ABSTRACT
The introductory chapter juxtaposes the narrative of crisis in the university in the West (standing here largely for Britain, Europe and the US) and in India. It extracts a peculiar feature of the contemporary debates on the issue in India: the various diagnoses of the crisis do not reflect on the concept of education (and the cluster of concepts related to it) at all! Instead their focus is on external causes such as infrastructure, managerial problem and political agenda among others. This is in marked contrast to the debate in the West where the crisis is often discussed in terms of the idea of liberal (arts) education and the nature of knowledge forms it initiates one into. Why is this so? What accounts for this silence or ‘blindness?’ The chapter is an analysis of the crisis debate and sets up the puzzle that the rest of the chapters will inquire into.
