Nepal, Dec. 8 -- A few discussions and seminars that I have attended in the past few weeks have made me pensive regarding the political awareness of academics. In one of them, some people from the audience hurled a barrage of questions at me. I realised I was speaking for those sahakarmis or fellow workers who have long left the field. Some have become political leaders, some part of think tanks, while some are dead. I felt like the English poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771) who wrote a famous elegy in a country churchyard with these words, 'Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds.' The occasion was not quite solemn, I must confess. Instead, it was restive and gnawing in character.

People were ...