With so much emphasis on the education sector, one wonders why we have yet to tap our greatest competitive edge in the area. While the Government laments the fact that not a single Indian university is able to make it to the top 100 global list of honour, and tries its best to remedy matters with summary interventions (like the FYUP experiment in University of Delhi), the greatest university in prospect is simply waiting to take shape.
Okay, let us step out of the guessing game and just say it. India’s challenge to the world, as imagined herein, is a university unique to it and its special talents, with unparalleled opportunities for field work and outstanding faculty with top-notch ‘industry’ experience, and the one and only one of its kind globally. This unique university would be one devoted entirely to the study and understanding of ‘corruption’.
Just in case the reader finds the proposition frivolous, may they be reminded that Columbia University, UClA (University of California, los Angeles) and the lSE (the london School of Economics and Political Science) have courses on political corruption. But yes, no existing university across the planet on date is dedicated entirely to corruption. We could call ours IIC (with due apologies to the venerable set that sips discrete gins inside the club by that name) — the Indian Institute for Corruption Studies. Where would we set it upIJ The hollowed out river bed of the Yamuna along the Greater Noida stretch would be a great backdrop, and surely Uttar Pradesh must host this grand venture, but perhaps political compulsions will rule, and Amethi and Rae Bareli stand out among other claimants.
The curriculum will be truly indigenous; on this count, ‘post-colonial’ and swadeshi viewpoints will smile in equal measure. The slogan — ‘No one can do it better than us’. The selection process will have to be rigorous, since most Indians will in any case meet the minimum criteria for admission — having committed at least one act of corruption by age 18. Admission quotas will be set up for political parties, the bureaucracy and corporate India. Fake certificates will guarantee automatic admission, and misrepresentation of facts lead to fee waivers. The absence of a character certificate will automatically qualify candidates for scholarships.
We will have an entire range of indigenous terminology that will be introduced as the lexicon of a body of knowledge (an epistemological system) that we will launch before the world. Words like ‘approach’, ‘setting’ and ghoos and gestures like the index finger rubbing vigorously on the underside of the thumb will reach a global readership through reputed in-house journals — called, among others, what else but hafta! Corruption studies will inspire MPhils and PhDs.
MPhils will be done on, say, the delicate difference between bribes and gratifications under the categories of ‘nazrana’, ‘haqrana’, jakrana and shukrana. What you pay the peon to get an audience is nazrana. What the beat constable skims from your daily income is haqrana (it is his by right — as in haq). What is acquired minus finesse, as in through active coercion and even physical violence, is jakrana. Shukrana (not named after Sukh Ram), is bribe paid as gratitude after the job is done or in simultaneous compliance in a quid pro quo situation. PhDs will be more specific. But with so many available areas of research (2G, Commonwealth Games, Coalgate, sand mafia or even the Jeep scandal — for those with a historical imagination), scholars will be operating in a buyers’ market, as it were.
Campus placement will hardly pose a challenge. Political parties will line up to infuse certified talent. After all, not getting caught in the act will be part of the applied research outgoing scholars will specialise in. Toppers will be in great demand, for in them will be posited hope for the nation’s future — leading political parties will eagerly vie with each other for these geniuses at the convocation even before the mortarboard (the convocation cap) is off. IIC could be the jewel in the crown for emergent India. We would finally address our worst kept secret without guilt, or fear of ridicule.
PS: And yes, IIC would be headed by none other than the Chancellor of Vices.