainstream television media hav

Professor Mukherjee, the head of a department and advisor to student groups when I was once a student, lived a life full of privilege, in the deeply held belief that he was intellectually and culturally superior and therefore, should rightfully command respect from his students. Professor Mukherjee was a special breed of Professors, Professors that came from well-to-do upper caste, upper class Bengali families in Kolkata to the small town.Many of these Professors came from Bengali Zamindari families and they ensured that the town knew of their Zamindari lineage. Professor Mukherjee's sense of superiority was embedded in his long-ingrained sense of Brahminical privilege, mixed in with a sense of ownership of high culture. In the faith that he was the chosen one, that his was the job of protecting the aesthetic aspirations of the academy, Professor Mukherjee made sure that he performed the task of extracting respect from his students. His studied seriousness formed the