This article responds to a debate in Economic & Political Weekly on the state of theory in Indian academia. While earlier interventions focused on the “who” and “how” questions related to the subject and work of theory, a more fundamental question is addressed here: Why theory at all? In our age of permanent crises, the necessity to make a case for theory that can interpret the world rather than change it for the good has arisen due to the dominance of problem-solving and solution-driven approaches adopted by the social sciences.