Interesting Science This Week. Week - 1

Starting this week, I am planning on writing a recurring post every week. The objective of these posts will be describe some of the interesting research development that I had come across in the scientific literature during the course of that week to general public. While the intention is to explain the research in as simple language as possible, I do not intend to dumb it down to the extent that it is done in main stream media where one comes across reports that claim drinking red wine can prevent cancer or diabetes or stroke or heart-attack or whatever. Also it requires to be pointed out that these blog-posts will essentially be about research that I find interesting. So, the content will almost entirely be biology. Also considering the demand on my time, I will limit each posts to at the most 3 or 4 findings from that week and a brief summary in each case. I will attach relevant original research references for anyone interested in knowing more details. Here is the first week's post. 

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There are two types of tumors that are formed in the body. Benign tumors, as the name suggests, aren't generally dangerous. They are compact, grow slowly, tend to remain in the organ where they are formed and do not spread to other organs. Malignant tumors, on the other hand, are responsible for causing cancer in the body. The cell mass of these tumors is generally loose, grows uncontrollably and the cells tend to spread to other tissues where they cause the formation of more tumors. The process of tumor cells spreading to other organs is called metastasis. Metastatic cells of tumors, also stem-cell like cancer cells (SCLCCs) or tumor-repopulating cells (TRCs), tend to be softer and more deformable than the differentiated cells in the tumor. The TRCs are also more resistant to drugs than differentiated tumor cells which reduces the efficacy of chemotherapy and prevents complete elimination of cancer, often leading to relapse. In a recent paper published in the journal Cell Research, a procedure has been described that could potentially help in combating this drug resistance in TRCs. The researchers in this work produced microparticles packaged with anti-tumor drugs from tumor cells in which programmed cell death was induced. Microparticles are 0.1 - 1 micrometer size vesicles derived from the plasma membrane of induced cells (1 micrometer = 1/1000000 of a meter). In subsequent analysis it was found that these drug-packaged microparticles are able to selectively induce death in TRCs than differentiated tumor cells because of their greater deformability. Microparticle treatment was also able to prevent development of drug resistance. In clinical trials, treatment of cancer patients with these microparticles was able to eliminate the cancer cells in malignant fluids to a large extent providing hope for their future therapeutic utility in combating the drug resistance of SCLCCs. 

1. Ma et. al., Cell Research (2016) 26:713–727. doi:10.1038/cr.2016.53

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Please do let me know your thoughts in the comments. It actually encourages me to know that people actually read the stuff that I put out. 

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India and quality of education

I recently came across a post on Facebook from a group called Hyderabad School Parents' Association (HSPA) in support of a protest organized by JAC SFR (joint action committee school free regulation). That post got me thinking about the attitude of us Indians towards government and regulation. We are so used to the wretched socialist system and government dole-outs that we have forgotten to appreciate that quality does not come cheap or free. As the lady in the video says, she wants the best quality school for her kid but does not want to pay the price required for the school to deliver services at that quality. Quality education is not cheap. You can't expect to own an iPhone at the price of a feature phone, can you. There are government schools that are run with our tax money but no one wants their children to go to government schools because those are poorly run and are no good. Everyone wants to send their kids to private schools for they are obviously better run and provide better services. But we do not want to pay the price for this better quality and demand for government meddling. Despite 70 years worth of experience we do not seem to realize that government involvement will destroy whatever little quality is left in our school education. Instead of forcing our elected representatives to better utilize our tax money and work towards improving the standards of government run schools, we want government to bully private schools. We expect good, talented teachers committed to their profession to work for peanuts. As Prof. CNR Rao once told a gathering of grad students in reference to salaries of university professors, if you throw peanuts you only get monkeys to dance. Just imagine the remuneration of lawyers, doctors, charted accountants or media professionals being fixed by the government. In all these professions, isn't the amount of remuneration determined by the market value of the services provided? Why should it be any different for education? Aren't medical or legal services basic rights of a citizen like education? 

At this point, the protesting parents would do well to rewind their collective memories to 2009 and answer what they did to stop Government of India from passing the right of children to free and compulsory education act, commonly known as RTE act. What protest did they carry out? What 'dharnas', 'gheraos', did they carry out? What pressure did they bring upon their Member of Parliament to prevent the government (with complete cooperation of opposition in parliament) from imposing this blatantly unsecular and unjust piece of legislation? Now, there is no doubt that every child deserves an opportunity to have access to quality education irrespective of the parents' financial status. But whose responsibility is it to create the physical and intellectual infrastructure that will give every kid born in this country access to quality education? Is it that of the government that collects the taxes or that of the private sector? It's been known very well for many decades now that the publicly funded school system is rotten to the core. The government instead of fixing this system so that even the kids attending government schools are provided with good standards, has imposed its responsibility on to the private sector through abuse of its legislative power. The RTE act mandates that 25% of seats in every private school be reserved free-of-charge for kids from 'economically weaker' families. Government is supposed to compensate the schools for the expense. But as is the norm for everything government in India, the schools were either not paid, paid very late or paid at a ridiculously low rates. In such a situation, where will the private schools raise the cost difference? Their only options are to either pass on the burden to remaining 75% of the students or take the losses and ultimately shut down. In both of the options, it is the middle class that is going to be adversely effected; either pay up more or have private school options reduced. 

If you didn't raise your voice to stop the RTE act because of decades of socialistic indoctrination, I don't think you have any moral right to now prevent the private schools from doing what they have to for survival. What will you do if private schools ultimately shutdown because of losses? At this stage another question needs to be asked. How much is the Indian middle class responsible for the decay of government school system? By not sending our kids to the local government school, haven't we virtually boycotted them? Hasn't this contributed to their ultimate neglect from the government? If our kids were attending these schools, wouldn't we have asked questions and demanded answers from our elected representatives about the poor administration of these schools? Finally, there is one thing that we need to remember. Nothing comes for free. Be it the schools, universities, satellite communication, free laptops, electricity, clean drinking water. Nothing is free. We will have to pay for the stuff that we use; in one way or the other; now or later; if not directly then indirectly.

How Tau Causes Memory Loss

Tau protein has been implicated in Alzheimer’s Disease, but little is known about how it contributes to memory loss. Now, researchers report a missing link between tau and cognitive deficits. Read more in the following report from Biotechniques.

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Getting outdoors in India

An Encounter With God

This is going to be a story. A particular event from my life. The immediate trigger for this is another post I made on my Tumblr page. You can find it here. As you will see the post was intended to correct the wrong information being publicized in an American publication about something that happened at a temple in the Indian state of Kerala, the place my family is from. After I posted this, I started thinking about what my position is with respect to religion and the concept of God. My way of thinking about these issues has gone through a lot of change in the recent years but it has not yet solidified. While I am fairly certain about rejection of any organized religion, especially those inclined to being dogmatic, I am not so sure about the existence or absence of a superior power. Since I feel much better writing about something as a process of contemplation rather than thinking in air, I decided to write my thoughts down here. There is also another reason. When the incident that I am going to narrate below happened, it included a rather painful experience that I normally do not like to remember but keeps coming back to me during the bouts of depression that I periodically still go through. One reason, I think, this keeps coming back is because I have never discussed this with anybody in my life. I am hoping that putting it down here might relieve me of the pain. 

I studied in a boarding school till the tenth grade and did not have much freedom or exposure to the world outside. Even during my undergraduate university years, when I lived in my parents' house, I did not have much opportunity to explore and know the world around me because of my father being an authoritarian and excessively protective. The incident I want to talk to you about happened during the last year of my under-graduation. In May of that year we went to Kerala for a relative's wedding. The entrance examination for admissions to master's program at Andhra University (located in Visakhapatnam, the city where we lived) was scheduled on the Sunday following the wedding. There was an unfortunate accident to one of my mother's brothers just ahead of the wedding. So, my mother and rest of the family decided to stay back and I had to go back to our place alone so I don't miss the exam. Anyone who has ever tried to travel around in India during summer vacations in May will attest to how difficult it is to get a train ticket confirmed. For that journey from Shoranur to Visakhapatnam by Bokaro Express, I could only manage to get a wait-listed ticket. One of my uncles assured that he knew someone who could 'arrange' for me to get a confirmed birth on the train. After we reached the train station, this arranging person turned out to be a railway porter who in turn introduced me to a TTE (sort of a ticket supervisor in Indian Railways) on that train. After some money changed hands, the uncle, assured of my reserved berth, said goodbye and left. A couple of stops after the train had left Shoranur, the TTE came around to where I was sitting and asked to check my ticket. Having been assured earlier, I assumed that he had come to allot me a berth to sit. After looking at my ticket he appeared surprised that I had a wait-listed ticket. "This is a waiting list ticket. Don't you know you can't enter the reservation compartment with a waiting list ticket? Get off at the next station and go to the general compartment". I protested and reminded him of the bribe that my uncle paid him. He, of course, denied getting any money from me. "Not me, but my uncle paid you. It is that bald man who came along with porter Hamsa at Shoranur". Probably because there were other people sitting there, this talk of money only seemed to anger him further. "Get out right now. Go stand near the door till next stop". I protested some more. "Will you go or should I call the police". The mention of police scared me. 

I proceeded to the compartment door without any further talk. I stood there for a while and after may be a couple of hours, the TTE happened to pass by that door again. "Why are you still here? Didn't I tell you to get off and go to general compartment?" I didn't know what to say. After a little silence, "OK, look you seem to be from a good family. I have a free berth in the AC compartment. If you have money to pay the extra fare, I can give it to you ". I was happy. There is hope after all. "How much do I have to give you", I asked. I don't remember the exact amount he asked for. How much ever it was, I do remember that I did not have that much money and I told him. How much can you pay, he asked me. I only had about 500-600 rupees. That is not enough, he said. Get out at the next station if you don't have the money or I will hand you over to the police, he further warned me. "I have an exam on Sunday. That's why I was forced to travel without reservation. Please help me", I pleaded. He came close to me and said "OK, if you don't have money, there are other ways to pay". Before I could even understand what he had said, my pants was unzipped and he was touching my privates. I did not know what was happening. At that point in my life, I had never even thought that men could be molested, let alone by other men. I was shocked and scared at once. I tried to free myself but couldn't. What happened in the next few minutes is not very clear in my mind. I don't even know how much time passed. But at the point when my memory of that day returns, I was still standing at the train door but the TTE is not near me anymore. He was talking to another young man, probably a little older than me, about getting his own ticket confirmed. After the TTE left, the man smiled at me and walked away into the other compartment. To this day, I am not sure if he had seen me in trouble and come to help me or if I am just imagining things. 

I did not see him again till that night. I found a vacant seat and sat there till the train reached Chennai. I had to move out after the people who had reserved that seat boarded in Chennai. I was once again back at the door and decided to somehow spend the night sitting there. After being there for a while, I saw him once again. He said he had met a Malayali family who were travelling with kids. They had got separate berths reserved for the two kids who were now going to sleep with their parents. So there were spare berths and they offered one to him. There was some luggage on the other but if I did not have a problem, I could sleep on it. I was more than happy to take anything if I can get out of the cold doorway. So, I slept that night on half a berth. It was not comfortable but warm and safe. By next morning, many people had gotten off the train and there were many spare seats for illegal occupants like the two of us to sit on. I got to know him a little more that day. He was Christian priest who had just finished his seminary training and was going to a remote village in Orissa to take up his first assignment. He asked about me, my family, what I was doing and what I wanted to do. I had brought along a big bottle of water for the journey. When the train reached Visakhapatnam and I was about to get off, he asked if I could leave that bottle of water for him. I was only too happy to be able to do something for him. We parted with the promise of meeting again at some point in our lives. 

Its been a long time since then. I got through the exam, completed masters, got a PhD and now am a postdoc. Have lived in Chennai, New York and Vancouver. But I often look back to that day and think how things could have been. That's how one of my encounters with what I think might be God happened.    

The 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony 2015

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.