Indian Science in Two Figures

Gangan Pratap has been having too much fun with data on India's standing in the world of science and science funding. The following two figures taken from his most recent publications in Current Science should go a long way in demolishing the spurious claim that a shortage of 'the spirit of adventurism' is what stands between India and S&T superpower status.

The first figure is a comparison based on two variables: (a) the proportion of researchers (defined as FTER, Full Time Equivalent Researcher) in the population and (b) proportion of GDP spent on R&D:

The second figure is a comparison based on (a) percentage share in world GDP and (b) percentage share in S&T output. This figure packs a lot of data since it tracks the progress of each country (or group of countries) during the period 1995-2007.

Art of the Possible: The Curious Case of the Caste Census

The caste census is (most likely) on! Let's hope the formal decision will be announced soon.

To see the significance of this (impending) decision, we need to jiggle our neurons and go back to 2006 -- to the height of the OBC reservation debate.

The more wonkish of the opponents of the reservation policy kept questioning the Mandal Commission's estimate of 52 % for the OBC share in the population. They kept hammering away at the fact that the last caste census happened way back in 1931 -- almost four generations ago! They kept denying the validity of caste data from surveys such as the National Sample Survey.

They kept claiming that the economic and educational situation of OBCs is not so 'backward' as to require affirmative action. [Specifics in 2006-08 era posts, especially those under the category Caste]

Most importantly, they kept pounding into us that the OBC share in the population was quite likely far smaller than what the government claimed.

Since a caste census would prove them right, they kept insinuating that it would be killed by a pliant government too scared to take on the "OBC leaders" who would surely oppose it.

Guess what?

[In the Lok Sabha debate,] Sharad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad — all OBC leaders — warned the Centre against committing the blunder of omitting caste. The Bahujan Samaj Party, Biju Janata Dal, Telugu Desam Party, Trinamul Congress, DMK, CPM, CPI, ADMK, NCP, Akali Dal, Shiv Sena and the Janata Dal (Secular) unambiguously supported caste enumeration.

In the two major national parties, the initial response to the demand for caste census was not so much as to oppose it, but to side-step it and hope that it would go away. BJP chose to focus on Bangladeshi 'infiltrators', before outraged leaders like Gopinath Munde forced its hand.

The Congress too has its own supporters of caste census [see this report for a summary of the Lok Sabha debate]; but in a Cabinet meeting, they were sidelined:

At Tuesday's Cabinet meeting, Home Minister P. Chidambaram, whose Ministry oversees the census, argued against the demand to include caste. He said the enumerators lacked the sociological sensitivity to record and classify the population on the basis of caste and sub-caste. According to sources, he suggested that the backward classes commissions at the State and Central levels be better placed to conduct a detailed survey. Others not inclined towards a caste census were Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal.

The Natural Party of Governance appears to have come around to accepting caste census. And this is indeed good news.

It's not done, yet. So, let's wait for the official announcement before hailing it as an example of politics that works.

Mashelkar on the Spirit of Adventurism

The Beatles sang some four decades ago, "All you need is love." Raghunath Mashelkar sings now, "All you need is irreverence."

I know it sounds all wrong. But nothing, it appears, is right about science in India. Mashelkar has diagnosed the missing ingredient: irreverence. And he has gone public with it in an editorial in Science.

Let's get real and frank here, shall we? The thesis that Indian scientists are held back because of lack of irreverence is amazingly self-serving, coming as it does from a man who led a massive organization for scientific research -- the CSIR -- for over a decade. It says, in effect, that Indian scientists have failed in spite of an abundance of water, electric power, intertubes, money, infrastructure, and yes, leaders.

If only they had a bit of irreverence ...

Tsk, Tsk!

* * *

[If that link doesn't work, use the one at the end of this note at SciDev.net].

* * *

Let's turn to (some of) Mashelkar's arguments. Here's how he explains the origin of Indians' purported reverence:

1. The situation has deep roots in Indian culture and tradition. The ancient Sanskrit saying "baba vakyam pramanam" means "the words of the elders are the ultimate truth," thus condemning the type of irreverence inspired by the persistent questioning that is necessary for science.

2. The Indian educational system, which is textbook-centered rather than student-centered, discourages inquisitive attitudes at an early age. Rigid unimaginative curricula and examinations based on single correct answers further cement intolerance for creativity.

3. And the bureaucracy inherited from the time of British rule over-rides meritocracy.

Let's leave aside the silliness of blaming the Raj, even obliquely; the British left 60 years go. Let's also ignore the blame-the-bureaucracy argument; it's disingenuous when it comes from a man who headed that bureaucracy for over 10 years.

Blaming rote learning won't get us far as an explanation for lack of creativity. Exceptions abound -- especially in music, a field famous not just for mind-numbing repetition during the early years, but also for institutionalized reverence.

Finally, as stereotypes go, reverence to authority is seen as a defining feature of not just the Indian culture, but of Asian cultures in general. And as arguments go, it's too convenient: When you are down, it explains why you are are not competitive; when you are competitive, it explains why you are not creative; when you are creative, it explains why you don't get Nobels.

It's one thing for the Westerners to beat the Asians with that stick. It takes a certain "reverent Asian mind" to peddle that argument to his own people, and bask in the audacity of it all!

* * *

I don't wish to go on. I'll just say that Indian scientists work under conditions that take a lot of basic, essential things out of their control -- from funding to electric power to water. What they need from their leaders are the resolve, the skill and the mental wherewithal to solve these little problems, so that they -- I mean the scientists -- can go about solving Big Problems.

Leaders who are impotent -- or, were impotent -- to get the little things right for their scientists should, at the least, shut the fuck up.

* * *

Mashelkar's little lecture about irreverence does many wonderful things -- for the leaders. It underplays -- conveniently! -- their role in ensuring the success of the scientists working in their organizations. It puts the blame for lack of success -- conveniently! -- on the working scientists themselves.

It allows leaders like Mashelkar give a grand and statesmanlike sheen to their high-profile outpourings -- it doesn't get any more high-profile than an editorial in Science! -- even though what they're doing are trashing their own people and peddling mindless boilerplate. Just think about it: wouldn't Mashelkar's editorial work even when we replace irreverence with initiative, proactive nature, big-think, audacity, or creativity? In fact, Mashelkar himself uses creativity synonymously with irreverence.

As a synonym for irreverence, Mashelkar also uses something else: 'spirit of adventurism.'

Yes, you read that right: it's adventurism, not adventure.

All I can say is: Sic!

This conference is so prestigious, you can even participate in it in absentia!

Take a look at the website of this conference, and then at the brochure (which, presumably, was circulated quite a while ago) for the same conference.

See any difference?

For one thing, the brochure says that the conference is organized by ACM (Association of Computing Machinery). The website, however, is silent about the involvement of ACM. Similarly, the brochure mentions -- and the website is silent on -- the ACM Digital Library as a destination for the papers presented at the conference.

We now know why the conference website has been cleaned up. This is what ACM says on its main page:

Conference Misrepresenting ACM as Sponsor
ACM has been made aware that the International Conference on Futuristic Computer Applications (ICFC) to be held in Bangalore, India, March 20–21, 2010, is using ACM's name to promote their event. This is not an ACM conference, and the organizers have been asked to remove all references to ACM on their site.

The brochure lists Google, Intel, Texas Instruments, HP, Philips, Yahoo Inc, Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, NASSCOM, and Vnysea as "supporting" the conference. While the website has their logos flashing in the left panel, its page for participating companies just thanks "all our current sponsors," without naming a single one of them.

This page lists a "Patron" and a "Co-Chair" from Duke University which seems to be unaware of their association with it: its directory has neither Steve Paterson nor J. Thorpe [except possibly this guy in the Department of Pharmacy!].

Finally, any conference that says this should make your scam sensors antennae tingle and throb violently:

Participate in ICFCA in your Absentia.
Those who cannot come to Bangalore on the conference days due to prior engagements but wish to present a paper in absentia are encouraged to send in their "Application in Absentia" by January 15, 2010. Papers presented in absentia are eligible to be included in the conference and shall avail of all the privileges bestowed on any regular paper.

* * *

Well, this has got to be one of the most fabulous conferences! I mean, wouldn't it be great to participate in it "in absentia" and still get a paper in a journal which will be distributed by the "Harvard Press", and available on Google Scholar?

I was sort of looking forward to running into some of the conference participants because the venue, J.N. Tata Auditorium, is right here in IISc.

I'm deeply disappointed that the "organizers" have not booked this auditorium (yet).

* * *

Thanks to a couple of colleagues who alerted me about this scamference conference.

Is JEE rank a prize?

It's fair to say that JEE has strayed too far from what most of us would agree should be its real mandate: standardization across the large number of Class XII boards. If it is not a standardizing exam, then what is it?

I want to consider the possibility that the JEE is actually a contest. That would make JEE rank (or, a seat at an IIT) a prize -- it's prestigious, it's highly coveted, it's scarce.

JEE, in other words, is a process very much like that used for selecting people to to represent India in the math, physics, or chemistry Olympiads. Only the numbers are different -- Indian Olympiads probably select a few tens, while the JEE selects a few thousands.

[JEE certainly has features that resemble the Olympiads: tough questions that require you to think creatively, questions that go beyond Class XII (even though the syllabus is nominally the same), questions that test your agility, time pressure, the need for intense preparation, etc.]

If this premise is accepted, then it is better to organize JEE like the national sports championships are organized, or like the Olympiads are organized. Lots of local events, which escalate to higher levels -- district, state and national level championships (and rankings).

This has the desirable property of selecting those who are 'good', 'motivated', 'hard working', 'persistent'.

It has the even more desirable property of eliminating a large number of people along the way, and fairly early in the process. We are talking about more than 90 or 95 percent of the students, who really have no business taking the JEE, who end up taking it because they think -- or their parents think -- the Prize is worth their blood, sweat and adolescent years.

People will say that there will still be coaching. Yes, there will be; but it will not be the dysfunctional, monomaniacal, it's-okay-to-neglect-school kind.

It will be small, sharp and focused. And it will help the right sort of people (willing victims, if you will!) : those who really have a flair for science, and enjoy doing intellectually challenging work.

If IITs want JEE to be a Prize exam, they are better off treating it as such, and take the necessary steps -- organize it like the Olympiads. Have multiple elimination rounds.

Half-truths and Harvard comparisons: The Curious Arguments in IIM-A pay hike demands

The memorandum submitted by the IIM-A faculty council irritated the hell out of me. It doesn't take much effort to conclude -- and to show -- that the document is filled with extravagant claims, "supported" by bald assertions, shady arguments, half-truths, and even lies.

So, the natural question is this: How can faculty members -- with a stake in protecting their academic reputation -- deem this document fit to be submitted to the government -- and, by implication, the people of India?

In short, what happened to their own judgement?

I reproduce below something that I wrote over a week ago as a possible opinion piece. While waiting for it to find a home in some MSM outlet, I noticed some chatter from IIM-A folks, and decided not to wait any longer. I'm posting it here.

* * *

Half-truths and Harvard Comparisons: The Memorandum from IIM-A Faculty Council

Imagine this scenario: A manager has just got a 75 percent raise, but thinks he deserves a better deal. He goes to his boss and says, "You know, similar positions in other companies pay 300 to 400 percent of what I make -- after this 75% raise."

After that impressive build-up, if I tell you that he demanded a hike of 22%, how would you react?

Did I hear you say, "What an idiot!"? Exactly.

Here's how that scenario played out in real life: In a memorandum submitted to MHRD, the faculty council at IIM-Ahmedabad first compared assistant professors' salary after the pay hike (Rs. 38,000 per month) with that at Harvard Business School (Rs. 1.91 lakhs per month, after a PPP adjustment) and Indian School of Business (Rs. 1.66 lakhs). It capped this analysis by demanding a 22% hike, from Rs. 38,000 to Rs. 46,400 per month.

Frankly, I have nothing against these pay hike demands. Heck, I'll be among the beneficiaries if they are accepted! But the demands must have a certain legitimacy, and the supporting arguments must follow rules of what Amartya Sen calls public reasoning.

Take, for example, the modest demands made by IIT faculty associations. They invoke comparisons with other public sector institutions, and limit themselves to getting IIT faculty the benefits that are already available to their cousins in universities and government R&D labs. While he government has contested these demands, it has done so without questioning the legitimacy of the arguments advanced to support them.

In contrast, the IIM-A faculty representatives have made extravagant demands that are way beyond the Sixth Pay Commission norms. Worse, in their zeal to argue their case forcefully, they have filled their memorandum with illegitimate arguments, half-truths and even lies.

Here's a sample: "the present notification by making the IIM [assistant professors'] scale equal to the UGC scale is tantamount to downgrading of the IIM pay scale as compared to the previous scale."

Never mind the 'scale' of confusion in that muddled sentence. It packs within it a half-truth and a lie!

First, the half-truth. With a huge difference in the salaries of assistant professors in both IIMs and UGC institutions -- Rs. 38,000 at IIMs against Rs. 21,600 in universities -- isn't it misleading to suggest that their salaries belong to the same 'scale'?

Now, the lie. In the part that says, "... it's tantamount to downgrading of IIM pay scale," the comparison is between IIM assistant professors and university readers. In the old regime, they had the same starting basic salary of Rs. 12,000. In the new regime, their starting salaries are Rs. 38,000 and Rs. 30,320, with the IIMs being privileged over the universities.

If anything, it is the readers in UGC institutions who should be protesting against the 'downgrading'!

I don't know how some of our finest minds ended up making these disingenuous assertions and ridicule-worthy arguments.

But what I do know is that as salaried employees, bureaucrats and faculty are fundamentally different. Unlike bureaucrats, faculty members can augment their salaries through quite a few remunerative activities -- all legal! Consulting is a popular activity, and so is teaching short courses, aka executive development programmes.

What I do know is that cash-rich institutions can use their government-given autonomy to offer their faculty more money; IIT-B and IIT-D, for example, give their junior faculty extra cash during their early years.

What I do know is that IIM-A is pretty cash-rich; it says on its website that it hasn't availed any government grant for several years now. So, in principle, nothing comes in the way of IIM-A making its faculty as rich as their Harvard counterparts.

In response to that last point, IIM-A faculty council may argue that their demands are not just for IIM-A, but for the IIM system as a whole. Okay, but it still makes us wonder which IIM they were comparing Harvard with. The one in Shillong?

In normal language, the IIM-A faculty council's memorandum is best described as a train-wreck. Internet offers a pithy alternative: Fail!

Finally, a bit of dark humour in the IIM-A memorandum. Immediately after the comparison with Harvard, it insists that, without that 22% pay hike, the government "runs the very real risk of ... loosing [sic] the faculty it already has in [its] premier technical institutions." Doesn't this risk assessment insult IIM-A's senior faculty? Isn't it equivalent to asking them, "If you are so smart, why are you (still) at IIM-A?"

I have never seen a more spectacular self-goal.

Fisking Sancheti

In many cases of plagiarism, we don't get to hear much from the perpetrator except for a mini-quote here and there. But in Sancheti's case, TNIE has done us all a favour by publishing Sancheti's detailed response to the newspaper's questions. [See the previous post for all the relevant links; this post is just about Sancheti's response]

Sancheti's defence starts with offence:

The charge is baseless since the background of the paper has not been understood in the right perspective.

What is the right perspective, according to Sancheti?

Firstly, the authors never make a claim for new knowledge through the equations developed. It only made an appropriate usage duly acknowledging the persons who actually did it. To support above I quote from the journal’s (IET Journal) editorial:”Equally aggrieving, of course, is to be accused of plagiarism, and I feel it is important to reiterate that acknowledgment of the original paper was given, if not explicitly.” In this case, the fact remains that authors have referenced Naryanan’s paper thrice in addition to several other references from other important researchers.

Wrong.

The facts are against Sancheti here. Sancheti and his co-authors may have cited the work of Nayaranan et al (1996), but they didn't cite that work where it really mattered: the plagiarized parts -- primarily, Section 2 -- of their 2007 paper. The implications of this action -- or, non-action -- of theirs is clear: those parts represent their original contribution. This is not just the right perspective, it's the only valid perspective!

Sancheti's use of citations to the 1996 paper is not "the right perspective." It is spin. Sure, the 1996 paper is cited, but not in the parts that are haunting him now.

* * *

A bit later, he quotes from the editorial announcing that the 2007 paper was being retracted:

Therefore, while acknowledging the original authors, there might arise some communication barrier such as perception, technical completeness, significance of information etc.

To support the above I once again quote verbatim from editorial. “While it is indeed true that Joshi et al cite in their work, the impression created in the readers’ minds is that the equations derived in their work are based on their own work. Outright plagiarism, of course, is constituted by the copying of material with no acknowledgment of the source, which is not the case here. Due acknowledgment has been given by the author, which makes one reluctant to pass judgement on the author’s intention in reproducing the material.” It is absolutely clear from the above that it is just an impression, and that the editors have not passed any judgment.

"It is just an impression." That's what his primary defence amounts to. Not whether this impression is justified. If you read the original and the plagiarized pieces, I have no doubt at all that you too would be convinced that it was plagiarism.

* * *

Then comes this very curious defence:

The paper still remains to be online as you can check from copy of the download attached with this [mail].

So what? So are so many other disgraced papers that continue to be available years after their officially pronounced demise.

Want examples? Take a look at this post.

I don't know what prevents journals from yanking these papers off their websites, and from putting up a note blaring "This paper was plagiarized, so it has been retracted. Go to this page to access that disgraceful paper." Looks like Sancheti will not settle for anything other than such a bold (and ugly) measure!

Isn't Sancheti playing a shady game here? Isn't he misleading people by effectively saying, "What plagiarism? What retraction? The paper is still available!"

* * *

Then, there's this:

On whether he has disclosed the matter either to NIT-K’s Board of Governors or the MHRD.

A: Allegations/impressions remain as they are till they are proved beyond doubt for any offence, therefore there is no need for informing authorities about it. In any case, since the matter has come to my notice now, I will take it up with the publishers as they did not inform us of their action.

Take a look at that answer and see if there's more dishonesty behind it. Academic publishers may be profit-hungry leeches; but by the same token, they also do everything to cover their asses when they do something that could potentially damage people's reputation -- nobody wants an unnecessary (and expensive) lawsuit alleging libel and defamation.

Is it possible that the journal alerted only one of the authors, first about the problem in their paper, and later about their decision to retract the paper? Is it possible that this author is not Sancheti? Is it possible, then, that this author -- either S. Joshi or A. Goyal -- didn't alert his co-authors about these letters / e-mails?

Is it also possible that Sancheti was unaware of the commotion among concerned NIT-K alumni (see this post, for example)?

All those things are possible, but then, what do they tell us about Sancheti's cluelessness? How can someone be so ignorant about an event that could have such a serious, career-threatening consequence?

In any case, further investigations will clear up this matter, and my guess is that Sancheti's version is likely to survive them. Sancheti is likely busy preparing a statement that he was misquoted here.

* * *

Here's the best part of his response:

On whether he should still continue as Director?

A: Since the allegations are baseless, the issue does not arise.

Sancheti just doesn't get it!

He has to go. Not as a professor of electronics and communication engineering, but as the Director of NIT-K.

In discussing the Anna University case, I said:

In the hierarchy of crimes in science (or, scholarship in general), plagiarism ranks lower than fabrication and falsification of research data, and rightly so. In other countries, one loses one's job for fabrication, and at least one went to jail! But I'm not aware of anyone who has lost his/her job for plagiarism.

In other words, plagiarism is "merely serious" -- as opposed to fabrication and falsification which are "Really Serious." Typically, the perpetrators of plagiarism are censured, which is clearly a public embarrassment.

But plagiarism is a bad, bad deal if the perpetrators occupy (or, want to occupy) positions where they have power over people. In such positions, there's this not insignificant problem of having to censure other perpetrators of similar (or, more serious) crimes. They would need a lot of moral authority, wouldn't they, to perform this highly unpleasant task?

It is the loss of moral authority that Sancheti has to worry about in the short run. History may be on the side of protecting his professorial salary but, as this TNIE story shows, history is certainly not on the side of protecting his position of power over people [though, I would still have to wonder about his power over his students if he is allowed to advise them on their research].

It is Sancheti's position as the Director of NIT-K that makes this plagiarism charge problematic for him and his institution.

Sancheti must step down and step away. If he doesn't do it voluntarily, it's the job of the NIT-K Board to make him do it.

How not to ask for a pay hike: 3. We'll lose our smart faculty

I have a humble request to the faculty members at IIM-A.

Please don't say things like this:

"The MHRD wants world-class quality in the IIMs. But quality comes at a cost. Unless the government reconsiders the entry-level pay in premier academic institutions, it runs a very real risk of not only not attracting new talent, but also losing the faculty that it already has," the memorandum said. [Bold emphasis added]

Please remember that there are so many senior professors among your ranks. If you still insist on the correctness of this risk analysis, you are saying -- implicitly, of course -- that they are all lucking fosers.Or, incompetent retards. Or, ...

That's all.

* * *

Actually, that's not all. You know, perhaps you should consider the following:

1. The salaries under the Sixth Pay Commission are higher by as much as 75 percent for all categories.

2. The SPC award comes at a time when firms have been on either reduced or frozen hiring. I hear people talking about a "global recession" and a general glut in the market for managers.

3. Putting these two observations together, I think a reasonable person would conclude that during the past decade or so, the salaries were far lower than at present, and the external conditions were far better than at present.

And yet, a large number of IIM-A's senior professors chose to stay on. To me, this cries out for an explanation. Unlike what you seem to think, I actually think of IIM-A professors as (somewhat) rational beings who respond to incentives. You know, incentives such as:

• Non-salary benefits. Safe, comfortable on-campus housing, a congenial atmosphere for kids to grow up in, etc.

• Many opportunities for earning extra money through consulting and EDPs.

• Maybe, just maybe, a benign environment that makes minimal demands on faculty, generally making life quite comfortable.

One could think of several others. Thus, I suspect you are grossly overestimating the risk of losing people.

Please don't back up your salary demands using justifications that can't survive even minimal scrutiny.

At the least, please don't let your justifications give the impression that those who leave IIM-A are somehow superior to, or smarter than, those who choose to stay on. You are sending a very wrong signal.

That's all.

How not to ask for a pay hike: 2. "All of us - yes, all of us - are outstanding"

In their zeal to hype things up, many journalists tend to portray the IIXs [where X=T,M,Sc,SER, ...] as mega-meritocracies which are one up on Lake Wobegon. IIXs, according to them, are places where everyone is not just above-average, but outstanding! They then peddle the nonsense that the IIXs deserve to create their own rules, including the freedom to pay salaries comparable to those in the private sector!

Not surprisingly, some folks in IIXs are keen to play along, and brush aside the huge disparity in performance levels in their institutions [see this post by Giridhar on the Gini index in reserch output -- which measures the level of inequality in output -- for one IIX: the IISc.]

But what the MSM reporters fail to notice -- I'm looking at you, Manu Sharma! -- are the ample clues in the behaviour and demands of the faculty unions.

Specifically, do they ask for a ruthless hire-and-fire policy? Do they ask for annual performance evaluations that will determine year-end bonuses (or, the raise for the next year)? Do they ask for differential salaries across disciplines -- based purely on demand and supply -- leading to stratospheric salaries for a computer scientist and a below-poverty-line ration card for a physicist?

Faculty unions are not meant for demands like these. Almost by definition, they are meant to take care of the interests of their median (and weaker) members.

Of the weaker members, there are plenty in the IIXs. To their credit, IIXs also have a fair share of high performers.

* * *

It is possible -- and definitely not inconsistent -- to have a salary structure that takes care of the weak and also provides sufficient incentives for the strong to keep up their stellar performance.

But, here's the thing: the Pay Commission is not the mechanism for dealing with high performers. For all its lofty rhetoric, its recommendations have a singular focus on the median worker.

Consider:

1. Take annual increments. While everyone will get a 3% raise, what can a high performer expect?

   4 %. Yes, you read that right. Four percent!

2. Until now, the main mode in which high performers are recognized is through promotions (in some cases, early promotions), without which higher salary bands ("scales") were just not accessible.

   The Sixth Pay Commission has mucked up this one too. With time, almost all the faculty members in IIXs will get into the highest pay band (Pay Band 4). The associate and full professors are already there; so will the assistant professors (after the acceptance of the demand that they be placed in Pay Band 4 after 3 years).

   Thus, assistant, associate and full professors will top out at Rs.67,000. At this top end, the only thing that separates an assistant professor and a full professor is the Academic Grade Pay, and this difference is only Rs.3,000 or 4,000, or just about 5%.

   I'm sure you find this underwhelming. I do, too.

With the incentive structure being what it is, you would expect a huge spread or variability in the quality and quantity of work done by people. This is precisely what you'll find at IIXs: they have many who just amble along, while a few are busy sprinting -- just in case you haven't done so, you really ought to go read Giridhar's post!

Thus, deep skepticism should be the response when someone peddles arguments like "We get 50K here, but we would get 500 K at Harvard; so we deserve at least half a Harvard-salary!" While it is entirely possible that the sprinters would find a place in a top university anywhere, the claim that *all* the faculty in IIXs and especially the amblers are super-fantastic is ludicrous.

* * *

Bottomline 1: Given this scenario, it is entirely appropriate that the new salaries for IIXs are roughly in line with those of other (similarly situated) government employees. It is also entirely appropriate that the faculty associations are restricting their demands to those that remove anomalies in which similarly situated people in the old regime have ended up in drastically different situations in the new regime.

Even the good folks in that Mecca of management mantras, IIM-A, justify their demands for a better deal using this argument:

IIM-A, which has taken a lead among the IIMs, has formed a 3-member committee to highlight the pay commission recommendations. The main grudge is the percentage increase in salary for IIM faculty has been lesser than that granted to their counterparts in other government agencies.

Bottomline 2: Instead of expecting faculty associations and pay commissions to take care their special needs, high performers in IIXs (and other institutions too) should focus on and exploit the many ways that are legally available (and seek to create those that are desirable, but not yet available) to augment their salaries.

Bottomline 3: Extravagant claims about the superiority of *everyone* at IIXs are just that: Extravagant.

Prathap and Gupta's paper on the research output from India's engineering institutions

Seema Singh's post at Mint Blogs had this eye-catching title: IISc is India's Top Ranking Engineering/Technology Institute, so naturally I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.

The source of this excitement is the paper (pdf), Ranking of Indian engineering and technological institutes for their research performance during 1999–2008, in the latest issue of Current Science by Gangan Prathap (Director, NISCAIR) and B.M. Gupta (NISTADS).

Prathap and Gupta use two different metrics to rank institutions: (a) total number of publications during 1999-2008and (b) a new metric called the p-index, defined as (C² P)^1/3 where C is the number of citations received by the papers during a three-year window immediately after their publication.

Here are the top 10 by p-index:

Rank	Institution	P	p-index
1	IISc, Bangalore	12951	50.17
2	IIT Kanpur	6234	39.27
3	IIT Bombay	7228	36.73
4	IIT Kharagpur	7370	35.37
5	IIT Delhi	6520	32.51
6	Jadavpur University	4807	30.30
7	IIT Madras	5715	29.09
8	IIT Roorkee	3471	25.93
9	Anna University	3687	24.54
10	IIT Guwahati	1596	19.36

I'm not really hot on the ranking part of this exercise; also, I know almost nothing about the p-index (other than the formula), or about why it's better than any other metric for assessing the quality of institutions. So I won't comment on those bits.

But I do want to comment on the validity of comparisons across very many different institutions without taking into account their type, size, age, funding levels, etc:

1. IISc is an oddball in that list. It's not a predominantly engineering/tech institution. In fact, its science departments are known to have a much stronger publication record than the engineering departments (Giridhar may be able to give some hard numbers to support this point).

   So, a direct comparison between IISc and IITs may not be appropriate, unless one does one of the two things: (a) consider only the engineering departments at IISc, or (b) consider only those publications tagged with "engineering" in the Scopus database. Pratap and Gupta may have done (b), but their paper doesn't say so explicitly.

2. IISc is an oddball from another viewpoint: it's a post-graduate institution. Almost all the others have strong UG programs, with a correspondingly large teaching load on the faculty. Again, a direct comparison is just not right.

3. From the formula for the p-index, it appears to favour larger institutions with greater faculty strengths. Thus, IIITs (which are pretty small) compare poorly against larger institutions like IITs. I wonder how a normalized p-index data would alter that list.

4. While Prathap and Gupta have done a great job in collecting the quantitative data, I don't know what to make of (value-laden) statements like these:

   Although the NITs have been around for a long time (earlier known as RECs), and have been upgraded to deemed university and institutes of national importance status, their research performance is still dismal. In fact, many Indian engineering and technological universities and private institutes are doing comparatively better in terms of performance. ... In addition, the research performance of the IIITs and NITs is disappointing when compared to that of the technological universities and some select engineering colleges. [bold emphasis added]

   But the NITs got the INI status just a few years ago! Until then, they were similar to (at best) the university engineering colleges such as the Guindy Engineering College, Anna University or the Bengal Engineering College (which is now called BESU).

5. It is inappropriate to compare directly the research performance of an IIT with that, say, of an NIT. This is because NITs (and other engineering colleges) receive much less funding and have much poorer infrastructure.

   In addition (and I think this is even more important than funding), the faculty strength at the NITs (and other engineering colleges) is far smaller than that at the IITs. In this post from 4 years ago, I discussed why faculty strength, by itself, is an important factor. Bottomline: If you are running an UG program and if you don't have at least 20 faculty members, you must be deluded to expect significant research output.

IITs and the reservation policy: A quick look at the JEE-2009 results

Like they did last year, the IITs have released some (but only some!) data on this year's JEE rank-holders. Specifically, we now have data on the aggregate scores at specified ranks for five separate categories: Common Merit List (CML), Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castss(SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Physically Disabled (PD). The quick analysis in this post considers only the first four categories: CML, OBC, SC and ST.

Here are some observations (which are in line with those for JEE-2008):

1. This year's procedure for assigning ranks is similar to that used last year: in the first stage, students with very low marks -- those scoring less than the subject-wise cut-off marks in any of the three subjects: math, physics and chemistry -- are removed from consideration, and in the second stage, the top N (this year, N = 8295 in the common list; about 1700 more appear in the OBC and other such lists) of the rest are ranked according to the aggregate score. There is, however, one difference between 2008 and 2009; this difference is in the cut-off marks used for first stage: Last year, the cut-off eliminated the bottom 20 percentile in each subject, while this year, it eliminated those with lower than the subject average.

2. This year's subject-wise cut-offs were 11, 8 and 11 (out of 160) in math, physics and chemistry, respectively. I checked, but couldn't find, the actual number of students who survived the first filter.

3. The aggregate scores of the first 500 ranks span a range of 122 (424 to 302), and those for the next 500 span just 24 (302 to 278). The remaining 7290 ranks span a range of just 100 marks!

4. At the 1000th rank, a difference of 1 mark (out of 480) could set a student back by 30 ranks. At ranks 5000+, each mark is worth as many as 125 ranks!

5. The cut-off marks -- both at the subject level and at the aggregate level -- are lower for reserved category students. For OBC, this relaxation is 10 percent, and for SC, ST and PD, it is 50 percent.

   Thus, the aggregate score of the last OBC candidate is at 161 compared to 178 for the last candidate in the common list; similarly, it's 89 for SC,ST and PD categories.

All the lists put together, 10,035 students were eligible to stake a claim for a seat in one of the institutions participating in JEE.

6. Let's look at some of the information graphically. Here's the first plot, which just presents the raw data on rank within a category against the aggregate marks.

   
   Figure 1

7. Figure 1 is not very useful because of our system of reservation in which the top 10 percent of the SC students, for example, study -- or, at least, have the opportunity to study -- in the same class as the top 10 percent in each of the other categories. Thus, a more useful way of looking at the data is to use scaled plots, where the rank within a category is divided by the last rank (the highest rank number) in that category: thus for the candidates in the OBC category, the modified y-axis now represents the OBC rank divided by the last OBC rank (1930); thus all the four curves end at 1.0.

8. Here's that figure, with the scaled rank (within category) plotted against the aggregate score.

   
   Figure 2

This plot, while better than Figure 1, still has some problems. For example, the curves for SC and ST appear close together in this figure, but in reality there's a big gap in the rates at which SC and ST candidates get ranked in JEE. The figure hides the crucial fact that while the OBC, SC and ST quotas are not completely filled, there is significant difference in the "degree of incompleteness" among the three categories.

This becomes clearer when we look at the actual number of candidates who make it to the OBC, SC and ST lists: 1930, 967 and 208, respectively. Clearly, they are below their full-quota figures of 2700, 1500 and 750 (for this calculation, I have conservatively assumed the total number of rank-holders to be 10,000; with full quota, this number would be more than 10,035). In other words, only 72%, 65% and 28% of the seats reserved for OBC, SC and ST candidates may get filled this year.

9. Let's re-do the figure using these numbers (full-quota) for scaling the ranks. The result is in Figure 3. Since the ranks within each category are now scaled using a larger number, the curves do not go all the way to 1.0 at the left-top.

   
   Figure 3

10. While Figures 2 and 3 look roughly the same for CML and OBC, a difference does emerge for SC and ST categories; and it shows, graphically, the extent to which ST students lag behind SC students.

    What is striking is how the left-most ends of all the curves appear roughly parallel to one another. This allows us to put a figure on how much the reserved category candidates need to "catch" up. At comparable category-wise percentiles, the aggregate marks of OBC, SC and ST candidates trail those in CML by 25, 120 and 150 marks. Since the maximum aggregate score is 480, these numbers translate to a group disadvantage of about 5%, 25% and 30%, respectively.

    [I readily admit that Figure 3 could be improved with better estimates for the total number of candidates in the full-quota scenario; but the results (especially the estimates of the differences between CML and the reserved categories) are unlikely to be affected much.]

As I said, these observations are broadly in line with what we found in JEE-2008. In particular, the OBC scores are just about 5 % below those of the common pool; thus, someone at the n-th percentile in the OBC list wouldn't suffer a serious disadvantage with respect to a classmate who's at the same n-th percentile in the common list.

Unfortunately (and as I noted last year), this is not the case for SC and ST students; if they go for the "top" IIT-branch combination that they are eligible for, they are likely to find themselves competing with folks whose JEE scores are far higher than theirs. Our quick analysis tells us that they are better off choosing "lower" branches than they are eligible for.

From what I know (or hear from my friends in IITs), these broad conclusions are generally borne out in real life. OBC students, on average, do just about as well as the rest of the class; on the other hand, SC and ST students, on average, do somewhat worse than the class average.

* * *

Update: Out of 1930 students who make it to the OBC list, about 1400 would have made it to the common list without needing a relaxed cut-off. In other words, 14% of the available seats would have gone to the OBC students anyway; this figure was the same last year too. Thus, a relaxation of 10% in the cut-off marks (both at the subject level and in the aggregate) gets OBCs only an additional 500 seats (or, 5% additional seats).

And here's the thing: the IITs will probably keep this relaxation in cut-off marks at 10%. If the ratio (10% relaxation to 5% additional OBC seats) holds, this would imply that OBCs' share of IIT seats will settle at about 19-20%, and that this share can go up only if the OBCs get into the common pool in greater numbers.

Budget highlights for higher education

The budget for higher education has gone up by a whopping 36 percent. Take a look at this summary (taken from Expenditure by Ministry/Department, which is a part of Expenditures - Vol. 1; all the budget-related documents are here; all the figures are in crores (10 millions) or rupees:

	2007-08	2008-09 (RE)	2009-10 (BE)
Total	6242.25	11340.00	15429.00
Plan	3127.50	6800.00	9596.00
Non-Plan	3114.75	4540.00	5833.00

[Keywords: RE stands for revised estimate, and is the best guess from the government about how much it spent in the previous year. BE is the intended allocation for this year. "Plan" stands for buildings, equipment, infrastructure, etc. "Non-Plan" stands for recurring, routine expenses -- salaries, maintenance, etc.]

As you can see, the allocation increased at a higher rate on Plan side (41 %) than on the Non-Plan side (28 %).

The details are also important; so, let's look at them (for which you have to go to Expenditures - Volume 2, and get the document for the Department of Higher Education):

1. Of the 15,000 crores, UGC gets the biggest slice nearly 47 percent, or 7366.65 crores (up 34 % from 2008-RE).

2. The next biggest slice -- nearly 35 % -- goes to Technical Education, which provides funding for the IITs, IIMs, NITs, IISc, etc.

3. The IITs appear to suffer a 5% decrease in allocation of 1605 crores in 2009, from 1685 crores in 2008. If you look at the details, the Plan side actually gets a whopping 23 % cut (685 crores in 2009, against 894 crores in 2008). This is worth exploring a bit more; my initial guess is that last year's allocation for the IITs included a sum for the new IITs, which probably went unspent.

4. NITs get 1299.90 crores, as against 1159 crores last year -- an increase of 12 %.

5. Some 400 crores is set aside for the setting up of new IITs. Similarly, a sum of Rs. 20 crores will go towards the setting up of new NITs.

6. IISc's allocation goes up from 209 crores to 224 crores -- an increase of just 7%. The Plan side stays constant at 75 crores.

7. IISERs get 215 crores against 175 crores last year -- up 22 %.

8. IIMs get 120 crores, up 8 % from last year's 111 crores.

Finally, there's a provision for Rs. 810 crores (it was 368 crores last year, and 451 crores in 2007-08) for something called the National Mission for Education through Information and Communication Technology. All of it comes under Plan expenditure. I wonder what it does -- 810 crores is a lot of money! All I could find about this mission is a bunch of documents and web pages on the Sakshat website.

Ranking of Indian universities based on their research performance

Gangan Prathap (National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources, New Delhi) is the author of this preliminary study (pdf) ranking Indian universities based on papers listed in the Web of Science database. In order to do a fair comparison so that universities are compared only with similar institutions, he has wisely left out the institutions of national importance [Grrr, I hate this description --it implies universities are not of any "national importance"].

Here's the list of the top 20 research universities in India (based on their publications in the year 2008):

1. Delhi
2. Banaras Hindu
3. Jadavpur
4. Anna
5. Panjab
6. Annamalai
7. Madras
8. Aligarh Muslim
9. Calcutta
10. CMC, Vellore
11. Hyderabad
12. Jawaharlal Nehru
13. Poona
14. CUSAT
15. Allahabad
16. Rajasthan
17. Sri Venkateswara
18. Guru Nanak Dev
19. Mysore
20. Mangalore

One of the things he notes is the year-to-year variability in the rank order. For example, Mangalore University, with an overall University ranking of 20 in 2008, has an All India Rank of 23 in 2007 and 86 in 2004! This is clearly because the ranking is based on just one factor which, for any university, has a pretty large year-to-year variability.

Another observation from Pratap's data: the number of papers from the top 20 universities has registered a near 100 percent increase -- from 4034 to 8005 -- during the five year period of 2004-08.

The presence of CMC (Vellore) so high in that list (as opposed to better known, and better funded medical institutions such as AIIMS or PGI, Chandigarh) is also noteworthy. I think. [Update: As pointed out by Pratik in his comment, both AIIMS and PGI come under institutions of national importance, and therefore are left out by Pratap in this exercise.]

As Pratap points out, this is only the first such exercise, and it uses quantity -- the number of papers -- as its yardstick. He indicates that this effort may be expanded to include quality indicators such as citation counts.

[Speaking of which, I should link to this Current Science editorial by Prof. P. Balaram saying some nasty things about scientometrics.]

Anyways, if you want to know how the Indian Institutes of Technology (and IISc as well) have done in terms of publications during these last five years, check out Giridhar's post! [Update: Giridhar informs us In the comments section, Giridhar informs us that he has compiled a list (pdf) of top 40 Indian universities based not just on their publications, but also on citations and the h-index. See this post for the context.]

Someone is wrong on the internet ...

... and that someone is the editorial team at Mint.

Mint carried an editorial today on the Pink Chaddi campaign to name and shame the bunch of thugs who issued a threat to women's safety. Remember, the threat was a credible one, as it was made immediately after a violent crime in Mangalore. The Pink Chaddi campaign was successful in shining a bright spotlight on those violent thugs. I think it can take some of the credit when they called a halt to their 'plans' for the Valentine's Day -- at least in some parts of the state.

The rest of this post is a addressed directly to the editors.

* * *

WTF, Mint Editors? I really, really mean it. WTF?

In the first of your two accusations, you say that the Pink Chaddi campaign has "failed to raise the issue that gender injustice in India goes beyond pub-going and Valentine's Day."

Tell me, how does fighting a clear and imminent threat to women's safety somehow preclude a battle for broader gender justice? Why should it? By the same token, why should the longer term battle against entrenched inequity come in the way of a short term protest aimed at thwarting a mob that issued a specific threat -- in the here and now?

I'm sure you'll agree that the long term battle against gender inequity needs all the help it needs, and therefore, it'll benefit from a diversity of approaches and tactics. Doesn't it then follow that this hugely successful campaign has opened up an important new way of fighting that battle? Is it so difficult to see that this success can be translated to other situations? Also, isn't it valuable that it has probably brought a certain awareness about gender issues to a lot of people?

An implicit assumption in your editorial is that the Pink Chaddi campaign is a one shot deal. That the groups behind it, having achieved some measure of success, will just go to a life of pub-going comfort, and forget the larger battle. Is there any evidence to support this assumption? On the contrary, the main group behind that campaign has already issued a call for its next action: This is Indian Culture.

Towards the end of your editorial, you offer your second 'critique':

The speed of the internet let [the Pink Chaddi campaign] spill into the real world. It's a pity that nobody thought of such measures when a management student in the National capital region was gangraped a few months ago. How about having a "Consortium of Rape-revolting, Angry and Ambitious Women" that would twitter through the year against gender injustices rather than just support sporadic sentiments?

Shame on you!

Shame on you for exploiting a horrible crime for your silly purpose of belittling a successful campaign. Shame on you for conflating this crime (with an identifiable victim) with the threat issued by a powerful mob to endanger the safety and dignity of a large number women.

And shameonyou, shameonyou, shameonyou for using a crime to beat up on women's groups, when your newspaper has not even bothered to report on that very crime.

[Yes, I checked. Again. And again. And yes, your pathetic little sermon set me off on this morbid search.]

You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

How clueless is NDTV?

So clueless that they failed to anticipate not just outrage and scorn, but serious professional ridicule; see the posts by Falstaff and Kuffir.

[Update: See also Rahul's fan letter to Ms. Barkha Dutt: "Keep going. ... I am sure you will continue to make more news than you report"].

* * *

Here's another example. Yesterday, Prem Panicker wrote a balanced post; while he emphasized bloggers' right to express their opinion freely, he also pointed out that they cannot play with facts, and when they do, they have to face the consequences. The specific example he cites is Chyetan's use of this quote from Wikipedia's entry on Ms. Barkha Dutt as of 30th November 2008 (pointed out by one of the commenters on Prem's blog):

During the Kargil conflict, Indian Army sources repeatedly complained to her channel that she was giving away locations in her broadcasts, thus causing Indian casualties.

This part of the entry wasn't backed up by a citation, and sure enough, it went away, probably as soon as someone raised this issue. I don't know when the next change took place, but this is what we find now in its place:

Her reporting of the Kargil conflict was criticized by Admiral Sureesh Mehta who insinuated that she may have compromised the security of the troops by giving away locations.[10].

It is essentially the same accusation ("criticism") as the previous one -- but (a) it cites to a newspaper, and (b) it names a high-ranking official who made that 'insinuation'. Click on that link, and you get this:

The competition among news channels to score brownie points reminded him of the “famous shot” during the Kargil War that led to the destruction of an ultra-powerful artillery gun of the Army. Three soldiers died and the Colonel, who yielded to a woman reporter’s entreaty to fire the gun for the camera’s benefit was dismissed from service.

Sure, this paragraph doesn't mention the woman reporter's name explicitly, but how many embedded women reporters in the war zone were involved in the 'famous shot' incident during the Kargil War? The context seems to point to Ms. Dutt as the reporter in question. Is this citation good enough for Wikipedia? It must be, because of the following.

In that entry on Ms. Dutt, the above quote is 'balanced' with the following sentence:

Ms Dutt refuted these charges in her response by citing Gen VP Malik's book that had opined otherwise. [11]

This sentence also has a citation. Clicking through, we find that it's an article by Ms. Dutt herself:

Finally, I would like to point out that the Navy Chief made a factually incorrect and wholly untrue comment on NDTV's coverage during the Kargil conflict of 1999, claiming that NDTV asked for a gun to be triggered for the benefit of the camera. I want to state for the record: no such incident ever took place and we have an official aknowledgment of that, including from then Army Chief, V.P Malik. I would urge Admiral Mehta to read General V.P Malik's book on Kargil for further clarity. General Malik was the Army Chief during the operations and puts to rest any such controversy in his book. In a formal letter, NDTV has also asked for an immediate retraction from the Navy and officially complained that the comments amount to defamation. Several writers have already pointed out how the Navy Chief has got his facts wrong. (DNA, Indian Express, Vir Sanghvi in The Hindustan Times, Sankarshan Thakur in The Telegraph). This, incidentally, was the same press conference where the Admiral threatened literally to "chop the heads off" of two other reporters who aired his interview ahead of schedule.

It's a solid defence by Ms. Dutt. But the fact remains that the Navy Chief has uttered those damaging words, and despite NDTV's letter asking "for an immediate retraction from the Navy" and "officially [complaining] that the comments amount to defamation," no such retraction appears to have been made by the Navy (at least to my knowledge).

It's going to be interesting, watching how Ms. Dutt and NDTV proceed with this stuff. Will they sue the Navy Chief, and extract an apology and a retraction? Will they demand that he display it prominently on his blog?

* * *

The "criticism" section of the Wikipedia entry on Ms. Dutt is only going to swell. What is worse, Chyetan's original observations about Ms. Dutt's live coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks will also be fact-checked, and documented in detail.

Did NDTV anticipate any of this?

Citizen Initiative: Never Forget

Never Forget   has been in the works for 2 months, and it went live this Republic Day -- yesterday. While the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai is the immediate trigger (look at the site's banner), it is only a hook; the site is meant for changing the very way we are governed, by getting the community -- us -- to monitor our politicians by holding them up to their own election promises.

... [I]f WE, the people, who elect them, do not care to evaluate their performance periodically, WHO will be the appraiser of enforcement of promises?

We maintain that, as a collective force, we can work to keep track of what our elected representatives -- whether at the centre, state, city, town, district or village level -- promised us and how far the promises have been fulfilled.

How is this going to be done? Here's the Vision statement:

At the heart of our effort is the idea of promises that can be evaluated. We want to find out whether our elected leaders are implementing what they promised to do in their common minimum program/manifestos , and that can be done by periodically monitoring the progress on each and every one of them. And this data can be used by the electorate to assess performance by way of our ballots.

The other core principle that we base our endeavor on is that of verifiable analysis. Each and every claim made in the course of our effort, without fail, will have to essentially be accompanied by a reference either documentation or factual press release. We believe that this will give our work the credibility that is seen lacking in several current editorials and articles about the state of the nation.

The people behind this initiative are young, tech-savvy, driven and committed. I met one of them -- Animesh Pathak, a fellow BHU alum (he blogs here), and I still remember his energy and enthusiasm while he was describing this project to me.

Go check out Never Forget. More importantly, if you believe in the concept, participate in it.

Lilavati's Daughters: 2. Dr. Anandibai Joshi

Dr. Anandibai Joshi was the first Indian woman to get a medical degree -- in 1887, and from Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania (which is now the Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia). In Lilavati's Daughters, Joshi's life story, possibly the most amazing and moving story in the book, is recounted by Pooja Thakar in a first person narrative. I'm giving below an extended extract from Pooja Thakar's essay. I have added a few links at the end of this post.

* * *

Anandi Gopal

by Pooja Thakar

I was born on 31st March, 1865 as Yamuna Joshi in Kalyan, a small town near Mumbai. My family used to be the landlords in the town, but had lost their riches. When I was 9 years old, I was married and my name was changed to Anandi.

Before my marriage, I could barely read Marathi. Education of girls was not common then. But my husband, Gopalrao, was an ardent supporter of widow remarriage and women's education. After our marriage, he started teaching me. This was very difficult. In those days, a husband didn't even speak directly to his wife in front of others. In the beginning, my husband tried to enroll me in the missionary schools. But that did not work out. We had to move from Kalyan to Alibaug to Kolhapur and finally to Calcutta where he was left free to teach me.

I didn't have much of a choice whether I liked to learn or not. He was my husband and I had to listen to what he said. I was terrified of him and the scoldings I would receive from him. But once I started learning, I was soon also able to read Sanskrit and als read and speak English.

After my rapid progress, my husband was insistent that I should acquire higher education. We were confused about what I should study. But then I realized that female doctors were a nonexistent facility to any woman in our country. Many women, ashamed or reluctant to approach a male doctor, would suffer a lot as a result. I myself lost my infant son when I was 14. So I decided that I would like to be a doctor. Even the subject I picked for my thesis later was 'Obstetrics among Aryan Hindoos.'

My husband tried very hard to get me admission to some university in America. He even tried to pretend becoming a missionary to that end but it invited only ridicule. However, a Mrs. Carpenter of Roselle, New Jersey, by chance came to know the story and was moved by the correspondence and wrote me a letter. She offered to host me in the USA. Since Gopalrao wasn't able to get a job there we decided that I should leave for America alone. We had to face a lot of opposition and criticism, to the extent of people throwing stones and cow dung at us. Finally, after many trials and tribulations, in June 1883, I reached America and was met by my Carpenter mavashi (aunt).

[... snip ...]

... [T]he room that was provided to me at the college didn't have a proper fireplace. The fireplace emitted a lot of smoke when lit. So it was a choice between smoke and cold! I tried to get another place, but that was not possible as no one was ready to rent a place to a brown, Hindu girl trying to be a doctor. After 1.5-2 years in that place, I had started having a constant temperature and cough.

Well, being in an alien culture, weather was always going to be difficult and I was ready to face it. What was most taxing was my husband's behaviour. After the first few letters, his letters had taken a strange turn. They had grown highly unpredictable, sometimes full of love and support and most of the times chiding and taunting me. Even in his nicer letters, there would be one nasty comment that would sour everything. He kept on taunting me that I was a free bird in a foreign land and that I had probably forgotten my 'poor', 'uncivilized' and 'incapable' husband who wasn't as 'great' as me. On seeing an innocent photograph I had sent him, he made a remark that I appeared to have forgotten my tradition and culture as my pallu was askew. I had no idea what the cause for his nastiness was. I was doing exactly what he had told me to and was only fulfilling his dream. But I had always found it difficult to figure out my husband. Sometimes I used to feel that he was way below me and pictured him at the bottom of a ladder while I was at the top. But then the next minute I reminded myself that he was the one who had given me access to the ladder in the first place. He was my husband and my teacher.

My health was severely affected by my stay there. After around two years in the USA, I had sudden spells when I used to feel very faint and get a high temperature. The cough never left me. By the end of the three years, my condition had worsened. I somehow scraped through the final exams. At the convocation where my husband was present and so was Pandita Ramabai, it was announced that I was the first woman from doctor of India and got a standing ovation for that! It was one of the most rewarding moments of my life.

Day by day I grew worse, and nothing was working. My husband then admitted me to the Women's hospital in Philadelphia. I was then diagnosed as having Tuberculosis but the disease hadn't yet reached my lungs. The doctors advised me to go back to India.

[... First person narrative ends here]

From the rest of Thakar's article we learn the following: Anandibai died on 26 February 26 1887, not long after her arrival in India and just a month shy of her 22nd birthday. She never managed to practice medicine in India.

* * *

Wikipedia has a good entry on Dr. Anandibai Joshi. This opinion piece talks about the different ways in which Joshi's biographers have recounted her life. Here's a key quote: "Different Anandis fashioned by different authors — so much so that Kosambi muses candidly, 'has the *real* Anandibai Joshee eluded us?' "

* * *

The first biography of Anandibai Joshi was penned by Caroline Healey Dall in 1888, just a year after Joshi's death. This book is available online, and Joshi's image, above, is from its cover. Right at the beginning of this book, Dall reproduces an entry from an album of Mrs. Carpenter, Joshi's host in the US; in it, Joshi answers a series of questions (you can view them here: page 1, page 2). Let me highlight three of them:

20. What epoch would you prefer to live in? The Present.

26. If not yourself, whom would you like to be? No one.

36. What is your aim? To be useful.

Lilavati's Daughters: 1. Prof. Rama Govindarajan

Published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Lilavati's Daughters is a collection of biographical and autobiographical essays in which 100 Indian women scientists talk about "what brought them to science, what kept their interests alive, and what has helped them achieve some measure of distinction in their careers." Since it's modeled after One Hundred Reasons To Be A Scientist (pdf, published by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy), we may expect Lilavati's Daughters to become available online.

In the meantime, I'm reproducing here one of the essays with the author's permission.

The author is Prof. Rama Govindarajan -- IIT-D alumna, faculty member in the Engineering Mechanics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNC), and winner of a Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (btw, she's also the author of this letter to the PanIIT organizers protesting against their infamous 'spouses' program!).

Here's her essay:

* * *

Dream Your Own Dream

by Rama Govindarajan

The stars shone down on 47 weeping girls, while a gentle sea breeze tried to soothe them. On this evening of drama, the prosaic words “housewife”, “graduate”and “bank employee”, were being scrawled in autograph books under “Your ambition is to become a ...”. And no, the overweight, under-confident specimen occupying the schoolyard for the last time did not scribble “research scientist”!

Not even years later did I understand what the term meant. What does it feel like to be one today? My website talks about the science I do, so I’ll only say here that I completely love it. However, I did not know this when I started out. All I wanted to become was a “regular guy”, which to me and my peers meant having enough money for a gracious life-style and being in charge of a group of people, preferably large. First big mistake: borrowed objectives.

Dear reader, if you are young, please dream your own dream. Also, please, please dream big. My grandmother, Alamelu, did. For me. She also set an example by fighting tooth-and-nail for what she believed was right, and by never obeying a rule of which she was not convinced. As a young bride, circa 1920, she risked ostracism by her community to cook and eat meen kozhambu with a Dalit family in their hut. My other early influence was my mother, Shakuntala, practically a single, working, parent, who made light of an extremely tough life to create a home where poetry and laughter ably substituted for luxury. My only regret is that my achievements fall far short of her sacrifice.

Doing a B.Tech. at I.I.T., Delhi was a simply superb experience. I was given the opportunity to study rather than memorise, and had the fun of discussing science with peers. Like many other girls in I.I.T., I emerged near the top of my class, picking up self-assurance, a “can do anything” attitude, and many close friendships. It would be good if within the next few years, half of every IIT class would be girls – it would be a change from when I was one of 54 in the chemical engineering class!

My Ph.D. advisor Professor Roddam Narasimha, has been the biggest influence on my scientific career. Apart from fluid mechanics, he taught me to do science the right way, which for him includes a thorough and critical understanding of the literature, extreme care in methods, and zero exaggeration in making claims. I also like his conviction that the youngest student in a group may be right in a scientific discussion.

I am also blessed with a home completely free of gender bias and its manifestations. So, what can go wrong when one has the best education and heavy-duty determination, and is surrounded by good people? Read on.

I am an engineer first, and fluid dynamics has always been a favorite, but my career in research began almost by accident. When I graduated, I wanted and got a plush job, in Mumbai. Every morning I became part of the compacted mass of humanity in the ladies compartment of the 6:57 fast train to Andheri. Soon the mass revealed itself as having faces, lives, and stories. The one common theme in the stories was the incredible hard work and determination involved. These women — executives, secretaries, fisherwomen, new mothers, very-soon-to-be-mothers, many malnourished, some from home-lives too terrible to describe, running top-speed across the overbridge at Grant Road at 6:56 a.m. — are my role-models and I think back to them every time I imagine I am having a hard time. An important ingredient for success is the willingness to push yourself to work really, really hard.

It took me two months on the job to realise that something a lot less plush and a lot more mentally demanding would suit me better. I then did a Masters in the U.S., which did not launch me into the planned orbit in industrial R&D, maybe because I soon tied myself by marriage to one city. A guest at my wedding remarked that Bangalore (as it was then) was not at all the place for a chemical engineer, and how right he proved to be!

In my efforts to leave no stone unturned, I went to dozens of interviews within the next couple of months, looking for unsuitable jobs. I finally took one of them just to put my share of rice on the table. The really big mistake: not realising that the world offers myriad choices for a young couple in search of two good careers. Just don’t be scared to experiment, to spend a few years as a nomad. Don’t feel guilty if your spouse has to make some temporary sacrifice as well. It would be best if you can postpone marriage to the post-nomadic stage!

It dawned on me that to succeed in Bangalore, I must redefine myself. The software industry was in its infancy, but I decided, maybe stupidly in some people’s opinion, that I would not be part of the big boom which I didn’t know then was coming. I went into the defence-related aerospace industry instead. Here, I wanted my experience with process control and computing skills, to be put to use to avoid importing control algorithms. The set-up of the industry made this wish impossible to fulfil.

So, four years after my B.Tech., I finally turned towards research in fluid mechanics, and have never in the nineteen years since then wished to do anything else. For ten of these years I worked in a national lab, during which I also completed my Ph.D. and post-doc. The last nine years in academia have finally been the “real thing”, this was an extremely lucky break, since the place I work, the J.N.C., came into existence at the right time for me! In my experience, independence and constant exposure to other researchers is crucial for doing basic research, and for these, an academic institution is unbeatable. A typical national lab has other main objectives to fulfil, and cannot be expected to focus on basic research in the same way.

If you are the type who likes every day to be different, scientific research is the career for you. If you like working with young people with bright ideas, who keep you on your toes, and if you like teaching yourself new concepts, this is the career for you. If you are prepared to toil long and desperately for the dazzling discovery you are not sure you’ll make, this is the life to choose! Even on a bad referee-report day, I am happy I do science!

What do you get when policies don't survive a change in government?

I don't know what kind of inputs Prof. C.N.R. Rao gave to the government before it announced the launch of eight new IITs. And I don't know why he keeps going on and on about how the government -- his own government! -- has mucked them up through poor / non-existent planning. But I do want to point out one (possible) reason behind the alacrity with which three states -- Gujarat, Punjab and Orissa -- chose to start 'their' new IITs within six months from the announcement: lack of policy continuity.

I'll give two examples.

• There was this curious case of "upgrading" a bunch of engineering colleges into IITs. During the NDA regime, four such colleges were identified. Under the UPA government, however, this list changed; it now had seven colleges. And only IT-BHU was common to both the lists.

  Oh, there was something else that was common to both the lists: the committee that chose these colleges! Bizarre, no?

• Similarly, in 2003, the NDA government announced the setting up of National Institutes of Science at four places: Allahabad, Bhubaneswar, Chennai and Kolkata; acting on it, the UGC had initiated some steps (see this, for example). After the General Elections, the new UPA regime scrapped this proposal, and announced that two IISERs were to be set up in Kolkata and Chennai (Mohali, Bhopal and Thiruvananthapuram were added later). The letters -- NIS as opposed to IISER -- might be different, but I don't think anybody would dispute that the spirit behind these initiatives was the same.

  Press reports at that time (see this, for example) noted that the UPA government's move was meant to snub the previous government's HRD Minister, Mr. M.M. Joshi. I don't know what Joshi felt about this snub, but this change led to severe heartburn in Orissa, since that state lost 'its' NIS [check out this site].

May be it's worth pointing out that in the second example, Prof. C.N.R. Rao's role was -- I have to choose my words carefully here! -- not insignificant.

So, let's see what we get out of this little exercise:

1. There is clearly a deep uncertainty about whether a stated policy will survive a change of government.

2. When the UPA government announced its proposal for five new IITs in 2008 (the other three in AP, Bihar and Rajasthan were announced in 2007), it was just about a year from the next General Elections.

Given the prestige associated with 'getting' an IIT, is it surprising that the Gujarat, Punjab and Orissa governments jumped at the opportunity to get 'their' IITs going?

Is it surprising, then, that the new institutions would need to scramble to get their academic programs going -- within three months after their creation?

* * *

Here's a great op-ed by Prof. T. Jayaraman covering some of this stuff (and more).

A quote that jolts ...

IISc [is] not a substitute for IIT.
-- Prof. U.R. Rao

That's the headline of this story on a recent meeting in which a number of public intellectuals in Karnataka spoke in favour of starting an IIT in the state.

* * *

Last year, the Central Government announced a wide range of initiatives in India's higher ed sector; they included setting up of eight new IITs (six of which have already admitted students), 16 Central Universities, 7 IIMs, 20 IIITs, and 14 'World Class' Universities. Despite a Central and a 'World Class' university coming its way, Karnataka is unhappy with not getting an IIT.

Isn't it sad that people -- and people who (should) know better -- whine about not getting a technical institute when they have an opportunity to create a great university? Particularly since a university can have a huge, positive influence on a far larger number of the state's people. Consider an institution that

1. is configured to be what I call a 'real' university -- a research university that does undergraduate teaching, covers natural and social sciences, humanities and languages, liberal arts and professions, and promotes exciting research in many interdisciplinary areas.

2. has the kind of autonomy enjoyed by our INIs -- 'Institutions of National Importance' -- the IITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, etc.

3. gets the kind of government grants that flow to the INIs (about 25 to 40 lakhs per faculty member).

4. has a governance structure that manages to avoid political interference (which plagues many state universities).

5. that draws faculty (and a large fraction of its students, too) from all of India.

Aren't these the nutrients that explain the stature of the IITs? Shouldn't our intellectuals be arguing for a flow of these nutrients to all our institutions -- INIs, Central and State universities?

* * *

To the list above, I would also add another key nutrient: scale. A 'real' university that graduates, say, ten of thousand students with UG degrees, and several thousands of PG degrees is far better than a technical institution that, almost by design, would not grow to beyond a few thousands of UG degrees. A large size gets the state more graduates at a lower cost, making this model replicable. Even at the State level!