... and what it actually does. Charu Sudan Kasturi lays it all out for us:
What the government says:
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal — and his predecessor Arjun Singh — have repeatedly termed faculty shortage the single biggest challenge in India’s ongoing higher education expansion.
What it has done:
The new regime — notified today by the human resource development ministry — not only snips increments recommended for teachers but also ignores perks proposed to fuel research at these institutes.
It ignores a special research grant and a health and insurance scheme prescribed by a central pay panel under former Indian Institute of Science director Goverdhan Mehta, and dilutes a proposed allowance for attending conferences. ...
The short shrift to incentives apart from salaries appears at variance with repeated claims by top government officials that they are concerned about the severe faculty shortage at India’s premier engineering and management schools.
1 Comments:
I think the academic profession has long been considered to be run by "docile" folks, and so governments feel that they can give them the short shrift and still not feel the pinch. Gotta keep in mind that over last 3-4 decades all the successive governments bar none has been bothered more with staying in power than doing anything constructive. I guess perks for faculty, improved research facilities etc will not really make much impact with maximum voters either, so...
Expect academics to be more and more neglected with a few half-hearted token attempts at improving the state of affairs thrown in.
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