"Political Economy".... think about it... Political comes first and Economy comes second. Now if it was Economic Polity, that would give it a whole new meaning. Unfortunately, I hadnt thought of this six months ago while enroling for the masters programme.
It is just inherently asssumed in Political Economy that the order of the words is to be the order of importance, the direction of flow, the core and periphery respectively.
Political Economists, intrinsically and by virtue of being political economists subordinate economics to politics,and if an infidel is bold enough to proclaim otherwise... well.. he/she bears the consequences of infidelity.
Unfortunately (or not), I am one of "them" infidels! There I come out and Ive said it. I am not loyal to PE. I am an Economic POliticist in the garb of an political economist. My soul purpose is to corrupt PE at its very core and work from within it to corrupt it into EP- almost like a computer virus, or a mole, or a Quisling.
But the question I intend on raising is- am I supposed to be restricted to politics and keep the economics within check in my work? Am I supposed to attempt to not "stray into the field of Economics" while writing of Political Economy? If so- then whatever happened to academic freedom?!?
If not, why is it that I am warned repeatedly by my "mentors" to not stray away from the field of politics into the field of economics?!?
MY answer would then be- I am not straying at all. I just never really was all in the field of politics. i am simply attempting to drag political variables into my chartered territory of economics.
It is the woe of the political economists that they are the jacks of both disciplines and masters of neither. BUt they are better jacks of politics than they are of economics ( I am taking the liberty of generalizing, even though this may not be true for a few in the field).
When I sit in this class of political jacks, being the sole economic jack, and worse- a liberal economic jack!!! ( sheesh, noone but the bloody Americans can be that.), I do feel the alienation.
Often I feel the controversy, and almost always I am made acutely aware of stringent disagreement.
Now that is fine. disagreement after all, among academic circles is given teh distinguished term "academic discourse". So I engage in discourse. But is it all just "discourse"?
Not quite. If you are a realist, you'd understand power asymmetries. And I dont hesitate in saying that these power asymmetries are seldom as pronounced as in a classroom. The professor almost always has teh last word (literally and metaphorically), the discourse is at his mercy. If he/ she is 'academically kind', your deviant (rogue) opinion/stand might be accepted, if not- you are doomed!
But whether or not it is accepted, there shall be a constant attempt to mould you/ to change you, the way you think, and to change, as my professors would put it- your epistemology.
I do not have the absolute freedom as a student of political economy to have economics as my epistemological basis.
This is not true of all my professors (and thank god for that!), but it is true for a third.
Back in the days, being liberal was the way to be. Today if I go out as a (deep breath) liberal economic politicist, I am almost seen in myself as the "axis of evil". Believeing in economism, means being simply- unsensitive, avariced, money minded, inhumane, and a critical ally of the evil faceless corporations!!!
How did so many identities get attached to me? I am all of 20 years old (21 tomorrow)... how did I simply by virtue of my thoughts become all those things? I never will really know.
At the end of teh day my professor is still disgruntled that I believe in economics far more than I do in politics.... and I scored the pits on my essay!!!

While Im sitting at my laptop happily playing work challenege on good ol' facebook, I hear this funny (apparently melodic??!!?) music just outside. It happens to be the new ice cream van that has decided to make its way into our uni campus. I'm about to shut my curtain on it, but behold!... its not any ice cream van... its a Kwality Walls van. Good ol' Kwality vans. Why its so special?- coz it reminds me of home - only back in India we didnt have vans, we had ice cream thelas.
I seem to have become more Indian than I was back in India, and it is perhaps understandable.
I crave chappatis, I crave for home food, I crave for even the weather, and my god do I crave for the prices we had back home. ( GBP... sheesh.. 2 pounds for 1Kg potatoes, thats 160 ruppees, where we get them for 5 Rs back home!!!)
My classmates, glod bless all them angelic souls, have only been too kind to not have shut me up when I go on giving examples and instances and analysis from India one after the other. It was really my flatmate Omer who made me realize that Im 'romanticising' about India just too much. I hated to admit it, but the man was right- I was a walking advertisement flier for India.
It definitely isnt exaggerating if I said that I completely love teh country for all Ive lived of it- to me its home. But home comes with all its flaws too. And I wish I could negate them all, but I just can't!
I never did go out past 9 at night by myself ( or actually even with anyone other than mum and/or dad). I just couldnt. It didnt seem worth it to take the risk. I hated travelling by teh 764 bus, where I didnt even have place to stand, where teh crowd seemed to breathe away all teh air available so that suddenly there seemed no air left for me to breathe, where all those feminist claims of the gendered society and commodifying women arguments suddenly became so real. I hated it when we had curfews, and I hated it when we had those blasts- every single one of them. I hated it when people were reduced to numbers on death toll headlines, and I hated that I knew so well that none of this was going to end any time soon.
I heard President Patil's Republic day speech right after she was sworn in, and I hated that I didnt find even one sentence in teh entire hour long drudgery that inspired me or made me sit up.
I do sound like a pessimist, and in certain respects maybe I am one. Deepali says I take it too far and things arent so bad. maybe they arent. But then if they arent, I hate that they seem to be to me.

Micheal called me a trade Nazi today. The fact that he's German might have something to with it, but I think he was really provoked by my ardent defence of the WTO. hehe. Im a social outcast at PAIS for my liberal leanings.
But be honest, it isnt really my fault that economics has most if not all the answers. I think Tom was tryin g to take a dig at me and my likes in class today when he quoted Krugman, " Unfortunatley, Economists don't rule the world"... they may not rule it, but they still dictate it, and it gets dictated, oh yes it does.
But while the political scientists and economists remin at loggerheads beating around the bush, the guys who'll really take the final prize are the in betweens- political economists- I did choose well. On hindsight, it worked out better than I thought it would.