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Some questions about microfinance and self-help groups
The editorial examines how self-help groups and microfinance may not be what they were once intended to be - the silver bullet to eliminate poverty - and this could soon become a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
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Responses to the Editorial in Phalanx 4
Why Does the Anglophone Indian want to be a Novelist?
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Films: |
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Avatar
by James Cameron
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3 Idiots
by Rajkumar Hirani Read |
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Home > Contents > Essay: Swati Ganguly |
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Some Issues in 'Doing Science' in India
B. Ananthanarayan
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This is an informal and somewhat personal attempt by a practitioner in science to raise questions or issues pertaining to 'doing science' in India. The intention is to begin by 'rambling' but raise the pertinent questions that are bound to crop up. One of the oft repeated themes in the media and in seminar halls in the metropolitan centres of the country, and on the agenda of policy makers, ministers and official circles is the subject of science education and research in the country, and what in general are their ills. Various prescriptions are offered and the general consensus now is that there is a severe problem with quality of education and many solutions have been offered such as the setting up of new institutions and starting of new programmes in elite research institutions. While these will definitely go part of the way in solving the problems, the general solution will also require
the lifting of the morale in colleges and universities across
the length and breadth of the country. On the other hand, much muddying of the waters is going on with the imminent entry of foreign Universities, with little known about what if all, will be their contribution would be to science education.
Questions/ Issues:
- Science education at the undergraduate level has two aspects. The first is the issue of providing quality education to as many as possible at fairly low cost. Unlike education in engineering and management, science education will not pay for itself and costs have to be kept low. Secondly, there is the issue of being able to identify talented students who will take the nation forward in scientific research.
- Elite institutions are in many ways a useful way to nurture talent. But the best quality undergraduate education for the largest number will be difficult for them to provide and it is necessary to also revive the universities, which are in a sad state.
- If low cost education is provided, it will be counterproductive if students who receive it find it advantageous to go abroad. How should it be made attractive for Indian students to work in India and not be frustrated about their prospects?
Whatever else one may agree or disagree about, all will
agree that the issue of science in the country and its future
is an important one. Indeed, the future is tied up with the
young and it is the duty of those in science to provide some
guidance about what a life in science is really about, so that
they may decide for themselves whether they would like to venture
in such a life or not. Of all the subjects of science it is undoubtedly so that the field of physics holds the hegemonic place in the public consciousness of the country. This is a direct result of the early stalwarts in science having taken up lives in physics, including J. C. Bose, C. V. Raman, S. N. Bose, Meghnad Saha, Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai. The achievements of these men are part of the lore,
and a lot is known about them even though definitive biographies
are lacking for most of them. Their lives had great drama
with their landmark contributions arising from the application
of genius to problems. The life of Srinivasa Ramanujan which had even
greater drama and tragedy has also elevated the pursuit of mathematics
among the minds of young to Olympian proportions.In other fields such as engineering we have Mokshagundam Visveshwariah,in biology Birbal Sahni and G. N. Ramachandran to name a few. Thus, these
iconic figures to date are used to motivate the young to pursue
lives in science.
Questions/ Issues:
- All these stalwarts were inspired by the issue of nation building which does not preoccupy the student today. Who then are the men and women involved in the pursuit of science in the country today? What is his or her physiognomy? With 'career development' being a primary consideration among the young, can we overlook the fact that we have to live with students making opportunistic choices?
- Is it possible that 'career development' by the young can be accepted and made to aid rather than come in the way of scientific research?
- Since the market is directing the best talents towards the more lucrative professions - that also require less innate ability - how should the talented be persuaded that scientific research would be beneficial to them?
It is important to note here that the age of stalwarts everywhere
in the world is essentially gone. No longer do we have the
`Mendeleev' periodic table or the `Gaussian' distribution, or the Dirac equation, and even less the Darwin theory of the Mendel's law.
It is worth keeping in mind that the Large Hadron Collider is built by thousands of nameless and faceless, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe project by hundreds of nameless and faceless, and that science
today is indeed based on teamwork and is increasingly so.
What the role of the individual scientist will be in this
scientific environment is hard to say, but the times are
exciting as we enter unknown frontiers on a daily basis,
on the microscopic as well as the macroscopic, in elementary
particle physics on the one hand and cosmology on the other,
in biophysics and biochemistry where borders blur everyday.
Questions/ Issues:
- Science today is certainly not as glamorous as it once was but this only means that science education needs to be marketed.
- Is it possible to train students separately in the writing of science - as distinct from those going into research? After all, popular science writing has often gone to inspire the young to go into science.
- Even if people can't be trained in writing about science, should scientists not be encouraged to do popular writing on science through incentives?
The best students in science hail from families in which a premium is placed on excelling in education. Let us try and attempt a quick typical story of a person hailing from a family in which a great deal of premium is placed on excelling at school, especially in mathematics and sciences. Interestingly, the Nobel Laureate William Phillips has noted that excellence at language is also an important asset on
the arduous path of knowledge. This premium has a definite
advantage as it prepares the young student in analytical
thinking and problem solving which are key to a career in
science. There is little substitute for an excellent curriculum
at the undegraduate level with highly motivated teachers and
if possible teaching assitants. What one learns here will
be the bedrock on which the scientific career will be launched.
A caveat though is that merely excelling in course work is
rarely a guarantee for success in research. A down side of
a top heavy mathematical and overly theoretical curriculum is
that the student may not have the time to be trained in
experimental sciences. Irrespective of which field one works
in, in the early formative years, a balance of theory and
experiment is highly desirable, be it in chemistry, physics
or biology. It is worth keeping in mind here that there is
perhaps needless emphasis on excelling in examinations and
contests, which may provide a student with some confidence
but may not really help out in the final analysis.
The flip side is that there are many who many not excel
in such a canonical manner but have talents and originality
that cannot be measured in this way.
Questions/ Issues:
- The examination system in India does not encourage reasoning as learning things by as a habit. It is necessary to make a distinction between talented students and those who perform well in examinations. This 'testing' system will have to be made immune to the effects of tutorial institutes.
- There has to be a way devised to identify what talents a student possesses so that each student goes into areas to which he/ she is best suited.
After graduating, the student then goes on to a Masters and then to
do doctoral work at a well established University
or Institute. In the evolution of a modern scientific professional
the graduate institute and supervisor still occupy a hegemonic position, both at the time of the education as well as in the subsequent evolution of the career. This is followed by post-doctoral work. Post-doctoral work is now part and parcel of the
training of the professional scientist. This is also a chance to
move from one country to another, one tradition to another, and
indeed another formative stage. On the part of the fledgling scientist it is at this time that he or she takes a new field into the host Institution. The latter on the other hand plays the mentoring role to
help the young scientist to come on his or her own.
Here one has the chance to use the techniques learnt as
a student and enrich the host Institution and learn
collaboration and to stand on one's own feet.
The young scientist is now facing the ordeal by fire
and the steel is tempered, and it is here that
his or her reputation is now forged. The young scientist has the chance to demonstrate his or her promise and exhibit the nascent leadership.
The ordained ones are now eagerly sought after by
leading Institutions across the length and breadth
of the world the goal being the permanent position.
Now the independent scientist is born and he or she
now sets out to do everything he or she wants to.
Courses are offered and taught, grants and proposals
written, research projects executed, research publications
written up and submitted, students are now enrolled
and the wheel has come full circle.
Questions/ Issues:
- What should India/ Indian institutions do to provide the best kind of facilities for post-doctoral work? Since their access to funds is limited when compared to those in the West, are there areas in which they should concentrate?
- How should students after post-doctoral research be given enough opportunities in India and tempted back to work for Indian research?
In this maelstrom we have now forgotten the aim of
the scientific enterprise -- the search for natural law,
the advancing of the frontier of knowledge, the joy
of discovery. These are of course subsumed in the
process above. Thus the professional scientist today
is, ideally, a confident world traveler on par with any peer
in the world. By showing that he or she can work in a developing country and producing such results as those that merit publication
in the most competitive international journals and by
chairing the odd session in an international conference,
he or she can show that India today occupies a place
in the comity of nations as do our sports persons, media
persons and Fortune billionaires. Glamour in science will certainly help in popularizing it among prospective students.
Having said this much there are some trends which are persistent
which need to be altered for ever larger numbers to enter science.
Firstly, the vast majority of the people in the country still are barely literate. How are their off-spring to overcome the deficiency
and to enter a life of science? Many of the advantages listed
earlier will not be available to these. Many educated in Indian
languages need to be brought to the table of higher learning
where they must first overcome the language barrier before
they are to partake in the 'grand feast of science'.
Questions/ Issues:
- Should science education at the primary level be made widely available in vernacular languages?
- Can the spirit of enquiry be inculcated if this is done at the grassroots level?
B. Ananthanarayan is Chairman and Professor,
Centre for High Energy Physics, Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore. He got his Ph. D. from the University of Delaware, USA.
After post-doctoral work at the Physical Research Laboratory,
Ahmedabad, Universities of Lausanne and Bern, Switzerland he
joined the faculty a the Indian Institute of Science. He has
been a visitor at several laboratories in France and Germany and
spent six months at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator
Facility, Newport News, USA. He is presently Homi Bhabha Fellow
and Associate Editor of the European Physical Journal A, a Springer-Verlag publication.
Editor
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