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).

Did Prof. C.N.R. Rao really say IISERs were "extremely well planned"?

NDTV interviewed Prof. C.N.R. Rao, Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister, "about science and technology and how it is progressing in India." I was surprised to find this exchange about how the new IITs have been created without any planning:

Professor CNR Rao [...] we have to plan these institutions very carefully and not just start them by admitting students and putting them in a classroom. We need to plan things like the curriculum and the campuses. There is lot to be done in this regard.

NDTV: Were you consulted when these increased numbers of institutions [new IITs] were announced?

Professor CNR Rao: When it comes to the five science institutes [the IISERs], I was party to setting them up and they have been extremely well planned. The ones at Kolkata and Pune are doing extremely well. They are already in their third year. [...]

Why am I surprised? Because of this report from May 2006 about the first two IISERs at Kolkata and Pune, three months before the first batch of students were admitted (link from this post):

• Neither institute has a permanent campus nor permanent faculty.

• Despite this, the HRD Ministry is trying to push through the first batch from this July in “makeshift and temporary locations”.

• In Kolkata, for example, classes for the first batch of 70-odd students, selected via the IIT entrance exam, will be held in the Kolkata campus of IIT Kharagpur.

• With no hostel ready, students will stay in nearby campus of National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research (NITTTR) at Salt Lake.

• “We have just started the process of acquiring land (200 acres) in Kalyani (a Kolkata suburb), and hope to complete the modalities soon,” said IIT (Kharagpur) director Shishir K Dube, who is the project-director for setting up IISER (Kolkata).

• Its counterpart in Pune, too, is in a hurry to start the first batch in August at the “temporary location” in National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in Pune. “About 100 acres, adjacent to the NCL, have been acquired recently. But no work on the construction of the campus has started yet,” sources said.

• Classes for the first Pune batch will initially start in a two-storied building at NCL’s Innovation Park. “Construction of new buildings will take nearly three years to complete,” sources said. NCL (Pune) director Dr S Sivaram, who is the project director for IISER (Pune), was unavailable for comment.

• No permanent faculty have been hired yet. Said Dube: “We will get faculty members from various institutes in Kolkata, like the Jadavpur University, IIT (Kharagpur) and S N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences to teach the students.” Pune, too, will draw faculty from NCL and local colleges.

Update: This is also a relevant link, I think ;-)

Women at IISc

Here are some key milestones (taken from Celebrating 100 Years of the Indian Institute of Science, IISc, 2008, p 123):

1920: N.M. Mehta, AIISc from the Department of General and Organic Chemistry.

1924: R.K. Christie, AIISc from the Department of Biochemistry.

1940: H. Kale, teacher of German.

1953: Rajeshwari Chatterjee, faculty member in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering.

1959: Piroja Vesugar, Council Member.

1960: Jelica Misovis, PhD degree (Bonus info from p.9: her thesis was entitled "Studies on X-ray crystal structure analysis).

In an earlier post on the first women researchers at IISc, I described -- wrongly, as it turns out -- Prof. Kamala Sohonie as the first woman to study in the Institute. Prof. Sohonie was the first woman to join the physics department in 1933, thirteen years after N.M. Mehta received her AIISc (Associate of the IISc, equivalent to a Masters degree).

Links ...

1. Churumuri posts a picture of a great Amul ad on the Satyam fraud: "it takes a slice of good butter to tell it like it is"

2. From Hyderabad to Harvard: An excellent profile of Harvard social psychologist Mahzarin R. Banaji by Weiqi Zhang in The Harvard Crimson

3. James Fallows: In case you were wondering, about that airplane in the Hudson (Update: Here's a follow-up); see also Survival Lessons from a Sinking Plane.

4. Cory Doctorow: Writing in the age of distraction

Higher Ed Links ...

1. Michael Nielsen: Three myths about scientific peer review; see also: How are the mighty fallen, with a link to a great article about famous economists' troubles in getting their articles published.

2. Arunn Narasimhan: Plagiarism, peer review and the power of internet

3. Giridhar: Research Double: I learned that IISc has 75 people with 100 papers and 1000 citations. Prof. C.N.R. Rao is in a league by himself, with 1000 papers and 10000 citations!

4. Eric Beerkens: The Principle of Open Access

5. Sean Carroll: Unsolicited Advice -- Part IX: Choosing a Post-Doc

6. Giridhar (again): Grad School to Professor, with a bunch of links with advice.

7. T.T. Ram Mohan: How international are US universities?

8. Julianne Dalcanton: Things the Grad Admissions Committee Does Not Wish to See

9. KaalEdge: How to Write a Great Statement of Purpose, and Part 2

10. Inside Higher Ed: Manna from Washington.

How do you say "It's all Greek to me" in Sinhala?

Apparently, you would say, "It's all Telugu to me!"

In Arabic, you would say, "It's all Hindi to me!"

Over at Language Log, Mark Liberman presents a directed graph of which language is used to denote incomprehensibility in a given language.

Among the Indian languages, there are two -- Telugu and Hindi -- at the receiving end of this graph, but none at the other end.

I couldn't think of a similar phrase in Tamil, but seriously, how do you say such a thing in any Indian language? If you have an answer, hop over and tell Liberman!

TED Conference is definitely coming to India

This November. In Mysore.

So we learn from Sidin Vadukut's report in Mint -- the TED site doesn't have any info on its Mysore edition yet. We neither know the dates, nor the conference fees which, for the US versions, can go upto $6000!

Here's what the TED website says about speaking at one of its conferences:

This isn't a typical conference. The TED audience has exceedingly high expectations of the speakers; we will work with you well in advance of the conference to help you shape a presentation that will succeed on the TED stage. Rules for TED speakers include a ban on "selling from the stage" (no plugging your company or organization), and a strict enforcement of the clock.

TED presentations last just 18 minutes. We've found that a carefully prepared presentation of this length can have astonishing impact. This format also allows us to fit in more than 50 speakers/performers over 4 days. Everyone hears every presentation; there are no breakout sessions. Thanks to the intimate feel of the venue and the energy and attention of the audience, many speakers conclude that their TED appearance was the most exhilarating and valuable public speaking experience of their lives.

I really like this: "[W]e will work with you well in advance of the conference to help you shape a presentation that will succeed on the TED stage"!

If you know someone who really ought to be speaking there, go ahead and nominate her/him.

Ms. Aruna Roy of MKSS is my nominee. Who's yours?

Bees probably have consciousness

Christof Koch in the Scientific American:

Bees live in highly stratified yet flexible social organizations with group decision-making skills that rival academic, corporate or government committees in efficiency. In spring, when bees swarm, they choose a new hive that needs to satisfy many demands within a couple of days (consider that the next time you go house hunting). They communicate information about the location and quality of food sources using the waggle dance. Bees can fly several kilometers and return to their hive, a remarkable navigational performance. Their brains seem to have incorporated a map of their environment. And a scent blown into the hive can trigger a return to the site where the bee previously encountered this odor. This type of associative memory was famously described by French novelist Marcel Proust in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Given all of this ability, why does almost everybody instinctively reject the idea that bees or other insects might be conscious? [...]

... [T]here is no accepted theory of consciousness, no principled theory that would tell us which systems, organic or artificial, are conscious and why. In the absence of such a theory, we must at the very least remain agnostic about consciousness in these creatures.

"The High Probability of a God Delusion"

Check out the LOL god blog for some fantastic (and qualified) responses to the "There is probably no god" ad campaign on London buses.

Yash Pal Committee: "Dissolve AICTE, UGC"

Over at Mint, Pallavi Singh covers some of the recommendations that are likely to make it to the Yash Pal Committee report -- which is only in its draft stage.

First, the Yash Pal Commitee agrees with the National Knowledge Commission on the need to create a single regulator -- termed Higher Education Commission, HEC, while the NKC version was to be called IRAHE, the Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education -- that will replace the current multiplicity of regulators, including UGC and AICTE.

Before I proceed to some of the recommendations, I have to chide the committee for allowing one of its members to hide behind an anonymity cloak and make intemperate statements such as these:

[...] “Not a single university we visited had anything positive to say about the regulator (AICTE), which is steeped in corruption and inefficiency, which has, in turn, spawned illegitimate education institutions,” the member [who sought anonymity] said. “So, there is no point in allowing it to function.”

This sort of anonymous carpet-bombing can be horribly counterproductive. For example, someone in AICTE may come along and say UGC is being let off the hook because of Yash Pal's previous avatar as its Chairman! One can also raise a legitimate question about how the proposed HEC will be different from AICTE in regulating higher ed institutions.

The debate on the future of India's higher education is better served if the people in power offer specific, valid, evidence-based criticism. For example, instead of an allegation of "corruption and inefficiency," it's far better to list the specific deficiencies, and explain how they harm the country's higher ed system. Similarly, if "illegitimate educational institutions" have been spawned, the committee should list the ways in which rules have been flouted.

Leaving this sort of cheap shots aside, let's get to the substantive side of the Committee's recommendations:

The panel, rechristened as committee for rejuvenation of higher education in late 2008, suggests three wings for the proposed HEC: academic, accreditation and grants. The accreditation wing would subsume the powers of National Assessment and Accreditation Council, or NAAC, while the grants wing could continue to function like the UGC, a person with knowledge in the matter said on condition of anonymity.

The proposed accreditation wing is in line with the government’s plans to create a single accreditor for colleges by splitting the regulatory and accreditation roles of AICTE, which oversees the functioning of engineering and business schools. The ministry plans to merge the AICTE’s National Board of Accreditation and the UGC-funded NAAC.

The grants wing would release funds to colleges and universities while the academic wing would implement matters related to development of a “curricular approach to university education”, in which the departments in educational institutions, including the IITs and IIMs, become more interdisciplinary, instead of remaining “watertight compartments”, and broaden their menus to include more subjects and disciplines for research and teaching within a university system, Yash Pal said.

And then, there's this:

The panel has also recommended that institutions of higher learning, including the premier Indian Institutes of Technology, or IITs, and Indian Institutes of Management, or IIMs, broaden their menus to include more subjects and disciplines.

When this proposal was floated as a trial balloon, the IITs reacted badly. Very badly.

Better, more effective teaching

Three links, all of them fascinating:

Harvard's Eric Mazur, writing in Science (probably behind a paywall): Farewell, Lectures? Here's his highly quote-worthy problem statement:

... [T]he lecture method [is] a process whereby the lecture notes of the instructor get transferred to the notebooks of the students without passing through the brains of either.

And here is his solution (he has a lot more about it at his website):

Since this agonizing discovery, I have begun to turn this traditional information-transfer model of education upside down. The responsibility for gathering information now rests squarely on the shoulders of the students. They must read material before coming to class, so that class time can be devoted to discussions, peer interactions, and time to assimilate and think (4). Instead of teaching by telling, I am teaching by questioning.

I now structure my time during class around short, conceptual multiple-choice questions. I alternate brief presentations with these questions, shifting the focus between instructor and students. The questions address student difficulties in grasping a particular topic and promote thinking about challenging concepts. After posing the question, I give the students 1 to 2 minutes to think, after which each must commit to an individual answer. They do this by submitting their answers using handheld devices called “clickers” (see the figure). Because of the popularity of these devices, questions posed this way are now often referred to as “clicker questions.” The devices transmit the answers to my computer, which displays the distribution of answers. If between 35% and 70% of the students answer the question correctly, I ask them to discuss their answers and encourage them to find someone in the class with a different answer. Together with teaching assistants, I circulate among the students to promote productive discussions and guide their thinking. After several minutes of peer discussion, I ask them to answer the same question again. I then explain the correct answer and, depending on the student answers, may pose another related question or move on to a different topic.

Here's Sara Rimer's report on MIT implementation of a teaching methodology called TEAL -- Technology Enhanced Active Learning.

Finally, Dan and Chuck Heath, autors of Made to Stick are offering a bunch of short articles on the book's website. One of them is titled Teaching that Sticks (requires registration, though).

Assorted links ...

Warning: some are R-rated:

1. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (cartoon): Life tip: Nothing is different anywhere

2. The (UK) Telegraph: Student auctions off virginity for offers of more than £2.5 million

   Natalie Dylan, 22, claims her offer of a one-night stand has persuaded 10,000 men to bid for sex with her.

   Last September, when her auction came to light, she had received bids up to £162,000 ($243,000) but since then interest in her has rocketed.

3. NY Daily News: Porn kings Larry Flint and Joe Francis go begging for a bailout

4. Onion Radio : Researchers Discover a Massive Asshole in the Blogosphere

Annals of plagiarism

Here's the quote of the day:

I seize the opportunity to congratulate [the authors of the original paper] for their previous and fundamental paper — in fact that article inspired our work.
-- A plagiarizer

This beauty appears at the end of this Nature story (probably behind a paywall) on the text-matching software eTBlast which has been used to catch "thousands" of similarities between papers.

BTW, it's the same software that was used to catch a plagiarized paper from Anna University Sri Venkateswara University [Update: Sorry for this mistake; thanks to Rahul for pointing it out in his comment.] last year.

The fraud at Satyam: the role of independent directors

Check out T.T. Ram Mohan's posts on the fate of some 'independent' directors at Satyam, and on the need for reforms that would prohibit directors of a company from consulting for it.

Ram Mohan links to this Sandipan Deb column which comes down hard on the most credentialed director in Satyam's now-discredited board: Harvard's Krishna Palepu:

... Think of Krishna Palepu, the Harvard professor acclaimed as the world’s greatest expert in corporate governance. His official CV states that “in the area of corporate governance, Professor Palepu’s work focuses on how to make corporate boards more effective, and on improving corporate disclosure”. Among the executive programmes he teaches is “Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance”. “He also co-led Harvard’s Corporate Governance, Leadership, and Values initiative, launched in response to the recent wave of corporate scandals and governance failures.”

A friend of mine wrote to Palepu. “Evidently,” he wrote, “you are guiding US-based global corporations in such matters. However, in your ‘home’ country, you are helping organisations like Satyam steal shareholders money. My question is simple—does this make you a traitorous hypocrite, or merely a greedy criminal? I’m inclined to the latter, but as an eminent Harvard professor, perhaps you can guide me on the correct terminology? Look forward to your response.”

Guess what? Palepu has not replied. “Greedy criminal”, I would think.

Does Satyam represent India?

Janmejaya Sinha does the right thing in calling a foul on those columnists who are using the Satyam fraud to beat up on India and the Indian corporate sector:

Quite a few commentators have opined that Ramalinga Raju's fraud (which may yet end up killing the company he founded) is a blot on India's IT sector, India's corporate sector, or even India itself. This is not only absurd, but it's also an insult to a whole bunch of law-abiding CEOs and their companies. Singur (as also some of the intra-corporate 'satrapship' problems) notwithstanding, the Tatas continue to enjoy a reputation for integrity, and so do Infosys, TVS and Sundaram groups, HDFC and HDFC Bank, L&T, Unilever India, and many, many others.

However, I am completely surprised by the reaction of so many wise people on what the scandal means for India. One writer in one of the Indian dailies, a Lord no less, wrote with amazing pathos: “even as recently as August 2008, India was touted as a success story, …we all knew it was a bit of Davos dalliance. But now four months later, after the September terror attacks in Delhi …26/11 and now Satyam, India is not shining. Will it ever again?” And there are others asking corporate India to walk further to prove its credentials.

I am surprised that corporate India and, indeed, India needs to carry such a burden. The tone of the writing smacks of a colonial hang up still evident after more than 60 years of independence and in the midst of the Madoff scandal and, indeed, the fall of the global financial system as we knew it.

Clearly, the Satyam episode has revealed that there are significant holes in our legal / regulatory / governance systems, which allowed Raju and his gang of thieves to get on with cooking the books, as Raju himself admits, for several years. I'm sure investigations will reveal where they are, and suggest ways of plugging them.

India, as a country, comes into the Satyam story only in how the investigations proceed, and what it does with the results. While the government's initial tardiness -- Sinha cites reports "that the authorities moved in late to seal the company accounts" -- is indeed disappointing, its move to reconstitute the board of directors (with the appointment of people of integrity, such as Deepak Parekh) is encouraging.

In the meantime, "Satyam=India" equations

• take the focus away from what needs to be done (a) to get to the bottom of this fraud as speedily as possible, and (b) to salvage Satyam's core operations which, by all indications, are profit-making and hence, worth preserving,

• are an insult to so many of the country's law-abiding companies, their executives and yes, their boards (e.g., the Tata group, the TVS group, Infosys, L&T, Unilever India), and

• are intellectually lazy.