Mr Kaushik Basu's tweet was not just a "bad take" arising from ignorance or incompetence

But a disingenuous attempt to use his credentials to drive political debate https://twitter.com/akshayalladi/status/1335457580991225856

On what such "discrediting of experts" means for India's intellectual culture

It's going to make India's already anti-intellectual populace more skeptical of intellectuals

Anti-intellectualism, once the preserve of the Far-Right, will become the dominant culture in society

I don't think that is a good thing

India has always been a culture that has looked up to the elites

That's one reason why learned brahmins were placed even above Kings in India's social order

As society respected "learning"

That's going to go away now

The new elites of our times are perceived to be "anti-India", "deracinated", "disingenuous and condescending"

This promotes a certain contempt for book knowledge. For abstract thinking, academic research

You sense this in drawing room conversations in many Indian households

There is a contempt for "books". A glorification of "hands-on" culture. For people who "do" things.

Who write code. Who build stuff. Who make deals.

So in this new India, the heroes are the "can-do" men

The Ambanis, the Adanis, the Nadellas and Picchais, the Baba Ramdevs

As opposed to the Raghuram Rajans, the Abhijit Banerjees, the Amartya Sens

In some ways, Narendra Modi symbolizes this new India

"Hard work is better than Harvard"

Lots of Indians relate to that

It is a problematic axiom for sure. But you can see why it is popular

The Chai-wallah can't be worse than Cambridge products like Nehru and Mahalanobis!