Autonomy for Excellence in Research

Thus there is also the need for limitation in autonomy for defining excellence in research.

There is a need for a national body to be constituted by the Indian Government to regularly evaluate the research performance of Indian Universities and institutions.

The curriculum of research activities must be regularly updated to prevent it from becoming obsolete.  This is the need of the hour because research needs to adopt and transform to meet the need of this ever evolving society.

Authorities like UGC, NAAC should place more emphasis on quality research work rather than quantity- at the time of rating the universities.

Universities should groom faculties with research eminence to generate and sustain a culture of research.  Hence a reputed research team should spearhead the UG, PG and Doctoral students in the universities.

There is a need for patenting our research activities as the number of researches patented in the US is far more than what we have in India.  This would also reduce the malpractices and in turn sow the seeds for excellence in research through recognition of quality research work.

 

Another problem is that institutional autonomy granted to most universities has led to a decline in public funding of higher studies.  This has led to increase in industry-university partnerships resulting in sponsorship and commercialisation of research.  We hear reports of a

large percentage of medical research today being doctored by the drug manufacturing companies who fund research with the aim of creating a ready made market for their products.  Autonomy to researchers would mean the freedom to openly differ with the expected findings of say company X, even if it is the sponsor of the study.  In the absence of such autonomy – what is supposed to be a scholarly effort is becoming more of a business deal.

 

On one hand, research scholars today suffer from lack of individual autonomy and on the other hand they utilise institutional autonomy to get away with substandard research outputs using easily available information and malpractices.

 

This is unfortunate because India has a wealth of talent comprising the best brains in all fields of learning.  We also have a fairly efficient school and college education system and the infrastructure facilities in our universities are being upgraded to international standard.  In order to utilize these strengths and promote excellence in research it is imperative that we first correct our system of lop-sided autonomy.

 

Borrowing an analogy from medicine, the patient is in a critical state and there is every reason to believe that if critical interventions are not made, we will face the death of research in India.

 

References:

Das Beena (1993), “Sociological Research in India”,Epw, June 5.

Du plessis Hester, Deshmukh Vijaya (2009), “Centre to Centre Approach to Facilitate Transdisciplinary Research “,University News, Jan 21- Fef 01, Vol 47, No. 04

 

Sodha Mahendra, Srinivas Reena (2009), “A Plan for Scientific Temper in Economic Research & Training” , University News, Feb 09 – 15, Vol 47, No. 06.

 

 

 

Pages: 1 2 3