(A Co-Educational Degree College Affilited To CU)
The department has been an integral part of the institution since its inception in 1966. Initially Political Science was offered as part of a General Degree Course under University of Calcutta. Later Honours course was introduced from 1970-71 academic session.
The department offers ICT enabled classes and regular mentoring for all honours students along with special service for slow learners. It further organizes students’ seminars by advanced learners. Apart from this, regular film screening on politically/socially issues is conducted on cogent issues. The Department has actively participated in State Government’s Youth Parliament and Quiz competition. The department has two merit scholarships- Sudarshan Nandi Scholarship and Bilwamayee Dey Scholarship for honours students.
Politics affects virtually every aspect of our lives, including the availability of education, jobs, housing and healthcare. Whether countries are at war or at peace depends both on what governments do and who supports them. The demand for political science study and research is growing because of increasing interest in politics, foreign affairs, and public policy. It also includes social and environmental policy issues, healthcare and immigration.
Political science is the study of political values, institutions, processes, and policies. Political scientists seek tounderstand the underlying ways in which power, authority, rules, constitutions and laws affect our lives. Thestudy of political science prepares one for life as an informed citizen, ready to participate in political activitieswithin interest groups or political parties; related to community organisation and political advocacy; or evenservice as an elected or appointed official.Political science is the study of people and societies struggling with great and enduring issues such as war andpeace, order and freedom, and justice and equality. Understanding how and why those issues are resolved, or failto be resolved, is at the heart of education in political science.
Studying politics encourages the development of both specific and transferable skills. It helpsyou to develop reasoning and analytic skills, and to arrive at decisions based on the analysis and synthesis ofinformation and data, build competence in oral and written expression, research and evaluation skills, which arevalued in a wide spectrum of potential career areas.
A bachelors’ degree in politics offers direct access to InternationalRelations, International
Affairs, Global Politics, Defense Strategic Studies, Peace and Conflict ResolutionStudies, Public Administration, and allied subjects. Political science is a very useful base for professionaleducation in law, social work, teacher training, journalism, public relations or development studies.Teaching, research and publishing are typical occupations for the political scientist. Studying political sciencecan also lead to careers in the government, in law, business, international organizations, non-governmental organizations or not-for-profit organizations, think tanks, in campaign management and polling, journalism, andelectoral politics. Although a career in politics could be considered a typical opportunity for a political scientist,it is not a must.Campaigns and elections are one of the more obvious career choices. Traditional campaign jobs are generallyfound through individuals and local parties. Volunteering for a campaign or a local party will help you to get apaid position later. Careers in campaign management are cyclical as they come and go with election schedules,but there are on-going opportunities with consulting firms or a political action committee of an interest group.Political science a very useful base for a career in social work, human rights, social or political research andurban planning. The syllabus of political science has been made with the following course objectives.
Course Objective: This course helps the student familiarize with the basic normative concepts of political theory. Each concept is related to a crucial political issue that requires analysis with the aid of our conceptual understanding. This exercise is designed to encourage critical and reflective analysis and interpretation of social practices through the relevant conceptual toolkit.
Course Objective: This course is divided into two sections. Section A introduces the studentsto the idea of political theory, its history and approaches, and an assessment of its criticaland contemporary trends. Section Bintroduces the students to the important debates in the subject. These debates prompt us to consider that there is no settled way of understanding concepts and that in the light of new insights and challenges, besides newer ways of perceiving and interpreting the world around us, we inaugurate new modes of political debates.
Course objective: This course acquaints students with the constitutional design of statestructures and institutions, and their actual working over time. The Indian Constitution accommodates conflicting impulses (of liberty and justice, territorial decentralization and astrong union, for instance) within itself. The course traces the embodiment of some of theseconflicts in constitutional provisions, and shows how these have played out in political practice.It further encourages a study of state institutions in their mutual interaction, and in interactionwith the larger extra-constitutional environment.
Course objective: Actual politics in India diverges quite significantly from constitutional legalrules. An understanding of the political process thus calls for a different mode of analysis -
that offered by political sociology. This course maps the working of ‘modern’ institutions,premised on the existence of an individuated society, in a context marked bycommunitarian solidarities, and their mutual transformation thereby. It also familiarizes students with the working of the Indian state, paying attention to the contradictorydynamics of modern state power.
Course objective: This course introduces the specific elements of Indian Political Thought spanning over two millennia. The basic focus of study is on individual thinkers whose ideas are however framed by specific themes. The course as a whole is meant to provide a sense of the broad streams of Indian thought while encouraging a specific knowledge of individual thinkers and texts. Selected extracts from some original texts are also given to discuss in class.
The list of additional readings is meant for teachers as well as the more interested students.
Course Objective: This is a foundational course in comparative politics. The purpose is to familiarize students with the basic concepts and approaches to the study of comparative politics. More specifically the course will focus on examining politics in a historical framework while engaging with various themes of comparative analysis in developed and developing countries.
Course Objective: This Core Course seeks to equip students with the basic intellectual tools forunderstanding International Relations. It introduces students to some of the most importanttheoretical approaches for studying international relations. The course begins by historicallycontextualizing the evolution of the international state system before discussing theagencystructure problem through the levels-of-analysis approach. After having set the parameters of the debate, students are introduced to different theories in International Relations. Itprovides a fairly comprehensive overview of the major political developments and eventsstarting from the twentieth century. Students are expected to learn about the keymilestones in world history and equip them with the tools to understand and analyze thesame from different perspectives. A key objective of the course is to make students awareof the implicit Euro - centricism of International Relations by highlighting certain specificperspectives from the Global South.
Course objective: Based on the study of individual thinkers, the course introduces a wide span of thinkers and themes that defines the modernity of Indian political thought. The objective is to study general themes that have been produced by thinkers from varied social and temporal contexts. Selected extracts from original texts are also given to discuss in the class.
Course objective: This course introduces students to the key international developments since the end of the Second World War. The emergence of the cold war and its evolution, birth of regional organizations, global governance mechanisms, implications of globalizations have been discussed in detail. The second section of the course deals with India’s regional foreign policy vis-à-vis her South Asian neighbours. It also deals with the organizational structure and functioning of the United Nations.
Course objective: This course goes back to Greek antiquity and familiarizes students with the manner in which the political questions were first posed. Machiavelli comes as an interlude inaugurating modern politics followed by Bodin, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. This is a basic foundation course for students.
Course objective: This course aims to familiarize the students with important modern political thinkers stretching from the 18th century encompassing traditions as varied as Idealism, Utilitarianism, Liberalism, Anarchism as well as Socialism.
Course Objective: This course introduces the students to the intricate-multi-layered inter-play of society and politics along myriad categories of identity such as caste, class, elite, tribe, religion, gender etc. It also makes the students acquainted with important concepts such as political participation, political development and political communication.
Course Objective: The course provides an introduction to the discipline of public administration. This Core Course encompasses public administration in its historical context with an emphasis on the various classical and contemporary administrative theories. The course also explores some of the recent trends, including feminism and ecological conservation and how the call for greater democratization is restructuring public administration. The course will also attempt to provide the students a comprehensive understanding on contemporary administrative developments.
Course Objective: The Core Course seeks to provide an introduction to the interface between public policy and administration in India. The essence of public policy lies in its effectiveness in translating the governing philosophy into programs and policies and making it a part of the community living. It deals with issues of decentralization, financial management, citizens and administration and social welfare from a non-western perspective.
Assistant Professor & HoD
Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor
