As I prepare for a teaching career, I’ve started asking a fundamental question: What did the teachers before me believe about economics and how it should be taught?
That curiosity led me to the undergraduate economics curriculum framed by Dr. C. T. Kurien at Madras Christian College (MCC). This blog post offers a Gen Z reflection on a syllabus created over half a century ago—with the humility to admit I can’t fully judge it through today’s lens.
Syllabus Born During Protest
During the mid-1960s, when the anti-Hindi agitation was at its peak and protests were happening across Tamil Nadu, colleges were shut for a brief period as students actively participated. That’s when the faculty members of the Economics Department, under the leadership of then HoD Dr. C. T. Kurien (CTK), sat together to draft a curriculum that was bold and unconventional. It's important to note that MCC did not yet have academic autonomy. They created the syllabus in anticipation of implementing it once autonomy was granted. Dr. CTK, deeply dissatisfied with the prevailing syllabus, aimed to expose students to schools of thought beyond the mainstream neoclassical framework. The syllabus was implemented in 1978, when MCC finally gained autonomy. Interestingly, by that time, Dr. CTK had moved to MIDS and taken over as its director, so he wasn’t at MCC when the syllabus was actually rolled out. A decade later, in 1988, the students themselves reviewed the curriculum as part of the department magazine Economique, with Dr. Selvaraj as staff-in-charge, Mr. Vijay R. as the editor, and Mr. Balasubramaniyam as the sub-editor.
The syllabus opens with a preamble that frames its objective clearly: “skills to recognize and analyze the working of actual economics and specific economic problems within the context.” The ambition is admirable and signals a shift from rote and abstract learning toward real-world engagement with economic ideas—something still relevant and impressive today.But vision is one thing. Execution is another.
Many students at MCC during the 1970s weren’t fluent in English and struggled with access to the prescribed textbooks. So while the preamble was ambitious, its impact depended heavily on who was learning—and what support they received.
Credits: Ms. Cyra Tony
Did It Fulfill Student Aspirations?
This is a more difficult question to answer definitively. I didn’t live through the curriculum. I didn’t study under it. And so, I hesitate to speak for the students of that era.
What can be said, though, is this: the curriculum tried to engage students in a deeper, more meaningful study of economics. It wasn’t afraid to include complex tools and emerging frameworks, such as game theory and systems analysis. It introduced programming languages—COBOL and FORTRAN IV—at a time when computers were virtually nonexistent in Indian classrooms. It devoted three full semesters to studying the Indian economy in depth. These choices suggest that the creators had high expectations of their students and wanted to stretch their intellectual capacities.
Whether students felt supported in meeting those expectations is another question altogether.
Did It Align with Other Indian Universities?
This is where CTK’s curriculum struggled the most—and, arguably, where it ultimately failed.
The program failed to train students rigorously in traditional microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics, the key papers in economics. This hindered the students when they transitioned to leading academic institutions in India, like the Delhi School of Economics or the colleges in Delhi University. The syllabus was innovative, but it didn’t align with the dominant academic framework of Indian economics education. As a result, it lacked portability. What made it unique also made it isolating. While Indian universities updated their offerings to reflect changes in the discipline, CTK’s remained frozen. The initial vision was bold, but its custodians failed to carry that momentum forward. What started as a progressive model eventually became outdated. A paper that stood out was “Development of Economic Ideas,” which appeared in semesters III and V. The course intended to expose students to Classical, Marxian, Neoclassical, Keynesian, and socialist schools os economic thought, which was rare and commendable. However, these were neither rigorous nor application-oriented. If this course had oriented students to apply the theories to analyse macroeconomic issues from multiple lenses, it would have been a remarkable milestone in the teaching of economics.
Was the Curriculum Internally Consistent?
It is important to note that the syllabus was internally consistent and coherently structured. The course Quantitative Analysis, in particular, followed a logical progression. However, the question of which school of thought this mathematical framework was aligned with remains debatable. Dr. C. T. Kurien’s dissatisfaction with the neoclassical school—and his intent to move away from it—seems to be in tension with the syllabus’s reliance on mathematical tools typical of neoclassical economics. On the other hand, the Institutional Analysis paper demonstrated strong continuity and was thoughtfully developed across the program.
Were the Contents Adequate and Up to Date?
Adequate? Not quite. The syllabus had vision, but it lacked full execution. It introduced powerful ideas without always giving students the tools to wield them effectively. It balanced precariously between being too radical for the mainstream and too incomplete for the truly alternative. It could have become a model for heterodox economics education in India—but only if it had gone further.
Up to date? The curriculum definitely was up to date and it was in fact visionary. The inclusion of advanced topics like systems analysis, game theory, and electronic data processing in economics are admirable and was fore sited for Indian context at that time. The integration of such cutting-edge tools in the 1970s and 1980s made the undergraduate curriculum exceptional.
Conclusion: A Curriculum With a Vision, Not a Map
CTK’s economics curriculum wasn’t overrated. It was iconic in intent, and in many ways, courageous. It broke away from the safe, standardized models of Indian economics education and tried to do something different. It wanted students to think critically, use data meaningfully, and engage with India’s economy in real, grounded ways. But vision without infrastructure is rarely enough. Without consistent revision, pedagogical support, and alignment with broader academic pathways, the curriculum faltered. As a Gen Z student looking back, I see a curriculum that tried to do what we’re still asking for today: more relevance, more tools, more critical thinking. It didn’t fully succeed—but it dared to try.
Gratitude:
Ms. Cyra Tony, for graciously allowing me to use her abstract artwork inspired by the syllabus, which adds a thoughtful visual dimension to this blog post.
By Sreya.
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