Your editorial and A Vaidyanathan’s essay on social sciences in India (January 13) are informative and should form the basis of an extended discussion on this important issue. The editorial suggests that in pre-independence India much of the “trail-blazing” research was conducted within the domain of universities that were ill-funded. I am not sure this is not the case even now. Despite the lack of basic resources, which are taken for granted in most western universities (e g, research assistance, computers and professional development funds for each faculty member), the most significant research in sociology, anthropology, political science and economics, to name a few, is still conducted by scholars who work in universities in India. Their contributions are the bases on which new generations social scientists are trained and foreign researchers working on India depend. For example, without the research by G S Ghurye, M N Srinivas, V K R V Rao, K M Kapadia, Andre Beteille, T N Madan, Deepak Nayyar, Prabhat Patnaik, and T K Ommen, to name a few, there will be little of social science that is to be applauded in India and respected abroad....
