Monday, September 04, 2006

Bangalore, India's research hub


Via Pradeepkumar: Frontline has a rather dry report by Parvati Menon and Ravi Sharma on the academic and research institutions in Bangalore, with additional details -- history, activities, achievements -- about a few of them.

IISc just gets a mention in the history section of the article; since it gets mega-coverage in Indian media, the reporters probably chose to focus on some of the other institutions. A more egregious omission, however, is that of a rising international star: the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS). Menon and Sharma don't even mention it in their report!

BTW, in what way can the National Assessment and Accreditation Centre (NAAC) be deemed to be a research institution? Its core area of activity (which it's not doing a great job of) is to visit colleges and universities, assess their capabilities and infrastructure, and give them some sort of a grade. What research does this institution do?

5 Comments:

  1. Unknown said...

    The poor quality of the report reflects the background of authors. Parvathi Menon holds a Ph.D in Indian History and Ravi Sharma is their special reporter making all sort of features. I wonder why they didnt ask their science correspondent (the finest in India I think) Dr. R. Ramchndran to write this piece. May be they didnt want him to fly from Delhi to cover this!!

  2. gaddeswarup said...

    Crazyfinger(http://www.crazyfinger.org/) in the post 'It’s the Law, Not the Economy, Stupid!' has given a link to a very interesting article about NLS:
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=682341
    I think that it is the same one mentioned in the Frontline article. Whether it is the same or not, the article is very interesting and one of the best pieces I have read about developing educational institutions. Perhaps there are similar articles about places like IISc.

  3. Anonymous said...

    Thanks for the NCBS link. Seem like a great place, I particularly liked how they detailed their faculty selection page was.

    And hey, great new look. I guess reading from bloglines does mean that you miss out on stuff. :)

  4. Abi said...

    Pradeep: I agree. Ramachandran would have done a far better job.

    Swarup: NLS is a pretty interesting place. It's a private institution, and has set an interesting precedent for several others that came up later.

    Confused: Thanks. I am getting used to the options in the new, improved Blogger!

  5. Unknown said...

    new look! very cool! I agree with pradeepkumar. this is not doing justice at all to bangalore and science there.
    this is an old reference, but nature outlook (july 2005) carried a series on science in india that was very well presented.
    http://www.scidev.net/ms/india_focus/