What was once considered one of the most sought-after courses at Delhi University (DU) has today become a cause of concern for the varsity’s teaching fraternity. With the Economics honours syllabus undergoing a complete structural change under the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP), professors claim that the changes will do more harm than good to students who pursue the subject.
Papers that formed a very important part of the course have been scrapped. While Economic History of India and Comparative Economic Development have been done away with, the paper on Economy, State and Society now has 27 readings as opposed to 15 that were taught earlier -- something that teachers fear will not just be undoable, but also beyond the reach of Humanities students.
“The committee has done away with integral social sciences-based papers. Economic History of India has been removed and instead some background topics from this area have been included in the Indian Economy paper. Such changes in other papers too have completely crowded out the social sciences element in Economics as a result of which it will become extremely difficult for a Humanities student to pursue the subject,” said Saumyajit Bhattacharya, associate professor, Kirori Mal College.
With the course now becoming analytically heavy, modules which exposed students to global economic scenarios and wider areas in economics such as Development Studies, have been made redundant.
“Students who study Economics under FYUP will be completely unaware of current global scenarios. After college, students who want to research further in areas such as Development Studies will find it difficult because the multi-disciplinarity of the course has been compromised on,” he added.
While the head of the department, Pami Dua, declined to comment, teachers maintained that students who exit the course in the second and third years, will learn very little economics.
“The foundation courses for the first two years is primarily math and statistics with negligible components of economics. So a student who chooses to exit after two years will have learnt very little economics. The very foundation of the course is now half-baked with little understanding of the real world,” said Nandini Dutta, professor of Economics, Miranda House.
Source: HindustanTimes.com
