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Who & what to blame? Who to & when it can be set right? Is it possible to give suitable and unanimous answers for these questions in this vast and complex country? Not everyone is in a position to analyze and duly comment. Very unfortunate situation is prevailing. Even if one states something obvious, motives are /can be attributed to the person. Hence, people refrain from commenting. But someone has to come forward and do the needful. Who can be those? Investigative journalists. Of course, even they can be at risk! But they can be highly acknowledged too! But in such a vast and complex country investigative journalists from all over the country should form an interactive team and work coherently.
Demand and supply are common terms. When either is taken an extreme form in any sector -including academic sector, state of affairs takes a different shape. Once there was a statement. ‘Adulteration has become so rampant that there is a severe shortage of adulterants Therefore the adulterants in turn have to be adulterated”! So is the situation in the academic sector. Gargantuan demand for higher education and coupling of the gargantuan demand with aping the developed countries. One may ask. Is the research controversy really so serious?? India has the second world’s largest higher education system with over 58,000 (fifty eight thousand ) higher education institutions, nearly 45 million students enrolled in higher education and with nearly 25,000 PhDs every year.
(As statistics can be expressed in different ways some may try to justify and give different projections . So, one should view statistics from different angles to assess the ground realities. ) , /Now aping developed countries has happened in different ways. During British time and even after independence for a long time there was no mandatory research project/thesis work at master’s level. Millions of students are there. When there is no money to conduct even bare minimum experiments/practicals as prescribed in the course curriculum. How can you imagine money for research project work/thesis for millions of students? / (Few exceptions can always be there in this vast country). An eminent professor long back has described them as “beggars” approaching and pleading with different people/institutes for research project work.
To add fuel to the fire /make things worse project work/report has been introduced at Bachelor’s level also adding more millions! Fortunately, till now—and God forbid in future—these people are not expected to publish any paper from their project work! But right at this stage they get acquainted with the mode of preparing a work report, academic ambience prevailing and their mind starts becoming aberrant. This may be carried forward ! PhD research work is primary. Variations are there across the country. About paper publication, before submission of thesis some institutes: a) insist one paper to be published b) two papers to be published. In this connection I may say there were ( now not so sure ) some institutes do not allow publishing of papers till the thesis is submitted /approved.. An unfortunate situation -for the students can be –research supervisor expecting more papers than what the institute has prescribed. Strictly speaking there are no research workers in the faculty, the way there are practicing surgeons in the medical field.
In no university or college faculty are bench workers. Unfortunately, this has become the situation in research institutes also, because of so many students preferring to do PhD in research institutes. / Now let me support the academic fraternity. What can they do? There is so much undue pressure on paper publication to get appointments, promotions, research grants, awards and honors etc ! Not just that. The system wants papers to be published in high impact factor journals. How many retractions are there compared to the total number of papers published? Very less. Once, an eminent scientist said; most of our research is confirmatory research. So, anyone making tall claims must be viewed with caution. So, retractions are minority cases./ Cutting the story short and suggesting a few measures: 1. Abolish project work at UG and Master’s level. Knowledge has become vast and multidisciplinary. Hence, they can /should complete their degrees exclusively by course work including the prescribed practicals. 2. No undue pressure on faculty to publish papers and make it a prerequisite for their further prospects. Let them impart subject knowledge to students and efficiently carry out other prescribed duties and accordingly evaluate.
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