Online Education and the Idea of Studentship during Pandemic and Post-Pandemic: Knowledge Politics and University

COVID-19 and afterwords has wide ranging impact from economic, politics to society and culture. Online education became the pervasive reality thereafter. The whole meaning of classroom, teacher- taught relationship and moreover, the idea of knowledge underwent change. It all happened at a time when university campuses are witnessing change in terms of more diverse, heterogeneous, first generational learners/students and moreover with presence of a greater number of women. The existing idea of knowledge and university is being contested with regard to its foundational feature of plurality of knowledge or having epistemic access to heterogeneous, diverse students which are much needed to cultivate critical thinking. However, it has also come with an in-built contradiction between elite and mass higher education. Institutions where maximum numbers of students are enrolled which are primarily provincial/state universities are under severe financial stress. While the elite institutions are being asked to generate its own resources and get financially independent or the support base is getting centralized. In this new paradigm of changing reality of university education where economic logic and technological rationality is defining the purpose of education and online education has come with a promise of growth and progress. This orientation towards technology has been on the one hand made technological provision as objective necessity but also making learners subjectively aware that it is necessary. In a resource crunch country like India where access to education is still a huge challenge for a large section of population access to data became another burden for students during pandemic. This paper is an attempt to understand the changing reality of knowledge politics viz a viz university under technological rationality during pandemic and afterwards on changing socio-economic political reality and moreover meaning of democracy in India with promoting the idea of reclaiming Public University.