Gilles Verniers is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University, Sonepat, Haryana, NCR Region. He is also joint course coordinator and faculty at the University’s much acclaimed Young India Fellowship (YIF). Verniers completed his BA in Economics, Social and Political Sciences from University of St Louis, Brussels in 2000. He earned his MA in Political and Social Sciences from Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium in 2004. He completed his MPhil in Comparative Politics and Societies from Sciences Po, France, in 2005. He started his PhD in Political Science from Centre for International Research and Studies (CERI), Sciences Po, and is an affiliated PhD at Centre de Sciences Humaines, Delhi. In an email interview, Prof Verniers shares his views on building a university from scratch and his thoughts on Indian students.
How has your stint at Ashoka been so far?
Teaching at Ashoka has been exhilarating. Our first batch is composed of extraordinarily gifted students, smart, inquisitive, hard working, and above all thirsty for learning. I’m amazed to see how fast such a positive ethos of collaborative learning and of mutual respect among students and beyond has sprung up on campus. Their capacity to face intellectual hardship and challenges is impressive. My students last term complained about the quantity of readings and I told them that I would not compromise on that, and that they should organise themselves and find collective solutions to a shared issue. They did just that by creating reading groups that split and discussed the readings before class. I probably should not shout it out loud but this is all a teacher could possibly want from students.
YIF has been much talked about. Tell us how students have benefitted?
YIF encourages an experience of shared learning. One of the most important part of it is the shared living experience of 200 young men and women who spend a year to talk, debate, explore domains in which most of them have no prior knowledge or expertise. There is little merit in pushing oneself further into a domain that one master’s already, or to do it for the sake of beating the person sitting in the next chair in whatever ranking.
Students learn not just from class inputs or from guest lectures, but also from the educational, regional and linguistic diversity of the class, from the permanent shock of views, perspectives and ideas that fellows bring to the programme. What they also gain is friendship and further networks that extend far beyond the usual collusion of alumni self-interests. One can also find the support to launch an idea, to find a partner to start a venture, or to acquire an international exposure through the faculty coming from partner universities and the internship and exchange programmes they offer.
What has been your significant contribution(s) to Political Science?
I am trying to adopt an approach to electoral analysis that is grounded in empirical work, disconnected from the common practices of commenting and opinion-making, so very frequent in the media and at times in academia. We’ve started, with eight fellows from YIF, a political data centre that collects data on elections, parties and politicians and build datasets on India’s political life. We plan to go online soon to make this data available to general public, scholars, journalists and activists, so that they can also benefit from the empirical information that we gather. That would be our way to ally research and public service.
What do the majority of Political Science graduates do? Do most of them go for civil services? Do the students have enough awareness about the role of politics and the study of Political Science in understanding and interpreting the decisions that shape the country?
Politics is everywhere so I’m tempted to answer that they can do anything! Civil service is, of course, a possible destination. So is journalism, or the non-governmental sector. But I can’t think of a single organisation, large or not so large, private or non-governmental, that is not confronted at some point in the public sphere, be it institutions or issues. We need people who can understand the rules and the functioning of a fast-changing political and social environment, let alone elections! This is not just about understanding and interpreting policy decisions but to keep in mind that complex problems such as poverty, illiteracy, environmental challenges, public health issues, etc, require more than purely technical solutions and that sound policies and schemes often fail because they do not keep in mind the political dimension of everything.
With the general perception that politics is nasty business, how many students choose the subject out of interest?
I shall hope that all those who chose the subject did it out of interest! More seriously, I would say that there is a widespread interest for collective issues — many of which political — among the students. The recent student elections for the undergraduate’s House of Representatives saw a 97 per cent turnout! Many ask me how one can successfully enter politics without having to abide by its dirty rule book. The recent Delhi elections gave them the idea and hope that it is possible, through sheer hard work, a good sense of organisation and concern for local issues. Time will tell whether it can effectively last. The scope of Political Science goes far beyond the domain of professional politics. And professional politics is not the only focus. Some students are interested in Political Science because they want to understand the political roots of gender or socio-economic inequalities, for example, or the geopolitics of water or energy. For a start, you need to want to make sense of the world you live in.
— shilpa.vasudevan@newindianexpress.com