P.M. Bhargava and the scientific temper police

When I started this blog, I had decided to strictly restrict the discussions to science, scientists and academic affairs and to completely keep politics out. But extraordinary times require rules for normal times be suspended. And what we are witnessing in India now is indeed an extraordinary time. The left-liberals who have for all these years since independence in 1947 had enjoyed a monopoly over government policy to decide how India should think and where she should go, are increasingly being challenged and sidelined. Having failed to influence the electorate during the 2014 general elections despite their best efforts and numerous open letters, they have now resorted to spreading canards about a democratically elected government. Latest in these shenanigans is a statement issued by a group of scientists. I was alerted to this statement by a news in Nature India. Third paragraph in this statement begins thus:

"The Indian Constitution in Article 51 A (h) demands, as a part of the fundamental duties of the citizens, that we '...develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform' "

Reading this reminded me of an op-ed that the leader of this group, P.M.Bhargava, had written few months ago. You can find it here. There he narrates why, how and, most importantly, when he got this article inserted into the constitution of India.

"The conclusion that our very own scientists — who would be expected to be leaders in the development of scientific temper — did not possess scientific temper themselves and were just as superstitious as any other group was supported by another incident in 1964. Following a statement by Satish Dhawan (who later became Secretary, Department of Space), Abdur Rahman (a distinguished historian of science) and I, set up an organisation called The Society for Scientific Temper, in January 1964, the founding members of which included distinguished scientists like Francis Crick, a Nobel Prize winner. For membership to the society, the following statement had to be signed: “I believe that knowledge can be acquired only through human endeavour and not through revelation, and that all problems can and must be faced in terms of man’s moral and intellectual resources without invoking supernatural powers.”

We were disillusioned when we approached scientist after scientist and all of them refused to sign the statement. Clearly they were devoid of scientific temper. Following this disillusionment, I persuaded Professor Nurul Hasan, then Education Minister, to have the following clause included in Article 51A in the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution in 1976: “It shall be the duty of every citizen of Indian “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of enquiry and reform.” 

Hopefully, I don't have to draw your attention to the fact that 42nd Amendment to the Constitution of India was enacted during the Emergency that India Gandhi had imposed. It was a time when democratic rights were suspended in India. It was the only time in history when something close to authoritarian dictatorship was actually imposed in India (forced sterilization of people, carried out by Ms. Gandhi's son Sanjay, is often cited as an example). The 42nd Amendment was therefore not enacted through a democratic process. It is also an amendment that has constitutionally imposed a political ideology, Socialism, on all citizens of India irrespective of whether they agree with it or even understand it (as an aside, I remember reading somewhere that the Swarajya Party of C. Rajagopalachari could not be revived in post-emergency India because they did not subscribe to socialism and hence were not in agreement with the constitution. So much for democracy and freedom of political association in India). 

So, here we have a group of people who see no problem in imposing their world-view, their way of thinking, their ideology on rest of the citizenry. They feel no compunction in actively collaborating with authoritarian dictators in the process. They see no problem in passing judgments on the scientific temper of a person just because they did not sign up to their "statement" and subscribe to their "society". The very concept of freedom and individual liberty seems alien to this group. Ramanujan ascribed all his math genius to visions from his family goddess. Newton spent a lot of time searching through Bible for secret messages from God. Now, imagine if the careers of these scientific geniuses were to be left at the mercy of Bhargava and his fellow scientific temper police. Well, you don't actually have to imagine. That is what has happened to Indian science for all these years since Independence. All life has been sucked out of it by this scientific temper police. 

Now, if only this "deeply concerned with the climate of intolerance" gang who have no qualms about collaborating with dictators to impose their ideology on rest of the nation, had looked up the word "IRONY" in a dictionary before churning out their statement. One only hopes they will finally be called out for what they really are, a bunch of hypocrites throwing a tantrum because they no longer have control over other's lives. 

Conference Dairy - 2

While attending these conferences one picks up a lot of funny snippets during the talks. Some samples.

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If you are a biologist who uses NMR to study proteins and are visiting a different country to work in a collaborator's lab,  never tell the border security that you intend to enter the country to do some work with "nuclear" magnetic resonance imaging. That little word could land you in a lot of trouble at the airport. 

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You come across a lot of interesting people at conferences. There is a scientist who originally wanted to become a pig farmer before straying into lipid biology. Then there is someone who swam to escape East Germany. But the one case I found most interesting is the scientist who did her PhD in planetary sciences looking at Jupiter before she shifted to studying the role of fatty acids in cancer biology. The largest molecule she studied as a grad student had 5 atoms. Now she studies systems made up of thousands of atoms. 

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At this conference I learnt of a molecule called Coprostenol. It's derived from cholesterol and is used to detect faecal contamination in water, food etc. Wiki page here. The meaning of its name is interesting. It's derived from Greek.

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During breakfast one day, I was sitting across from a senior professor. He claimed to be someone who reviews research papers a lot. According to him,  one can get a sense of which way the center of the research world is moving from the number of papers one receives for review from each country. Keeping that in mind, he said, he's been lately receiving a lot of papers from Chinese researchers but rarely ever from India. This discussion was in the context of whether the government is putting enough money into research and the ease of finding an academic job.

Conference dairy - 1

I am currently attending a conference that is known to be very intense with respect to both the schedule and science. The experience has been very rich both for the science I am getting to learn and the social aspects of meeting people from a diverse backgrounds. I have enjoyed being here so much that I think it is worth sharing. I have been told that I cannot use the name of the conference any where as well as not talk about science. So bear with the arbitrariness in both. 

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I have attended international level conferences before. A few times I was just a participant. Many times I have presented posters. But this is the first conference where I got an opportunity to make an oral presentation. And since the conference is being attended by some really important people in the field, I was kind of really nervous about my presentation. I wanted everything to be right and in place before hand so I don't have any nasty surprises during the presentation that would compound my tension. Since my talk was scheduled to be the last one in the session, I was told to connect the computer to projector and set it up so no time is wasted before my presentation starts. Sitting through the talks preceding mine, I was so nervous that I could barely sit steady. When it was time, my face was splashed on the screen, the session leader introduced me and invited me to the dais. I went there, stood in front of everyone and saw that the laptop screen was empty. First I thought it was the screen that timed out. No. I then thought it must have gone to sleep. No. Is it in hibernation? Turns out the computer for some reason that I still can't figure out had shut down. I was standing there with all eyes on me waiting for the computer to restart and the session leader was growing impatient. I would have thought the embarrassment will give me a heart attack. At least that is what I wished would happen. But surprisingly, I was alright. Even the earlier nervousness had disappeared. My heartbeat had returned to normal and I really felt relaxed. The science part after that went off smoothly. And I think the talk was overall well received. All that ends well etc. 

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In the session following my talk, there was another presentation by a researcher from Japan who is working on a similar problem. He had some really interesting data and some very important observations. Unlike mine, his talk went off without any technical glitches and overall he made a very good presentation of his work. But he was in great discomfort as soon as the discussion (Q & A session) began following his talk. It was clear that he knew the science to explain the questions that were asked. But he had a great difficulty in articulating them probably because of a lack of fluency in english. It is the reality of times we live in that english is the language of science today. And it becomes very difficult to communicate the science we do, however excellent it might be, unless we have at least a manageable proficiency in english language. For me, this experience has forever settled the debate on what should be the language of instruction in schools, especially science teaching. 

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I have met a female graduate student at the conference who has come from India. She works in one of the premier science research institutes. She has apparently got some kind of funding from Indian government to support her travel to the conference. As it is the rule imposed on all Indian researchers who get government funding to travel abroad, she too flew to US by Air India. And as any human being (or animal) that has travelled by Air India will tell you, she too had a harrowing experience with the carrier. Apparently, she had to fly (by Air India) to New Delhi to catch a connecting flight to New York. Midway through the flight, the plane was re-routed to Lucknow. The passengers were informed that the change of route was due to bad weather in Delhi. But when some of the passengers grew suspicious and demanded an accurate explanation, they were told that the flight had to be re-routed since there was not enough fuel to reach Delhi (on a regular, pre-planned route). That's how irresponsible the operations in Air India are. Consequently, the flight reached the original destination after a couple of hours delay. Meanwhile, the passengers (like this grad student) who had to catch a connecting flight spent a few nervous hours worrying about the prospect of having to deal with Air India's front-desk employees to find alternate flights if they missed the connection. I have often heard from friends before about this bizarre Indian government rule of requiring to travel exclusively by Air India, if they want to avail the government funds to travel to conferences, workshops etc. abroad. This rule apparently has to be followed even if ticket prices are lower with some other airline. I think this is just a waste of very limited budget allocated to research in India. In fact, I think it is an unpardonable waste of tax-payer money to keep Air India alive. But it is an even bigger sin to force the research community to waste their meagre funds on this white-elephant. 
Update:
Apparently, this grad student's travel for the conference is supported by DBT (the person wasn't very clear on what program of DBT gave this funding, but a little Google search tells me it might be the CTEP). As a scientist-bureaucrat who must have put up with this proxy-funding of Air India nonsense many times through his career, the incumbent DBT secretary Dr. VijayRaghavan should initiate steps to put an end to this practice. If required, it must be brought to the attention of the S&T minister and Prime Minister. 

Pictorial warning on cigarette packs

Note: A version of this blog was posted on my Tumblr page.

Recently, there has been a fresh controversy brewing in India regarding the size of pictorial warnings on cigarette packets. The mainstream Indian media outlets, going by their default nature, wouldn’t have bothered to inform their readers/viewers about the issue since it is not as important as some kid hitting a cricket ball towards a church. But this time, they were stirred to action since the parliamentary committee which recommended that the current size of the pictorial warnings on the cigarette (and other tobacco products’) packing need not be increased, happened to have an MP who is also a tobacco businessman. Of course, this gross conflict of interest would have gone over the heads of our media had the MP not been from the ruling party of India which the media honchos love to hate. That the said parliamentary committee gave absence of Indian research linking tobacco use to cancer as the excuse for its recommendation should have been reason enough to arouse media interest but that is not as attractive as something that would further the propaganda war against the current ruling dispensation.

The issue I want to talk about is not the media or the uneducated recommendation of the committee or the conflict of interest of an MP. I want to talk about our hypocrisy in this entire ‘pictorial warnings on the cigarette packs’ issue. To start off, let me clarify that I do not intend to question the scientific fact that cigarette smoking or tobacco use is injurious to health, including causing cancer. I also agree that people need to be informed and warned of this. But whose responsibility is it to do this? I want to ask if it is ethical to force the cigarette manufacturers to put up advertisements that would negatively effect their business. That too with their money and on the face of the product that they are trying to sell. Is it ethical for the government and the society in general to pick on just one kind of product? What about fast food business whose products have been shown to cause obesity which is now reaching epidemic proportions in various parts of the world? What about sugary drinks? Alcohol? Most universities in India are substandard. Shouldn’t they warn their gullible students that all they will end up getting for their time and money is a piece of paper called degree and not quality education? Our judiciary’s main quality is to deliver delayed justice. Shouldn’t they warn all the litigants that they will have to wait forever to know what happened to their case? News outlets’ main job is to inform the public. But in India today, all that the media does is propaganda peddling, disrupting communal harmony, spin lies, twist facts, edit truths and foster outrage. Shouldn’t the viewers of every news channel and readers of ever news paper be informed that whatever they see, hear or read should be taken with a truckload of salt and masala? Going to our government hospitals means getting many more diseases than what you already have. Shouldn’t those getting admitted they be warned of their awaited fate? These are just some instances where the government does not force warnings in the consumers’ interest. So, why only tobacco industry? May be because it is a fashionable thing to do in the west. May be because it is an easy target. I don’t know. What I do know is that these kind of warning should be mandatory everywhere to protect the consumer and not just where it is convenient for the government to force without facing a backlash. Also I do not think it is ethical of the government to force someone trying to sell something to warn against buying it. It is however government’s duty to warn people of the dangers. So why doesn’t the government use the tax money it collects from the sale of tobacco products to buy advertising space to issue these warning, including on the face of cigarette packs and in movie theatres?

What do you think? Do you agree with me? If you disagree I would like to know why. 

On Indian Universities

Note: A version of this blog was posted on my Tumblr.

Today, I had an interesting discussion with a fellow Indian post-doc here at UBC. Since both of us are at a stage where we are about to start looking for academic jobs, the discussion moved towards the university system in India. Both of us were in agreement that the way universities are currently administered actually does grave injustice to the young Indians that they are supposed to serve. I argued that as things stand today, there is just no quality control mechanism that can force these universities to reform or aspire for excellence. There are so many Indians aspiring for a university degree in the hope that it will help improve their social and financial status, that even the worst among the private universities, with barely any physical or intellectual infrastructure, manage to get many times more applicants for each available seat in every course. The situation in the public universities that charge almost nothing for a fee, the demand is unimaginable. Given this, the government is obligated not only to let these institutions survive despite their low standards but also to actively support their existence to manage the ever increasing demand and avoid riots on the streets. However, the government does have the power, both financial and administrative, to push the universities towards better quality. Problem is that they just don’t seem to think of it as a priority issue. And in a democracy nothing becomes a priority unless the voting public asks to make it one. If past experience is anything to go by, politicians in India do nothing to address an issue unless they are forced to by public pressure. And when they do want to make things happen, they do; the success of pulse polio campaign is a proof to that. In my opinion, one possible way to force this to happen is by imposing a penalty on the public for tolerating sub-standards in the institutions where they get degrees from. Let’s say the recruiting agencies do not consider the degrees from all the universities as equal. They could, for example, apply a normalizing factor that would put the degree issued by a good quality university at a higher level and pushes the one issued by a poor quality institution to a lower level. Such a normalizing factor could be developed by an accreditation agency like the NAAC. In fact, the entire function of UGC can be limited to assessing the different universities in the country to determine this normalizing factor for each university at regular intervals, instead of going around micromanaging universities. The union government can make it mandatory for all its departments, to begin with, to apply this normalization while assessing the applicants before any appointment. Government can also suggest the private sector employers to do the same. If people realize that the degree issued by a particular university is of no use to them in getting a job, they’ll hopefully pressure their local government to initiate the much needed reforms process. And eventually, probably in a couple of decades or so, our institutions might be in the same vicinity as the best in the world.

What do you think of this suggestion? Do you think it can work? Do you have any ideas that you think can help improve our universities’ standards? Do share. I would love to hear from you.

NASA | 5 Year Time-lapse of the Sun

Campus and Politics?

That was the subject line of an email I received a couple of weeks ago from a shocked Canadian lab-mate with the following attachment. 

 

As you can see the image is a paper clip from a Malayalam language paper. For those who can't read Malayalam, here and here are some links to the news in English. While my colleague was shocked that an academic campus could become the playground for the mainstream political organizations to the extent that it could even result in bloodshed, the news didn't even surprise me. So much that, I didn't even bother reading beyond the headline (and I searched for the English news stories just for this blog). And my guess is that even in the printed papers, this news was probably in some interior nook amongst the matrimonial and obituary sections. That's how common such incidents are in school, college and university campuses of Kerala. I do not know much about student politics in many other parts of India but I have studied in two other neighbouring states of Kerala, in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. In both these states, though there are student organizations affiliated to mainstream political parties just like in Kerala, their activities are pretty mellow and very rarely lead to violence, if ever at all. 

There are two major students' organizations in Kerala. SFI is affiliated to CPI(M) (and the now opposition LDF) and the KSU is affiliated to Indian National Congress (I) (and the now ruling UDF). Of these, SFI generally tends to invoke violence at the slightest provocation (here is an example). There are students' organizations affiliated to other political parties such as the BJP and IUML but are not as strong as these two which mainly derive their strength from the support of the consecutive LDF and UDF governments that change every 5 years. As the report in the above link points out, these organizations tend to function in consonance with the unions of teaching and non-teaching staff which themselves have political affiliations. Students are often forced to donate money and participate in their activities such as strikes and processions/marches which often turn violent resulting non-activist students getting injured and sometimes, even worse, getting killed. Since both the major political formations in the state have a vested interest in ensuring that these student orgs so that they can have a constant supply of fresh man power, no state government has ever tried to regulate their activities. 

The influence of vested political interests is not, however, limited only to the student bodies. It extends all the way through the teacher and staff unions up to the Vice-Chancellors (VCs). Most VCs are appointed not because of their academic or administrative accomplishment but due to their political and social affiliations. And these VCs don't even remain coy about their political links and often openly show off their political patronage even after assuming office. I know a person who is currently working as a Reader at the Calicut University (which, incidentally, is shut down due to competitive strikes by the SFI and KSU, one opposing the VC and the other supporting). This person had returned to India after two post-doctoral assignment, one in the US and the other in Germany. He had joined the Calicut University despite attractive offers from other private higher ed institutions. A few days after his appointment, he was approached with a membership by the staff union affiliated to the then ruling LDF. Since he was mostly bothered about doing research and teaching and wasn't even inclined towards a leftist ideology, he turned down the offer of membership. This set in motion a series of steps to harass him ultimately ending with termination of his appointment. The poor man had to go for a lengthy and costly legal battle with the University to get his job back, that too only after a change of government following state elections. This example is to demonstrate how the political-staff-student union nexus works in our academic campuses. They break anyone who is not ready to bend to their wishes, sometimes literally. 

All this is not that difficult to fix. As I said, there are states adjacent to Kerala where the politics of student and staff bodies is conducted without resorting to violence. It is also time to rethink if our academic campuses really require political activity at all. I am one of those who believes the primary purpose of universities and other academic establishments is to generate and disseminate knowledge. And the primary duty of the students is to learn as much as they can. Development of politically aware citizens can be restricted to the activities and organizations outside the campus. We can certainly design some other means to ensure student participation in the running of our institutions but that certainly should not be in anyway influenced by the vested interests of the political parties. Elimination of political interference is one basic and simple step that can have a cascading effect on the quality of our universities. Instead of ensuring that, our government keeps spending thousands of crores of taxpayer money to start more higher ed institutions that will all be plagued by the same problems and will ultimately fail to provide quality education to our students. It just saddening and infuriating at the same time. 

TED Talks: A neural portrait of the human mind

Bhatnagar Awards - 2014

CSIR-India has announced the names of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology 2014 winners. Congratulations to all the deserved winners. 

• A news report with the names of the winners here.
• Official website of the prize.
• Prize announcement.
• About the man after whom the prize is named.
• Something that struck me as interesting was that not even one of the 10 prize winners works for a university. This only further highlights the dismal condition that the research activities of our universities is in. One can only hope that the decision makers that announce and that present these awards are taking note. 
• A little Google search on the performance of Indian Universities vis-a-vis SSB award got me to this interesting write-up at Current Science. Critical point of the article is the figure below.

Lasker Award 2014

The names of the recipients of the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research award for the year 2014 have been announced. This year's award is in recognition of the work done by Peter Walter and Kazutoshi Mori to uncover the process of Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) in the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER).

1. Short talk by Peter Walter about the UPR at iBiology 
2. Award announcement . Also has links to videos about the work and description of the work.  
3. Home page of Lasker Foundation has the information about the other biomedical awards announced for this year. 

Teaching Style

On September 5th India will celebrate Teachers' day in honour of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President of India and former vice-chancellor of my alma mater, Andhra University. This blog is about the teaching styles that I have noticed as a student at various levels. 
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Now that I am approaching the last leg if my postdoc stint, I have started to think about the next stage of my academic life. I will soon be entering the job market. A part of my future plan will involve teaching; I do not as yet know if it is going to be only a handful of lab colleagues or a class full of undergrads. So, I have started thinking about what kind of a teacher I would be. What approach should I adopt? According to Indian tradition, there are two ways to describe the relationship between God and the devotee - "marjala-niti" (the cat principle) and "markata-niti" (the monkey principle). If you have ever seen a cat carry its kitten around, you would have noticed how the kitten is held securely by the mother's teeth. All the work in this relationship is done by the mother; she is responsible for the kitten's safety as well as for transporting it around the town while the kitten only need to hang around there. On the other hand, consider a monkey transporting its infants. While the mother takes care of the transportation part, the baby has to hold on securely and is responsible for its own safety. In this second relationship, there is a division of responsibilities. These descriptions, that are based on parenting styles of two different animals, can as well be extended to describe the relationship between a teacher and a student.

In my opinion, both the models have their virtues and are suitable at different stages of a supervisor-research scholar relationship. The cat-model is relevant during the initial stages when a student is just starting his/her research. They may not know too much about what to do and where to look for information. It would be useful for the supervisor to hold his hand at this stage and lead through the maze. As the student starts to find his feet, it might be a good idea to let him be and figure things out on his own. Let him figure out how to clear the roadblocks in the project, understand what the data is trying to tell and decide the best format (and place) to present (and publish) the data. Trickiest part of this scheme is to identify the right time to transition from a cat to a monkey. I do not, yet, know how good teachers figure that out. With time, I probably will, just like I did at the beginning of my PhD. 
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What is your opinion on the different teaching styles? Do you prefer any one of them or a composite? What is your style? Do let me know in your comments. 

Is FYUP the first step to rejuvenate higher ed in India?

Before getting into what I want to say, links to a few interesting articles about higher education in India and the FYUP mess created by UGC. (For those who do not know, FYUP stands for Four Year Undergraduate Program and UGC is the University Grants Commission, the primary regulator of university education in India)

1. Columbia University professor Arvind Panagaria has some advice for the new Indian government on higher ed reforms.
2. Pratap Bhanu Mehta cautions the government/UGC. 
3. Vikram Kapur of Shiv Nadar University at Firstpost.
4. Vishwesha Guttal from IISc, Bangalore has this to say about the mess that UGC is hell-bent on creating there. 
5. A write up in the journal Nature on the same topic.
6. An anonymous doctoral student has this to say.
7. A position paper from October 2008 brought out by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences, India on "Restructuring post-school science teaching programs" 

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In the last couple of months, folks at UGC seem to have suddenly woken up to their duty as the watchdogs of university education in India. They first forced the Delhi University to close down its much controversial FYUP leaving thousands of students' future uncertain. Our Parliament was then informed that notices had been sent to Symbiosis University, Shiv Nadar University and Indian Institute of Science to shutdown their respective FYUP. I do not know what happened to the first two institutions. But, since IISc is a major player among the Indian science's elites, there was lots of grief and wailing that the government had dared question the high priests of Indian science. The result is a face saving compromise where the IISc  gets to keep its program with a modified name and an option for the students to exit after 3 years, if they wish to. Now this leaves one wondering if the UGC couldn't have been similarly considerate towards Delhi University since their FYUP already had exit options at different stages. My point, of course, is larger than the DU or IISc. I think UGC was right in blocking FYUP in a affiliating university like DU and wrong in doing so with stand alone institutions like the other three. Hopefully what I am posting below will convince you about my stand.

It is well accepted by now, and you will see this point made many times in the links above, that the higher education system in India as it exists today is a relic of our colonial past. The system was designed to produce clerks and bureaucrats to serve the British administration. It probably served its purpose well at that time and possibly even during the early days after the independence, but is terribly lacking in being able to serve the needs of a developing country in an ever changing, competitive world. There is no doubt that the system needs to be reformed to meet the challenges of the day. But what is the right system to adopt? Should we look at the various models around the world and borrow one of them? This approach is a definite case for failure since the university systems in the different countries,especially in the western developed ones, have evolved through many years to suit their particular local needs. We need to develop one most suited to us. To get to the best possible solution, we need to experiment with the various models before finding out what works best for us. And these experiments need to be done under settings which would allow the best chance to succeed and provide us with the best possible data. And that is why such experiments are best done is stand alone universities (such as IISc) which have the maximum resources and the least number of possible variables. This is also the reason why a large university such as DU with its hundreds of affiliated colleges which fall in a wide range in terms of quality of resources (both physical and intellectual) is a bad setting to initiate such experiments. These affiliating universities serve thousands of students in any academic year and in most cases happen to be the only degree awarding institution in an entire district leaving the students without any other choice. As often happens with anything new and drastically different from the existing, the general public's first reaction tends to be to resist the change, especially so if the said change requires the investment of an entire year of your life's prime. But the same set of people will be more than eager to accept the change if there is enough evidence that an extra year's investment is going to exponentially increase their employability. After all for most people, the only purpose of a college degree is to help them make a decent living. So, as I see it, the FYUP controversy is at the core a result of communication problem between the academics and the taxpayers who support their academic adventures.

Since there is a wide consensus in the academic community that the Indian university education needs to be reformed to suit the present times, the only question is about how it should be done. Is FYUP the ideal remedy? At this point it would be useful that you have had a look at the position paper prepared by the 3 Indian science academies (link #7 above) to be able to appreciate what I am trying to say below. There are many write ups in the intertubes highlighting the inconsistencies in the stated objectives and proposed curriculum of the DU's FYUP. So, I won't dwell into that here. What I am writing here is mostly considering the position paper linked above (and hoping that the design of FYUP at institutes such as IISc is based on this paper). I do not wish to argue about the stated objectives and outcomes of the proposed changes to the collegiate education. I am in complete agreement that the system needs to be revamped and that the said changes are ultimately going to benefit the students, and the country in general. What I want to do is to look at whether the same objectives and benefits cannot be achieved by slightly tinkering with the existing system, rather than wholesale changes.

Two objectives that the proponents of FYUP argue will be achieved by the reform are inculcation of a scientific temper and interdisciplinary training. The first of these is aimed at invigorating and replenishing the extremely poor human resource currently available for academic research in the country. And since research output of a country is directly related to its economic progress, this is indeed  a very valid objective for the higher ed system to aim for. But then the question is, will that be sufficient to attract, and more importantly retain, research talent? Is this even the first necessary step in that direction? For example, will a talented student who is capable of earning a well paying job in a non-research setting (because of the interdisciplinary training of FYUP) continue to pursue academic research if s/he is subjected to mental (and sometimes physical and sexual) harassment by his/her supervisor? Will such a person even join for a PhD after knowing that their stipend will just about suffice for their survival, has very little chance of being increased and will regularly be paid after a 6 month delay? I think there are more fundamental structural and attitudinal changes that are required to boost the country's research output. In my opinion, the reason there is an overall poor scientific temper in the country and the reason very few take to research as a career is not because of how science is taught in undergraduate courses. It is because of the way science is taught in the schools, boring and without any hands on experimental work. And by the time kids are through highschool, their minds are mostly made up on what career to choose. If a person is not inclined to take up a research career at the end of highschool, that is not very likely to happen after getting a bachelor's degree. So the science in schools needs to be fixed first before getting on to meddling with universities. 

An important proposal in the FYUP position paper is the introduction of a research component in the UG courses by dedicating 1-2 semesters to project work resulting in a dissertation. This is indeed a very good suggestion provided there is a provision for students to directly pursue PhD without having to have a Master's degree as a qualification. A suggestion to this effect is also made in the position paper. One of the advantages of having such a system, the position paper goes on to say, is that it will make taking up a research career more attractive by reducing the time period leading up to a faculty position by one year. Anyone who has any interest in taking up a faculty position in India would know that the recruitment advertisement of every university/institute includes a requirement for the candidate to have at least a few years of postdoctoral experience; greater the competition, longer is the experience required for a candidate to qualify. And so, I don't think this one year's concession is going to help anyone decide in favour of a research career. 

Also, this suggestion to have a research component in UG courses will work out only in non-affiliating institutions such as IISc which have a well established research infrastructure. Among the affiliating universities, in most cases, the UG courses are conducted by the affiliated colleges and only postgraduate courses are conducted in the university campus. Except for a handful of quality colleges affiliated to each university, most others tend to be substandard, conducting their affairs with inadequate staff and facilities. Such places hardly tend to conduct even basic practical classes with standard experiments properly. I can cite my own example in this regard. I did my UG degree at the only government degree college in our city. Since it was the only government college in our city for boys (there was a separate college exclusively for girls and ours was a co-ed), it had the best possible UG faculty and gave admission to the top students who wanted to pursue a non-professional degree. All through my 3 years in the college, there was not a single restroom for the male students and there was only one such facility for all the girl students of the entire college. Since the college did not have funds to even construct toilets for the students, its understandable that there was not enough money to pay for the lecturers. To deal with this, teaching staff in most departments was contract faculty and there were very few permanent staff. (Some information to appreciate how indifferently paid these contract faculty were. After MSc, I went back to work in my UG college as a contract lecturer for an year. My salary was Rs.7000 a month and was only paid to me as a lump sum at the end of my appointment. Subsequently, when I joined for PhD my stipend was some Rs. 8000 odd + HRA).  This was the scenario at a public college and you can imagine what the situation might be in private affiliated colleges. Now imagine mandating such colleges to organise original research projects for their students for an entire semester; how practical do you think that is going to be. If they can't build toilets for students, will they be able to purchase the instruments, chemicals and other facilities that such a project will require? Do temporary lecturers, who are paid pittance have any motivation to develop research programs in these colleges? 

One solution to this could be to ask the students to carry out their project work in established labs outside their colleges, in universities and research institutes. I can relate another experience from my life in response to such a suggestion. I did my MSc at a private engineering college. As it usually happens at such places, we barely had the facilities to complete our prescribed lab courses and there was no research program of any kind in the college. So doing the project, mandated in the MSc course, on campus was out of question. So most of us had to look elsewhere. Those who had a relative who knew someone who mattered, got to do projects in a university or a private company for free. And those who did not have any connections, had to pay a university lab or a private company for the chemicals or more to let them do their projects (of course, not surprisingly no one reimbursed this expense, not to mention the lodging and eating expenses incurred during the project period). I can foresee something similar happening to students of most affiliated colleges if a project is mandated in their course, adding greater financial burden on to an already high education bill. Moreover, I don't even think this approach is actually required to inculcate a scientific aptitude among UG students. Why not, instead, make the basic lab course and practical examinations more creative.  

Another interesting proposal of the FYUP is the interdisciplinary nature of the course. There is no arguing with the claim that interdisciplinary training is going to make students more employable. But the question is, does it need to be over a four year period or can the same objective be achieved by restructuring the present three year course. To start with, I do not think science students should be forced to take courses in history or some other humanities nonsense. Most of what's important for them to know as Indian citizens is covered as part of the social studies courses taught in the schools. No new purpose is served by repeating those lessons, unless of course the idea is to leave the door ajar to facilitate political propaganda. Also the foundation/interdisciplinary courses could be limited to the first two semesters and planned in such a way as to facilitate incremental addition to the knowledge of a particular subject that students had acquired in high school. At the end of first year, students should be allowed complete freedom to choose any combination of major and minor subjects that they wish to study for the last two years without limiting the options to pre-determined combinations as is the practise at present. These measures along with not enforcing a compulsory project work would facilitate achieving all the proposed objectives of the FYUP in 3 years. Project work could be mandated as part of the PG courses which will be pursued by a far fewer students. Curriculum of the PG courses should be synchronized with the UG course so as to prevent overlaps and be designed to cover advanced aspects of the major subject that were left out of the UG curriculum.    

What we need in India is to find solutions that not only address the deficiencies in our university system but are also implementable. Many times experts in our country end up adopting what has worked elsewhere and often come up with solutions that are appealing on paper but seldom succeed in solving our problems. Just having the heart in the right place is not enough. There must be an ear to the ground too.     

Global University Rankings and India

Note:

The inspiration for this post is this op-ed by Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthy, the Director of IIT-Madras. A big thank you to the folks at Nanopolitan from where I learnt of this op-ed. 

If you have been following this blog, you would know that I have often written about the environment and the state of Indian universities, especially the State Universities. This post is in the later category. To say that the standard of higher education in India is abysmal and it is a direct reflection of the quality of our universities. And this fact is highlighted every year in the global university rankings published by such agencies as Times Higher Education. None of our universities figure in the top 200 or so rankings. Those that usually make it to high-200 ranks or later are institutes like the IISc and IITs, which are specialised institutions for research and training in Science and Technology. They do not really qualify as universities in the traditional sense. One response of those that are responsible for administering the higher education in India has generally been to rubbish these rankings, like Prof. Ramamurthy has done in the above op-ed. I am among those who take these rankings seriously. Admittedly, these ranking systems are not perfect, use metrics that are geared towards Western universities and don't take the specific social and economic settings in which our universities have to operate. Nonetheless, no one can have a doubt the universities that are ranked in the top 10 in any year are indeed top of the heap. Despite our peculiar social and economic conditions, it is indeed possible for Indian institutions to achieve internationally competitive quality standards. Success of our atomic and space programs and international standing of institutions like ISRO is a testament to this. Even some of our educational institutions like the IISc, IIM and IIT systems are well regarded in the world in their specialized domains. But these institutions are too few and very specialized to be able to lift the overall quality of our higher education system. And it would be unfair to compare them to centuries old, extremely well endowed, completely autonomous institutions like the Harvard or the Stanford that have well established research and teaching programs in diverse areas of science, technology and humanities. Nevertheless, those standards are not impossible to achieve provided we have the vision and the determination to remain dedicated to that dream. Our present Prime Minister's ascent to the highest administrative position in the country when every card in the deck was stacked against him is a testament to this. Hope his HRD minister has the same commitment to lift the Indian higher education to standards that rest of the world would hope to emulate. To get there we could probably start by reforming our universities and inject some professionalism into their functioning, starting with the appointment of Vice-Chancellors. As the news items in the following links will show, a lot of our university vice-chancellors are a disgrace to that office. 

1. Recently, Tamil Nadu high court cancelled the appointment of Madurai Kamaraj University Vice-Chancellor. 
2. The Vice-Chancellor of MG University in Kerala was sacked because he fudged his CV
3. Kerala Govt. recently admitted in the assembly that Vice-Chancellors of three other universities in the state did not have the requisite qualifications to hold that office. Note the brazen attitude of the state government in stating that the UGC prescribed qualifications are not mandatory.
4. Another news item on the same issue, this one with comments from some of the VCs.
5. This link highlights the non-serious attitude of the HRD ministry towards an important decision such as the appointment of VCs to Central Universities which were established the promise of raising Indian higher ed to international standards.  
6. Tavleen Singh has written an op-ed today urging the HRD minister to liberalize the higher ed sector and liberate it from the clutches of bureaucracy. 

Moral Dilemma

Let me start off with a story. I have totally made up this story but it is, as you will realize, inspired by some real life events. I wont be surprised if a lot of you can relate the story in part or full to some event you know of. May be at least some of you also share the same moral dilemma as me.  

"N" is the new guy at the local high school. He is a very smart young man who comes with excellent grades and recommendations from his old school. But for all the great academic record that he had, he was popular only with his teachers and never with the other kids. N is determined to change that at the new place. He will do whatever it takes to be popular with both the teachers and students. So he takes on "B", who is the local boxing champion and the reigning school popular guy. N starts to verbally bully B; taunts him about his average grades; makes snide remarks on how he looks older than other kids; calls him a "muscular sissy" when N warns about taking the matter to school Principal etc, etc, etc. Short of getting physical, N does everything possible to hurt B's ego. When things get so far that B can take it no more, he resorts to what he's good at and beats the hell out of N. Now that there is some blood on the floor, everyone around takes note. B is roundly criticised by everyone around for getting physical and using violence to settle a dispute. "Why can't you respond to verbal taunts in kind? Words should be countered with words, and not fists" is the most common counsel that B got. B is suspended from attending classes and representing the school at sporting events. And N gets everyone's sympathy for being the weakling who was beaten up by a physically stronger bully and becomes the new popular guy. 
My moral dilemma is not about what N or B did. N did whatever he thought was needed to achieve his objective. And B, being a person of limited smarts, resorted to the best possible method he knew to protect his fragile ego. But I am not so sure about the conduct of all the others. While B was criticised for losing his composure, N was not only let off despite his provocation of the violent act but he also got everyone's support. No one seems to have paid attention to the fact that N is as strong as B, if not more. Only that it was in a different faculty than B. Why is it that the society seems to think that physical power is somehow stronger than mental power? Why is physical violence more condemnable than mental violence? Isn't N as much responsible for the violent act as B? If so, shouldn't N too be condemned and punished? Or should N be let off because, after all he was only exercising his right to free speech when all that he did was to state facts about B, however offensive those might be? If freedom of expression includes a right to be offensive, why is intellectual offence any less worse than physical offence? 

Getting 'em and Keeping 'em

For all their scams and scandals, the "recently-voted-out" UPA government in India needs to be credited for getting a few things right. Increased investment into improving the standard of higher education and research is one of them. An important part of these efforts was a concerted campaign to woo scientific talent from abroad to man the newly established, as well as the well rooted, institutes and universities. As a life sciences researcher, I am acquainted more with the various initiatives to recruit quality faculty in Biomedical sciences, but I am sure there were similar efforts in all the other STEM disciplines as well. Unlike most other initiatives of that government, at least some of these efforts seem to have borne fruit. An increasing number of foreign-trained faculty have been joining the higher ed institutes over the last few years. Some of the factors that could have encouraged these scientists (some of them already holding faculty positions in foreign universities) to return to India are an increase in the number and amount of research funding; improved availability of quality chemicals, instruments and other infrastructure; a more liberal and collegial atmosphere in the new institutes and of course, a large pool of very smart students. Apart from all these, there is another important factor that might have clinched the deal for a lot of them. That is, an ever improving ecosystem of high quality researchers in the country. Research today, more than at any time earlier, is a highly collaborative effort. And having a decent pool of researchers working on similar problems in your close vicinity gives you a chance for better exchange of ideas and collaborations. More good researchers you have, the more will come. That's the reason why universities and institutes in countries like USA, Japan and Germany keep producing consistently  high quality research work.   
Despite all these efforts to recruit new talent into our universities and research labs, one area that, in my opinion, has not got much attention is on retaining the existing and incoming manpower (and womanpower, of course). Over the last few years, our elite, extremely well endowed institutions have seen some high profile departures. A couple of these that I know of have been from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), probably the best biomedical research institute in India. G.V. Shivashankar, a well accomplished biophysical scientist, had moved away a couple or so years back to NUS, Singapore. When I first came to know of this, I was left asking myself, why? And now, the news is that another young researcher, Yamuna Krishnan, will be moving out of NCBS soon (She was recently included in a worldwide list of 40 under 40 by the journal Cell). Why would two very successful and brilliant scientists, working at an institute that probably has the best talent in the country and probably gets more funding than any other institute, decide to move out? May be because the new place offers even better funding, opportunities and ecosystem to support their work. Admittedly, there is very little that the government or administrators can do immediately to address the concerns about a limited ecosystem to support and nurture their research activities. It is a slow process that will take a long term effort to bear fruit. But there are some other issues, salary and benefits for example, that the government can help resolve. There might be other issues involved that I am neither aware of nor am capable of imagining. Whatever those might be, the concerned authorities should be empowered to do all that it takes to find solutions and retain the best scientific minds in the country. Otherwise, all the various efforts to recruit high quality talent into our research labs will be like trying to fill up a leaky bucket.   

PS:
I do not, in any way, wish to give an impression of criticising these two extremely good scientists. They have all the right to make the most of their talent and ability. And they are the best people to decide on which place and setting gives them that opportunity. This post is just intended to share my pain at seeing such high quality research talent leaving the country. And also, highlight what could be a blind spot in the way higher ed institutions are administered in our country.

Talking about Talks

In popular culture, the stereotype of a scientist is that of an introvert and a recluse. I do not know if this is based on the observation of real life lab-rats or its the product of a writer's imagination. Either way, it has come to be accepted by the larger populace outside the academic world. But, from looking at my own colleagues and the wider research fraternity, this stereotype is as bad as every New York cab driver being an Indian. The fact is that the reclusive, loner scientist is probably an endangered species being driven to the brink of extinction by a growing culture of academic cliques and the increasing prominence of collaborative research. It is now important that you network with the right people, employ the appropriate jargon and attend the popular conferences. The funding agencies and grants' review committees tend to be more sympathetic towards projects with an inter-disciplinary character which might require that you need to have at least a working relation with folks who have an entirely different way of looking at a problem. Then there are the hiring committees that ensure that you humour and stay in touch with every supervisor and every committee member that you had ever worked with, so that you can furnish some 10 or 15 reference letters with your application. So, in this new and improved (?) world of academic research, being good at communication is as important (if not more) as knowing science. And one of the most important means of scientific communication is to talk about your work. You give talks at lab meeting, at departmental seminars, at student/post-doc association meetings, at conferences, at job interviews, etc etc etc. Considering that giving talks is such an important, and frequent, part of an academic's life, its a real surprise that many researchers are not good at it. 
As a graduate student, I worked at an isolated, multi-disciplinary research centre and had very few opportunities to listen to talks from external researchers. But when I started my first postdoc position at a medical college in the Tri-Institution area of New York, it was like going from being starved to being obese; there was at least one (but usually more) talk every week. I have attended talks by some of the best researchers, working on almost every possible problem in life sciences, sitting in the same room with Nobel laureates, sometimes more than one (as a grad student, I remember going to a seminar by Sydney Brenner and being so overwhelmed at seeing a Nobel laureate that I didn't hear anything he spoke). Now, as a postdoc at a conventional university with all the different faculties ranging from humanities to engineering, I get to attend talks on such variety of topics from the effects of Indian residential schools to monitoring bike traffic to develop a better signalling system. Of the hundreds of  talks that I might have attended, there are only a handful that really had my attention throughout. But this is in no way a comment on the quality or novelty of the work discussed but on the style of presentation. Recently, there was a "job seminar" in the department (I really look forward to attending those as an opportunity to collect tips for my own performance when the time comes). I was a little extra interested since the candidate had an Indian name, was from Harvard and had done some excellent work. But during the seminar, she looked nervous and overwhelmed by the occasion and overall the performance was a let down. On another occasion, the candidate's talk was so monotonous and understated that it was really hard to feel the excitement of the work. Recently, there was another seminar by a very senior scientist. Again the work was excellent but for some reason, the presenter tried hard to avoid eye contact with the audience; most of the time he looked at some empty space towards the end of the seminar hall. Good writing or talking may not make up for bad work, but bad writing or talking can certainly let down some really good work. That was the lesson I learnt from that experience. Whenever I myself give a seminar on my work, I try to keep the presentation the way I like to hear; informal, without too much jargon, assuming no one knows anything about my work and overall having the feel of a conversation rather than a sermon. My first real research presentation was during the first meeting of my doctoral committee. I had made what I thought was a bunch of good powerpoint slides, reviewing a lot of literature on the Gap Junctions (a lot of which I only barely understood then) and describing the plans for my PhD project. In my mind, I had a clear picture of how I was going to talk and explain my project. But I was so nervous that as soon as I was asked to talk, I could not recognize anything from the presentation I myself had prepared.  At the end of that disastrous presentation, my supervisor gave me an advice that I still use while preparing for a seminar to this day. Preparing for a talk is not about making powerpoint slides. Its about planning what you are going to say about each figure on each slide. A good way to do that is to write down or type down exactly what you are going to speak about each slide. This helps to keep the talk compact by staying focussed and to stay away from rambling about aimlessly. The one mantra that has served me well through the many academic talks all these years is that "good talks are well practiced talks". 

Update (5:10PM 16 June 2014):

Wanted to add a quick note. Whether the science in your talk is good or not, whether your presentation is good or not, it is always important to watch your manners. I had once attended a workshop at IISc, Bangalore. Most of us  participating were grad students. One of the workshop speakers was a young professor from JNCASR, Bangalore. During the seminar, while he was still talking, raised his leg onto a desk, placed his foot facing the audience and started tying his shoe lace. I do not know if he was in some unbearable discomfort that he needed to retie his shoe laces then and there. But I thought that was improper and extremely arrogant behavior from someone who at least at that time was like a teacher for us. 

How to build world class universities in India

An interesting writeup in Economic Times looking at some of the attributes of top International universities and comparisons with the Indian situation. Here is the link.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-03-13/news/48189407_1_universities-faculty-endowments

"THAT" moment

I have read this somewhere but don't really remember where. That the greatest motivation for a scientist and the reward they work for is the experience of that one night when he (or she) alone knows a particular secret hidden in the nature's treasure trove before they reveal it to the rest of the world next morning. It is to experience that feeling of discovery that we slog day and night. I have heard people talk of it in research pep talks. I've wanted to experience it and have been waiting for it ever since I started doing research. Through years of being a grad student and a postdoc; and I started my PhD in 2004. I call it the eureka moment. That moment when you see something in your experiments that you hadn't expected when you started. A pleasant surprise. I think that moment for me has come now. 

I am sure you've noticed that I said "think". You see, the way academic research works these days, you can't just jump out of your bathtub and start celebrating butt-naked. And it's never a moment. There is a long gestation period before you can be sure that you have got something good with you. A period when you have to repeat the experiment a number of times, so the observation is reproducible. You also have to think if you have got all the controls right and haven't missed anything. You have to do a number of supporting experiments that can explain the unexpected. Your work then has to be reviewed and approved by your "peers", who you hope don't have a conflict of interest in approving your observation. After all this, you have to be approved by a copy editor somewhere who wants to make sure that you have got your fonts right, the spacing right, the size of images right, their color right, the spellings and grammar right, etc., etc., etc. Only then will your work be published for consumption by the tax paying public that has funded the entire process. By then you would have lost all the enthusiasm to open the cork and it will be time to be back at the bench so you can continue with your efforts to save the humanity (from itself?). And wait for the next eureka moment. 

Novels and moving images.

Recently watched "Sherlock", BBC's modern reimagining of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic detective tale. My impression of the show, in one word, is disappointing. In the modern retelling, the famous resident of 221B Baker Street comes out as an arrogant, egocentric and pretentious. In the original stories Sherlock Holmes' attitude towards Watson is warm and friendly. But in the BBC series on several instances it comes across as downright condescending. Its the same with other characters too, like Lestrade. Also I think the new Mr. Holmes is too much into sentiment and melodrama; like the more-than-obvious hint at romance with Irene Adler character or the self-sacrificing leap to death at the end of second season. As a teenager I was a great admirer of Mr. Holmes and an avid reader of his adventures as documented by his friend and roommate, Dr.Watson. For me, he was the most detached observer and interpreter of facts. As such my judgement of Mr. Holmes' personality could have been clouded by idolatry. If the portrayal of the great detective comes across as being over-the-top and skewed to even a fan like me, then I would think the show needs to improve its character sketches. Of course, its quite possible that it could be just about me. I have also been a big fan of John Grisham's courtroom dramas. And I have not found a single movie based on his works to be as engaging as his novels. Infact, I can't think of a single movie that could be considered a worthy recreation on screen of a literary work. Guess its a matter of choice. Some just prefer their favourite characters as immobile images.   

  

The right turn

Few days ago, Uday Kiran, a young actor in the Telugu movies killed himself by hanging. He tasted fame and success when he was 20 with the success of his very first movie and ended it all at 33. His initial success was followed by a long list of box office failures and he was almost forgotten by an industry where a person is only as good as his ability to excite the cash registers. He was reportedly depressed for sometime about the way his career was shaping.

Jiah Khan entered the Hindi films as a teenager. In her first movie, she was the female protagonist to Indian cinema's biggest superstar Amitabh Bachchan. Unlike Uday Kiran, her debut movie did not do well with the audience and rest of her career panned out like his; almost forgotten. She committed suicide sometime last year. And she too reportedly suffered from depression.
These are but two celebrity examples of a problem that is very prevalent in my country; there are many stories that remain unheard and untold. While the peculiar socio-religious setting of India makes it a fertile breeding ground for mental health related problems such as depression, most people, even those from the educated class, refrain from seeking professional care either because of poor awareness or out of fear for social stigma. At the end of the examination cycle each year, the newspapers are scattered with reports of young boys and girls giving up on their lives  and dreams because of pre- or post-exam anxiety. Some of the brightest kids that enter our elite engineering, medical or management colleges do not graduate from there alive. A lot of these lives could have been saved if only they knew what the problem was and that there are easier ways to solve their problems than death. Any information that can instill hope in them will contribute in some way to avert the ultimate tragedy. I know this, because I have been there. I am still there; but trying to break free. In the hope that it might be of help, to me primarily and to someone else as a consequence, i have decided to chronicle my journey to overcome this psychological shackle in this blog. I will try to post as frequently as my work permits. Hope you will join me in this exciting ride.