In the New York Times, Akash Kapur explores the conflict in Indian culture that is drawing students and money away from the arts in favor of technology. It’s easy to understand the appeal. Young people want to succeed and the energy in India’s economy is in the tech sector:
As India grows richer, its culture is changing. The question is whether that culture will be defined solely by the nation’s new prosperity — whether a nation in the midst of a consumerist frenzy can maintain noncommercial islands of intellectual and cultural endeavor, and whether a population determined to get rich can appreciate pursuits whose returns are less immediately tangible. […]
Indian humanities and social sciences institutes have been neglected over the years — stultified by curricular inflexibility, underfinanced and understaffed. While the country’s elite business and technology schools have virtual autonomy to appoint staff and raise funds, others are forced to negotiate bureaucratic obstacles. […]
The humanities are losing out, too, in the battle for students. According to the World Bank, while general graduate degree programs, which include the humanities and social sciences, still have the highest enrollment, the number of students seeking technical degrees grew six times faster from 2000 to 2004.
Prosperity and Its Risk to Culture (New York Times)
