Bangalorean
Ambassador
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2010
- Messages
- 6,233
- Likes
- 6,855
Yes, this definitely makes sense. I have seen the ridiculous state of private research in India. A friend of mine is a PhD in genetics, but is not able to get any good job in India. The only options he has are in the government sector. He applied for a research job (low-paying of course). Being a Bangalorean, he was assigned a job in some remote backwater in WB, whereas other "better connected" candidates managed to land themselves plum postings in Mumbai/Bangalore/Delhi/etc. You just can't survive if you don't game the system, things are that pathetic.I would like to correct you on IISc.- what you said is true but only partially. GoI does not infuse the kind of money into research as foreign countries. But why are the profs. there still teaching?
Pros-
- Low work pressure
- Almost no answerability
Cons-
- low income (these guys could have worked abroad or in private sector)
- small research grants
So, the guys here have made a tradeoff- high income and too much work vs low income and no work.
And I think small research grants is a big culprit. Private sector does not pour in so much in India as it does in US. Also, the administration in most universities is hostile to such investment except a few big schools like IIMs. This leave very little incentive for Profs to work on anything other than local politics. This is from an insider- we have taken social equality(inclusive growth) too much seriously that we split the small research pie between too many different projects. So instead of giving 10 lakh to one project, usually they pay 2 lakhs to 5 different projects. In the end, none of the projects get any desired output. For eg.- A guy wanted to do some research on comparing PPP vs private road projects and he wanted to measure smoothness of roads. The way you do it is run a car for several hundred of kms with an measurement instrument mounted on it. The grants authority did not reject his project, because he is well known, but gave him 2 lakhs while he asked for something like 20 lakhs. Apparently the instrument mounted on the car itself costs more than the money granted!!!
So, there is no private research and govt. research is underfunded and poorly paid. It is definitely a vicious cycle which can only be broken with increased economic growth and prosperity.
what a typical marxist (stupid) reply . of course if VW goes bankrupt of fails to deliver, there won't be any car companies which can be expected to deliver now is it? Is it? Is it? But HAL's failure to deliver will of course be met by other companies too , which of course were not allowed in India to be part of defence establishment thanks to license raj. And of course, we should also forget the tiny important bit about HAL being funded by our money while private companies are not funded by us and so we have no reason to care about their performance.

