An investigation by The Kansas City Star reveals that for two decades, Dr Ashim Mitra would make scholars carry heavy equipment, tend his lawn & sit his dog.
New Delhi: An Indian professor has allegedly been treating his Indian Ph.D. students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) like personal servants for two decades, and the school has done nothing to stop him.
A detailed investigation by The Kansas City Star, a local newspaper, revealed that Dr Ashim Mitra, a reputed faculty member at the UMKC School of Pharmacy with over 24 years of experience, would frequently make Indian scholars working under him carry his heavy equipment, serve food and water at cultural festivals, tend his lawn, and sometimes even sit his dog and care for his house-plants for weeks at a time, when he was away with his wife.
“I considered my life at UMKC nothing more than modern slavery,” scholar Kamesh Kuchimanchi told the newspaper, adding that one of the biggest disincentives against speaking out against Mitra was the fear that he might “force me to lose my visa and lose everything”.
“That was his ammo. Either fall in line or you would be thrown out. You didn’t want to be in that situation where you have to go back home empty-handed,” Kuchimanchi said.
‘It’s a cultural thing’
The other big obstacle to reporting Mitra was ‘being Indian’.
Mitra allegedly exploited more than just his position at the university. He also leveraged his place as an esteemed member of the tight-knit Indian community in Kansas City. Indians constitute a large percentage of students at UMKC’s pharmacy school. They come to Mitra’s lab in particular because they seek a certain kinship and a sense of belonging.
Instead, the traditional Indian teacher-student relationship further worsened the situation, the students allege.
“It’s a cultural thing in India. When a teacher says ‘do something’, we tend to do it,” said Ganesh Bommareddy, a former scholar under Mitra who requested a change after three years. “Our culture is such that when a professor walks in the room, we stand.”
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Mitra’s ability to earn research grants worth millions of dollars for the school — and projects that led to substantial contributions in the pharmaceutical sciences — resulted in university administrators overlooking complaints against him for years.
Mitra secured more than $8.5 million dollars in grants from the National Institutes of Health while at the UMKC.
Formal complaints
In the two decades that he was allegedly exploiting students, only one of Mitra’s colleagues came forward to formally complain against him — Mridul Mukherji, a fellow Indian professor. But nothing came of it — the ensuing investigation was a mere formality.
Mukherji’s was also not the first complaint that the university received against Mitra.
Kuchimanchi told the paper that he delivered “a list of wrong things” to the then-pharmacy school dean Robert Piepho in the late 1990s.
But right after the meeting, “I turned around to close the door and saw him crunch it up and throw it in the trash can, and I didn’t have a copy”, Kuchimanchi added.
When approached by the paper, Piepho denied the incident ever took place.
Mukherji has filed two lawsuits in the Jackson County Circuit Court — against Mitra in 2016 for his mistreatment of students, and against UMKC in 2018 for “discriminatory and retaliatory behaviour” against him by university officials. The 2016 lawsuit is set for trial next September.
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Where did all this lead?
Mukherji told the paper that the university tried to get him to settle his lawsuit more than once, under the condition that he would quit UMKC. Mukherji resisted, and still teaches in the pharmacy school. As does Mitra. However, he is no longer division chair as of 2018.
On its part, the UMKC insists that Mukherji’s complaint “was looked into, repeated efforts were made to contact all students identified by Dr Mukherji, but no students substantiated the claims, and no formal action could be taken under the university’s policies and regulations that were in place at the time.”
this is what most of indian origine professors in the US or Canada do. I too did my MS and PHD from one of the leading universities in Canada and I have seen this happening
These kind of prof. should be removed from the job and teach them how to behave..
Indians abuse indians. This is common. Why Indians were slaves for 1400+ years? Why Islam slaughtered Indians and today Hindus are worried about Islam in Bharat? Indians hate indians.
I know Patelias & Patlanis hate high class Hindus and are totally barbaric. All states have these Patelias.
Time to end this for ever. Do not let Patelias and likes of Dr Ashim Mitras.
We cannot change these.
We all pay for these entities.
These Indian prof’s do exploit and poor students are indeed treated as slaves. Its an open secret and I know many of my own relatives and friends kids doing Masters/Phd treated this way. Trump should immediately order investigation against these Profs and throw them in Jail, punish them in such a way that no more Prof will ever treat students as slaves . Need to put an end to this.
This is NOT A UNIQUE occurrence or isolated academic tyranny in India, USA!! Although I never worked in the USA, I have witnessed in person, haplessly in countless US conferences I attended in the last 35 years. Such is the misery guts that so-called Indian Professors who are strictly to be addressed as no more than PhD supervisors like any other American heritage particularly based in the USA instead fondly addressed woefully incorrectly indeed as ‘my guide’ by gullible, vulnerable Indian post grads or ‘post-docs’ or shall I say mildly put it post-dogs’!! Quite blatantly in glaring public gaze in the conference poster floors one would freeze at the appalling treatment meted out by these less fortunate Indian students by these so-called American Indian Profs. Historically, in most cases, these students almost certainly have heart wrenching narratives of how they had to either beg, borrow or sell their family silver or parents’ life-savings and rather unsuspectingly walked into the trap when such poor gullible ones usually after their MSc stage whilst in a bleak house Indian job market scenario, approach/ walk into these predators’ path and either recruit themselves or inevitably lured into the honey trap of going abroad. Such misfortunate lot amongst Indian students are literally awash in the USA in particular, and treated even worse than chained bonded slaves of the doggone days in the land of the Free!! This Prof would have been 10x or 100x worse had he been based in Mother India. Such slave labour and exploitation has been rampant amongst American Indian academics and peers who used to use, abuse or misuse the ancient more benevolent versions of Guru-student subservience over several decades in modern day India dating back to early independence and it is right across the country!! Such grotesque attitudes of Professor-student abuses are more predominant and apparent in our own Mother India albeit in many versions and levels, be it, North and West, East and South of India; no means excusable, nevertheless unequivocal rough but true stats exist right across our own country. Turning the other cheek or wearing a Nelson’s patch is a norm in Indian Universities. Hitching a ride on the back of this India’s own pathetic scene setting, one can see that this ‘dirty baggage’ of abhorrent behaviour is carried over quite as an innate characteristic of certain lot of Professors as this one highlighted in Kansas, USA. If one looked back into the mind set or despicable mentality of such individuals they may have either had a tyrannical childhood at home or they themselves would have been a subject of PG/PhD teacher-student abuse in their shady past. There are others who have had a very elite upbringing in India and consider all others who work with them or under them as subordinates of various categories and descriptions running into the vexatious caste issues too. Quite simply such obnoxious behaviours when identified by often helpless students should thoroughly be investigated by the US Universities instead of silencing the lambs and festering such toxic mishaps, the victim (complaining students) should be offered full counsel and support. Equally such alleged abusive Professors, need psychiatric help. Period!! More ‘Kuchimanchis and Bommireddys and more importantly hard evidence via today’s age of the video/audio streaming, and other IT gadgets fitted/kitted in their hand (cell phones) are required to expose such mentally unstable and neurotics masquerading as academic peers amongst the otherwise hard-working intellects and often doing phenomenal research and teaching outputs exemplifying themselves (e.g. Venkataraman Chandrasekhar in 2009 Nobel Laureate in Biochemistry amongst many others who have won the hearts and minds of millions of Americans in many walks of life from academia, health and politics too who are “indeed best among equals” as the English, African, Irish, European, Latinos and others have been inhabitants of the ‘Land of the Free’; there is one cue that my fellow Indians could take – please be mindful that well before the first wave of Mahatma (great soul) Indians arrived on the shores of Americas, these ‘precursor immigrants’ arrived a few hundred years before ourselves, held on to only ‘their high moral values and “settled” very well as “AMERICANS” AND most importantly they RID of their ‘bad and ugly baggage’. Together with professionals of all shades, until recently the onset of IT Tsunami (that still is making the Indian immigrant new waves) in the USA, every Indian of all shades of socio-economic and cultural heritage from India should be example ambassadors on the world stage playing their ‘act’ on the US stage! They are there to be rich, enrich but not bitch with their fellow desis! If there is “one enemy that one needs to watch out in the US, it is “US” i.e. the desis! my dear indie friends and brethren sirs! Sorry guys for bad lingua in the concluding lines.