The most important degree in India

Nowadays, when friends and family members have conversations about their children graduating from school and worry about how artificial intelligence may take over their jobs after college, I reassure them. Representation Pic

I must shamefully open this column with an embarrassing admission: I have degrees in English literature that have clearly prepared me for nothing of importance. Smarter choices would, with hindsight, have prepared me for great things, such as the possibility of leading a great nation. Unfortunately, the only things my choices have left me with are the ability to write a little or enjoy some of the world's greatest literature now and again.

My degrees come from recognised institutions or, to err on the side of caution, institutions that have been recognised until now. This means nothing though, because being in possession of the wrong kind of degree is a burden I will be forced to carry for the rest of my days. I feel too old to be able to get back to a life of academia, so there is no light at the end of this tunnel. I have felt melancholic for the past seven or eight years because it's if something vital has been denied to me, some special sauce that could have turned the world into my proverbial oyster if only I had known of its existence at the time.

It has been made increasingly obvious to a lot of people these days that the only degree worth pursuing now is one in Entire Political Science. To be fair, I did study political science for a couple of years while in college, as part of my bachelor's degree, but all we had were three papers spread out over a couple of years. Nothing about it felt ‘entire' in any way; more like ‘part' of political science. I was not aware of which parts were more important than the others, or which were missing altogether, preventing me from getting an ‘entire' degree rather than a small portion of it. I should have asked more questions about the missing parts, but simply didn't think it necessary at the time. The folly of youth, I suppose.

Then again, maybe I shouldn't blame myself for this oversight. How could I have known that this potentially life-changing degree was within my grasp during those years, when everyone around me was living as cluelessly as I was? Not enough had been done by our own government to promote that course of study, which is why so many millions of young Indians wasted years of their lives on nonsensical degrees related to law, finance, engineering or medicine. Imagine how much brighter today's already bright India would have looked if every organisation had a stream of Entire Political Science graduates on its roster. The thought boggles my mind.

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I have been doing a bit of research on this degree and suspect that its benefits have been known to the world outside our borders for a long time. It's why I couldn't find any mention of it on the University of Oxford's website. I also checked Cambridge, Harvard, and Princeton, but found nothing. Not being a former soap opera star put me at a disadvantage when it came to looking up Yale, so I didn't bother with that institution.

Why, I asked myself, did the world's so-called ‘best universities' not offer the most valuable degree known to India and Indians? The only possible answer was jealousy. They probably offered it to a select few and wanted to keep it from the rest of us common folk, presumably to prevent us from becoming too powerful with the knowledge the degree inadvertently imparted. I also realised this was precisely why the University of Bombay didn't offer the degree too. The revelation absolved me, because it meant I would never have been allowed to study for it even if I had known of its presence back in the day.

Nowadays, when friends and family members have conversations about their children graduating from school and worry about how artificial intelligence may take over their jobs after college, I reassure them. When they say the words ‘MBA', or ‘LLB', or ‘IIT', I admonish them. Why churn out more graduates who learn nothing, I ask? I urge them to apply to their nearest university's department of Entire Political Science instead. None of them has been able to locate the department in question, but it is only a matter of time. If it exists in Gujarat, I'm pretty sure it exists across the country. I would go a step further and make a degree in Entire Political Science mandatory for everyone. Imagine what a country filled with those graduates could accomplish.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.