Student subversions and curricular changes in the neo-liberal University: A study of engineering education in India

• In Event: Education and Activism Redux II

Proposal

In this paper, I look into two themes - student subversions and curricular changes - related to engineering education (EE) in Kerala, the Southern state of India, and argues that top-down curricular changes should be derived from the internal contradictions already existing in the organization of EE, manifesting in the multitudinous nature of student subversions in the contemporary, such that crisis in EE can be derived internally, and thus not as external impositions where the totality of capitalist relations impose its might on particularities. I look into the restructuring of engineering curricula in Kerala – under the management of the newly formed Kerala Technological University – in the last half-a-decade, especially its introduction of points/grades for extra-curricular activities meant to improve the soft-skills of graduates and locate its emergence as a response to increasing student disruptions within engineering campuses in Kerala. I make the following arguments in this paper: i) student subversions have taken a qualitative change in the neo-liberal conjuncture, and organized, demand based student actions have given way to multitudinous disruptions that may or may not be demand based; ii) the subjectivities that are produced in this conjuncture cannot be mediated by the state like the way it could in the previous capitalist regime of accumulation; iii) higher education which historically was tasked with mediation of youth subjectivities – through disciplining and then disciplining through controlling – is in an objective crisis; iv) for the state-of-affairs, regimentation at the level of the body – biopolitical level – has become the only mode through which rebellions can be repressed (read measured); v) curricular changes aimed at the regulation of students’ bodies – in the form of grading for extra-curricular activities in the case of EE in Kerala – is a response to this crisis of higher education to count youth difference; and vi) through this accounting of the specific – in this case student subversions in the context of EE in Kerala – the general that is higher education recomposes itself such that it appears as a trans-historical entity with an essence which is beyond the reach of the specific and hence immutable.

Theoretical outline

The theoretical perspective is deriving from the changing character of capitalist regime of accumulation where capital has moved away from the Fordist model of organization of production towards a dispersed Fordist or post-Fordist model of production where production is deepened into whole of sociality and the factory is dispersed into the society (Negri, 2018). This dispersal out of the Fordist factory model – which internationally manifested as the welfare state consensus or the planner state model – was a response to the rising class struggles across various segmentations of the population and through this process capital managed to overcome the structural crisis that it found itself in during the 1970s (Holloway, 1988). The de-industrialization of the Global North and the emergence of the subcontract service economy (Smith, 2020) in countries like India followed this international development and EE in India and Kerala exponentially increased during this period (Mathew, 2022). In the case of Kerala, this expansion which occurred in the private self-financed sector was met with organized resistance during the 1990s and early 2000s and privatization was internally limited due to the mode through which self-financialization rolled out in Kerala. But the new technical composition of capital (Notes from below, 2018) – which signals the level of organic composition or level of development of machinery in production – also displaced traditional forms student resistance where organized demand-based student resistance gave way to multitudinous and disparate subversive activities which may or may not be demand based. This is in line with what Clover (2019) identified as the move towards riots from the strikes of the 19th and 20th century and signals the emergence of a new class composition – the subjective side which emerges as a response to a particular technical composition (Kolinko, 2001). The productivization of this new subjective composition and re-purposing resistance for capital to move towards a higher level of technical composition followed this and in the context of Kerala, the resistance took shape in the form of disruptions that were brought about following massification and democratization following the neo-liberal restructuring of education. The response to the newer forms of subversions – which cannot be counted and hence brought within the existing juridical framework – in its particularity is in the form of determinate recomposition of totality through curricular changes.

Methodology

The paper traces a set of student suicides, accidental death of a female student in a government engineering college during 'Onam' celebration - a regional festival - and girls’ hostel strike in the same college to argue that the nature of student subversions within EE has been moving towards multitudinous, disparate and spontaneous actions which stands outside of what has been traditionally considered as rebellions within educational institutions in Kerala. These subversions posed a new kind of challenge to the status quo and in their determinateness, they negated the totality of the hierarchically organized higher education within the state. This determinate negation – deriving from Hegel and Marx – created cracks in the grammar of the organization of HE in the state, and the recomposition of the totality was imposed through arbitrary curricular changes which further exposes the irrationality at the core of contemporary HE system in the society. I study the introduction of Student Activity Points within engineering curricula as a response to this internal crisis within EE and argue that it signals a new order of curricular reforms within HE where assessment and evaluation is openly mobilized for the purpose of checking resistance and subversion. I will also bring in the crisis discourse within EE in India within this discussion and will derive crisis from within the existing organization of EE in the state.

Author

• Manu V Mathew, BML Munjal University