Preetham Adiga

1. When the Tea Was Still Clean Once there was a Zen monastery where the tea was clean. Monks drank it after meditation. Scholars drank it while dismantling each other’s arguments. Seekers drank it when their minds cracked open from too much truth. The tea room was loud, brilliant, chaotic. Ideas collided. Truth appeared occasionally, like lightning over a mountain. A lazy monastery cat often slept under the table while philosophers argued about reality. Sometimes the cat would open one eye, yawn, and return to sleep. The monks liked to say: “If a cat can sleep through philosophy, perhaps philosophy is working.” It was messy. Which meant it was alive. Then she arrived. And slowly, the tea began to rot. 2. The Snake That Knew Etiquettes She entered like a decree written in perfume. Perfect posture. Perfect diction. Perfect calm. Behind it, something quietly corrosive. She had been educated among powerful men — trained to think like them, speak like them, almost liv...

There is a quiet miracle happening inside Indian universities. It is not research. It is not innovation. It is certainly not academic freedom. The miracle is this: universities have discovered a way to run entire institutions on the cheapest labour imaginable—PhD scholars. For decades, universities claimed that doctoral education existed to produce knowledge, nurture scholars, and advance intellectual life. But somewhere along the way, the system quietly reinvented itself. The PhD scholar is no longer primarily a researcher. They are now a multi-purpose institutional appliance . They teach. They invigilate exams. They organise conferences. They design posters. They manage department events. They perform administrative tasks. They coordinate guests. They sometimes even do the work that permanent staff are supposed to do. All for free. Technically, of course, it is not “free.” A small scholarship is provided—an amount that resembles a stipend but behaves more like institutional pocket m...

When Dhanwanti Nayak wrote “The Importance of Being Useless,” she was defending something beautiful. She was defending literature, philosophy, art—the parts of education that don’t immediately produce profits, patents, or PowerPoint presentations. The things people call “useless.” Her argument was simple: what looks useless is often what makes us human. Poetry teaches empathy. History teaches perspective. Philosophy teaches doubt. Without them, we produce professionals who can operate machines but cannot understand people. It’s a powerful argument. Unfortunately, universities misunderstood the assignment. They didn’t defend useless knowledge. They became useless themselves. Two Kinds of Uselessness There are two kinds of uselessness in the world. The first kind is the one Nayak celebrates. This is the uselessness of curiosity. Reading novels. Thinking about society. Studying culture. This uselessness produces ideas. The second kind is the uselessness perfected by...

People often laugh when they hear about my PhD topic. “Memes?” they ask. “You did a PhD on memes?” Yes. But the real joke wasn’t the memes. The real joke was the academic system that forced me to study them. And the two elderly gatekeepers who made sure four years of my life became the punchline. How This Started: I Made the Mistake of Having Real Experience I did my master’s from a well-known media institute. After graduating, I did something that academia often treats as suspicious behavior: I worked in the real world. For four years, I worked in a digital marketing agency. Content writing. Branding. Social media management. Actual campaigns. Actual audiences. Actual money being spent and earned. In other words: the exact ecosystem universities claim to be preparing students for. So when I applied for a PhD at the same institute, I proposed something radical. I wanted to research the gap between digital marketing education and real industry practice. A shocking idea, ap...

  Prestigious research institutes are supposed to be places where ideas grow—spaces where scholars are encouraged to question, experiment, and contribute to knowledge without fear. That is the image universities proudly present, especially those connected to institutions recognized under the Institutes of Eminence Scheme . When I began my PhD in a reputed media institute that forms part of such a university, I believed in that promise. I expected intellectual freedom, mentorship, and the opportunity to pursue meaningful research questions. What I encountered instead was an environment where hierarchy and administrative power often seemed to override academic judgment. This is my personal experience of navigating that system. A Supportive Guide in a Difficult System To be fair, my own research guide was supportive throughout much of my doctoral journey. He encouraged my research interests and tried to help me navigate the institutional requirements. However, the difficulty I ...