O programa de Sociologia e-PG Pathshala: contexto, contradições, lacunas e resultados

Vishal Jadhav; Sujata Patel

doi:10.20336/rbs.947

Authors

Vishal Jadhav Pondicherry University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9375-3682
Sujata Patel Umeå University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6785-5981

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20336/rbs.947

Keywords:

e-PG Pathshala, University Grants Commission, high education, distance learning, sociology syllabi

Abstract

This article critically assesses the sociology curriculum prepared for an e-learning platform between 2012-2015 called e-PG Pathshala whose objective was to provide a new perspective to post graduate students learning sociology in India. This paper, written by authors who were associated with this project, examines its successes and failures in displacing Eurocentric and narrow nationalist assumptions framing of sociology in India and its substitution with an interdisciplinary approach that uses India as a site for comprehending the global ‘social’. It also evaluates its success and failures in terms of the time and context when it was introduced: when India had entered the path towards neoliberalism and a regime change in favour of rightist populist Hindutva governance had occurred. This article discusses the various constraints it faced and the challenges it had to overcome in terms of institutional inertia, red tapeism, budget decreases and in attracting module writers to develop a reflexive and inclusive syllabus. It argues that in spite of these constraints, it was able to create a novel set of syllabi for sociology students which came into use when the universities closed down during Covid times. Today this e-learning space provides the much-needed opportunity to rethink and revise the sociology curriculum and syllabi in India.

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Author Biographies

Vishal Jadhav, Pondicherry University

Vishal Jadhav was course coordinator for Classical Sociological Theory and co-course coordinator for Political Sociology and is presently working at Pondicherry University.

Sujata Patel, Umeå University

Sujata Patel was coordinator for the subject of Sociology, is retired as Professor from University of Hyderabad and is presently the 2021 Kerstin Hesselgren Visiting Professor at Umeå University.

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