Instructor

Anush Kapadia

Semester

Autumn ‘21

Course Difficulty

Moderately difficult for someone without a solid command of English, and an aptitude for reading long, arduous texts. If you have the endurance to slog through the texts, the course would be much much easier.

Time Commitment Required

At least two whole days of effort was required for each of the assignments, as well as a day’s effort for each presentation. You could reduce this time by being regular with the texts and lectures over the semester, but unfortunately that’s something I didn’t do :(.

Grading Policy and Statistics

Moderate grading
3 AA
4 AB
6 BB
2 BC
3 CC

Attendance Policy

None, recorded videos would be uploaded to a Drive once the classes were done.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites, although if you’re a voracious reader or have a good vocabulary, it helps embellish your assignments, and that would help your grade :)
HS307 has no specific correlation with this content

Evaluation Scheme

25% - 2 team presentations
30% - Take home assignment 1 (midsem week)
45% - Take home assignment 2 (endsem week)

Topics Covered in the Course

Theories of the state from the point of view of sociology and political science. Broadly discussing 6-7 readings throughout the course.

Teaching Style

The professor would conduct live classes two days a week and the third class would be devoted to a team presentation. Teams were randomly formed by the professor and were allotted two weeks. The objective of the presentation was to explain and critically analyse the readings, in addition to whatever was discussed over the week.
Teaching is excellent - at first sight, it may seem that the professor is a bit abstruse and wordy, however once you thoroughly devour the readings and re-watch the lectures, everything begins to make complete sense. Watching lecture videos are extremely recommended as the professor’s way of explaining concepts is out of this world.

Tutorials/Assignments/Projects

Team presentation - the professor is extremely critical and has a very high bar for the presentations, he expects a thorough analytical review of the reading, not a copy of the lecturesof the week, expect a lot of follow-up questions
Assignments - The standard template was 5 essay type questions (~1000 words) of which one had to attempt any 3. The questions required a great deal of thinking and a profound understanding of the texts and lectures. About 10 days were given for each of the assignments - the professor was also quite considerate in granting extensions, given that I took it in my placement sem.

Feedback on Exams

None

Motivation for taking this course

To try out something offbeat, the content looked quite interesting. I wanted a reading-based course rather than one with quizzes, exams and the typical hustle, and I got just that here. If you have any enthu for political science, sociology or the like, then this course is a must.

Course Highlights

Each reading is its own highlight :)

Course Importance

None really, more of a one-off course

How strongly would I recommend this course?

Extremely strongly - if not this then any course by Prof. Anush Kapadia.

When to take this course?

7th semester. Anytime is a good time, provided you have the bandwidth for a little bit of rigor and effort.

Going Forward

None really

References Used

References are extremely important and dictate the flow of the course.
Chatterjee (1), Partha, “Democracy and Economic Transformation in India”
Chatterjee (2), Partha, I am the people
Dusza, Karl, “Max Weber’s Conception of the State”
Evans (1), Peter et al, Bringing the state back in
Evans (2), Peter, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation
Jaffrelot, Christopher et al, “Business and Politics in India”
Harriss-White, Barbara, “Rethinking Institutions”

Interesting relevant links

Lecture video drive (LDAP access): https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1XejEA1T-VcE4VxLtHRkhhrHmGlmrKps8bQDN6SuhtQVSNA_V885eYluj_OcOB63oc-UO13S3

Review By: Aditya Iyengar