Teaching of economics in India: Challenges for orienting the Praxiology* Chaubey P.K., Mukerji D.P.* Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi *Prof. D.P. Mukerji Memorial Lecture, Delivered at 2004 Annual Conference of Indian Social Science Association at Agra. D.P. Mukerji I was a child of barely 0 years when Dhurjati Prasad Mukerji (05.10.1894–05.12.1961) passed away in December 1961 at the age of 67. I had only known that he was a rare scholar of Economics and Sociology and a pillar of Lucknow School of Economics and Sociology. He had varied interest in life and a wide range of knowledge. Having done M.A. in History (1918) and M.A. in Economics (1920) from the University of Calcutta and spending a brief stint in Bangabhasi College in Calcutta, he came to join Lucknow University as a Lecturer in Economics and Sociology in 1922, where he later became Reader in 1945 and was made Professor in his personal capacity in 1951. He also served the first U.P. Congress Government under Govind Ballabh Pant (1937–40) as Director of Information and created the Bureau of Economics and Statistics. In 1947, he also headed U.P. Labour Enquiry Committee. In 1951 he was a Visiting Professor in I.I.S.S. at the Hague. Besides writing in Economics, Sociology and History, he wrote on music. But he was a litterateur as well and wrote a few novels, short stories and essays in Bangla. He has been recognized as teacher, economist, sociologist, musicologist, litterateur, and a historian of rare quality. He was an unconventional writer and critic and was particularly known for his provocative lectures and persuasive coffee house interactive discussions. I am informed that Zakir Hussain invited him to the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) after his retirement from Lucknow University. He built the Department of Economics of the AMU during 1954–1958 as Chairman of the Department. His inaugural lecture in the AMU, as was a practice in the past, was on ‘An Economic Theory for India’. Dissatisfied as he was with the fragmentary framework of contents of Economics as taught in India then, he pleaded for evolving a theory that served well the planning concerns of India and which he thought could fruitfully be drawn from Marx, Schumpeter and Keynes. But he emphasized that it had all to be rooted in the Indian cultural milieu. [I had a change to read some of his writings as I was asked almost ten years ago to write a piece on his contributions in Economics for his Birth Centenary seminar organized at G.B. Pant Social Science Institute at Allahabad. I could hardly imagine that I could one day be asked to deliver a memorial lecture in his name. I consider it a token of love and affection of the social science fraternity rather than my contribution to or competence in social science that the Indian Social Science Association selected me for the coveted fellowship this year. Almost fifteen years ago, I was invited as one of the selected scholars to participate in a workshop on Teaching of Economics in India in Bangalore, which was organized as a brainstorming session, on the advice of (now late) Professor Sukhamoy Chakravarty, by the Indian Economics Association Trust for Research and Development. I had written a small piece, little realizing that someday I would be asked to deliver a memorial lecture on the theme after the name of a scholar who had worried over the matter almost fifty years ago.] Top |