Founder chancellor of Indian private university donates Rs. 1 crore (US $ 166,666) to PM Relief Fund

Last updated on 8th November 2014

Here is a tweet from PMO India with a pic of SRM university, http://www.srmuniv.ac.in/index.html, chancellor (and others) donating Rs. 1 crore (Rs. 10 million which comes to 166,666 US dollars, at Rs. 60 to 1 US Dollar) to PM National Relief Fund (perhaps meant for Jammu & Kashmir flood relief), https://twitter.com/PMOIndia/status/513257413512675328.

From SRM university's wiki page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRM_University:
The SRM University (Sri Ramaswamy Memorial University), formerly SRM Institute of Science and Technology, is a co-educational private university in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. It was founded in 1985 as SRM Engineering College in Kattankulathur, under University of Madras. It now has four campuses in Tamil Nadu—Kattankulathur, Ramapuram, Vadapalani and Tiruchirapalli—and three in the rest of India such as Modinagar near Delhi, Sonepat in Haryana and Gangtok in Sikkim. The institute gained deemed status during the 2003-2004 academic year and was renamed SRM Institute of Science and Technology. It became SRM University in 2006, when it attained the status of a full-fledged university, under section 3 of the UGC Act 1956.

--- end wiki extract ---

I think, whether one likes it or not, private universities in India have truly come of age, are here to stay, and have become a significant power to reckon with in the higher education sector. I think this is the first time I have come across/noted an Indian university top-shot donating a significant amount to the govt. Usually one reads about Indian universities requesting money from the government!

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Update on 8th Nov. 2014

Around a week ago, The Hindu carried this article, VIT varsity gives Rs. 1 crore for Cyclone Hudhud victims, http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Visakhapatnam/vit-varsity-gives-rs-1-crore-for-cyclone-hudhud-victims/article6553111.ece.

The article has a photograph of top management-level persons of VIT, a well known deemed university of Tamil Nadu, a neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh, handing over a demand draft pf Rs. 1 Crore (166,666 US dollars at Rs. 60 to 1 US Dollar) to Andhra Pradesh chief minister, Shri N. Chandrababu Naidu. A small extract from the article and comments on it (Mr. Vishwanathan mentioned below is the founder chancellor of VIT):

"Mr. Vishwanathan said that the VIT was deeply concerned at the loss of lives, property and crops in Vishakhapatnam due to the recent cyclone. “Majority of students at VIT University are from Andhra Pradesh and we wanted to like them to know that we are here for them in their time of loss,” he said."

[Ravi: I very much appreciate this sentiment. To put it in a blunt way, they make money from the Andhra Pradesh (AP) students and so when AP faces big problems they want to give back to AP some of the money they made from their students. That's nice.]

--- end small extract and comments ---

Ravi: So VIT, which in a sense is a competitor to SRM, the other deemed university mentioned earlier in the post, has matched SRM's contribution to govt. relief funds! Nice to see them match each other in such CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) work.

Noted Indian professor of education on young foreign Ph.D. qualified Indians finding it difficult to get good academic jobs in India, and on temporary teacher positions

Last updated on September 20th 2014

Prof. Krishna Kumar, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna_Kumar_(academic), is a well known professor of education of Delhi university. A recent article of his appears in The Hindu, The impact of institutional decay, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-impact-of-institutional-decay/article6410189.ece, covered many ailments of the Indian higher education system.

In this post I would like to focus on the part of the article covering the difficulties young foreign (Western countries like USA seems to be implied) Ph.D. qualified Indians finding it difficult to get good academic jobs in India, and of the pitiable condition of temporary teachers in Indian higher education. These are covered mainly in two paragraphs of the article:
a) Third paragraph: From the sentence, "Let us imagine that such a young person returns to India after completing a doctoral degree." to the end of the third paragraph.
b) Fourth paragraph: From the first sentence of the paragraph, "You can find any number of young men and women across the country who have been teaching for years in vulnerable positions known by various names like “temporary,” “contractual,” “ad hoc” or “guest.”", to the end of the fourth paragraph.

The following comment of mine expressing my disagreement with a part of the abovementioned part of the article, appears on the article's web page:

Ravi S. Iyer  

According to UGC norms, doctoral (Ph.D.) degree holders can be directly appointed as Asst. Professors. They do not need to pass NET exam to be Asst. Professors. But the doctoral degree must be from a university recognized by UGC/AICTE, I guess. The concept of having a national entrance test (NET) for higher education teachers is a good one, IMHO. NET allows Masters degree holders (Bachelors in engineering field) to prove their knowledge level by clearing the test and then becoming eligible for appointment as Asst. Professors with a pretty decent starting salary of at least around Rs. 25,000 per month (as per 6th pay commission), I believe. It is those who do not clear NET or do not have a Ph.D. that easily fall into the temporary/contractual/ad-hoc lecturer poor-salary-no-benefits and no-job-security trap... If the current NET exam is not a good one then the author should provide remedial suggestions. Only criticism without remedial suggestions is not very useful.

--- end comment on The Hindu article web page ---

A correspondent responded to the above over email (and approved sharing of his words):

I have 'returned' to India twice in my career. Both times, I enquired with official agencies about the support they provide for people like me. In both cases, they asked me to fill in a form (different in each case) and on submitting this I had no reply (ever).

It is NOT easy for Indians to return to India. Unless they come to take up a job agreed in advance, they will find things enormously difficult. Even when they do return to a job, they will face hostility from the others there who are suspicious about anyone coming from 'outside the system' and worried about their own competence being thrown into discussion. So expect any number of obstacles to be thrown in your way in the hope of tripping you up.

The first year is critical. It is the time when the newcomer decides whether he or she will continue to work here. Many people decide to return to where they came from during this year. The ones who do stay usually have personal reasons too: family considerations, lack of opportunity for them where they came from, etc.

I may have overstated things a little but I stand by my basic point: it is not easy for an Indian to return unless they are relatively independent (in mind and in financial terms). It needs a lot of patience and it needs a lot of support from people further up the hierarchy.

I responded (slightly edited):

I think that (what you have written) would have been the case a decade or two ago. And I can relate to it as I have been on multiple around-year long assignments abroad (in the 80s), lived that life and worked on challenging projects, and then had to come back to the Indian company base and live a far more hassled life including painful suburban train travel as well as Bombay road traffic jams, and far less challenging work. Yes, I did not have to look for a job on return and was not an outsider to the company. Barring that all the other issues were there. Almost all of my colleagues chose to settle down abroad (USA & Europe mainly) as I guess they could not handle the poor material quality of life and/or less challenging work back in India once they had tasted the great material life and challenging work abroad (especially USA in the late 80s). BTW I don't blame them at all. Their life, their choice. But for my deep spiritual inclinations, cultural and family ties, I too would have attempted to settle down in the USA. I have very fond memories of my stays in the USA.

But I think that, in the last decade or so, for the well educated or well experienced professionals, returning to India from USA and other Western countries is not as difficult as compared to what it was earlier. In the academic field there was (and perhaps still is) a squeeze in US academia that led to many US settled Indian academics return to India - I know of one such person who is now with a leading academic institution in South India. In the professional field, given how strongly India and the US are connected both telecommunications wise as well as social networks wise, I think it is far easier nowadays to organize a job position in India, sitting in the USA. And in professional companies. meritocracy rules and so the insider-outsider issue is not so much.

Once one gets out of professional meritocracy-type companies and institutions the picture, even today, reverts to what you have written. Especially in companies and institutions in small town/small city India, my view is that one experiences fair bit of resistance from some, but not all, well entrenched insiders who feel somewhat threatened by competence of outsiders, even if the service is offered free (perhaps it is worse when the service is offered free). But now I think I understand such matters better. Well paid and secure jobs are few and far between in small places, and so there is a lot of competition for it from those who are willing to live in such small places. The people in these systems, and so these systems, are typically not the top-most in their fields but there may be some notable exceptions of very distinguished people who usually head various parts of the system. A very competent outsider getting into the system can become a major threat to the status quo. It is human for at least some of the people involved to feel very threatened and try to protect their livelihoods and career growth prospects using whatever tricks they can. The right and safe trick for the very competent outsider is to provide services only in areas where his services are welcomed and withdraw from those areas where there is resistance. But sometimes the very competent outsider quickly becomes somebody who wants to change the entire system which includes marginalizing or even throwing out less competent old-timers. An additional, very human but, very unfortunately, not uncommon issue is that, many times, such very competent outsiders after having risen to, and established themselves in, positions of authority in the system, become dictatorial and, dismissive and intolerant of dissent. These issues usually create a huge political crisis and, many times, eventually poison and damage the sub-system that the very competent outsider got into. Many times, it would have been far better for the system to not have taken in such very competent but mover-and-shaker type outsiders in the first place! 

Now what is striking is that in most of small town/small city India we may typically have the above type of organizations! The centres of excellence which would be meritocracies would be the minority, even though they would be looked upto as models to supposedly emulate.

Perhaps the bottom line is that it is all about people in the place where one lives and works. One has to learn to adjust to the people around us in both the workplace and the home neighbourhood. And there is huge variance in people not only between USA/UK and India but also across various regions/cities/towns in India.

The correspondent wrote back (slightly edited):

Anyone who returns to India to work needs a mentor. I tried to provide that help to several people who joined (a leading Indian industry-research organization) when I was there. All of them stayed on and have been very successful.

Recently I tried to mentor someone else at another institution (in Delhi) but she found working in her Indian institution hard going and returned to the US (though she promises to come back to India 'soon').

So things vary from place to place and of course from one person to another. I am sure you are right and more people return nowadays and with far fewer problems than even 10 years ago. It has helped that many of their new colleagues have also travelled and/or lived abroad.

I responded (slightly edited):

Interesting info. about your role as mentor. Note that your mentoring exposure would have been mainly to the Computer Science/Information Technology research sector in India. I think you did a great service to that sector in India as well as at a human level to these persons & their families, by helping these India returnees to navigate the 'return' challenges successfully.

Interesting HRD ministry interaction with media today on 100 days accomplishments; Grant to set up Swami Vivekananda chairs

Today I saw an interesting HRD ministry interaction with media on its 100 days accomplishments, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewtw1pbnt18, 53 min. 45 secs, streamed live Sept. 11th 2014.

I added the following comment on the youtube page:

Very happy to see such interaction between Hon'ble HRD minister & team and the media, as well as the public via the Internet. Some notes related to my interest areas, from my viewing of the video:

PPT Presentation:

*) Terrific to see data made available on schools without access to toilets. Now those who would like to help in this regard know where their help is needed.

Shri R. Bhattacharya, Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy (http://mhrd.gov.in/whoswho) talk:

*) Efforts initiated in past 100 days of the (new NDA) govt. shown in PPT presentation

*) Around 7:03 in the video, "The first item, as you would have seen, focuses on quality. Learning outcomes are a cause of concern and therefore, in this last three and a half months, the highest focus has been there on how to improve quality outcomes. And for this you are aware that the minister has released on 26th August the program, Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat Abhiyaan. It was the first item in our presentation (in) this short film and its focus is on quality. Its a twin track approach to focus on the areas where learning deficits come, both in terms of time and in terms of subject. In terms of time, learning deficit in classes 1 and 2 contribute to all deficits in learning later because it is difficult to catch up. And in terms of subjects it is early reading, writing, numeracy and mathematics. So these are the main areas."

[Ravi: Thank God MHRD is focusing on learning outcomes. It is the urgent need of the hour, IMHO.]

*) Around 9:15, "If learning outcomes contribution is there, they have to be assessed. And assessment has not been a focus area in many of the states though the NCERT does it every three years, it is required for each state to do it every year because of the requirement of a third-party assessment. The normal assessment which takes place is by the teacher and the school environment. We have had consultation with the states and the states are now convinced. Each and every state will now take up a third party assessment every year so that corrective measures are taken on an annual basis on improvements of the outcomes."

[Ravi: Third-party assessment seems to be a great initiative.]

*) Around 10:52, "Along with this, encompassing everything is the ICT in education. And you would be happy to know that this four week Massive Online Open Education (MOOC) on open education resource has been launched on 5th September. More than 1500 people have registered for it. It is there on the NROER web site (http://nroer.gov.in/CourseOnOER/) which has been released a couple of months back. On this NROER website we have completed training in the last three months for all the states for creating, sharing and translating of content. And you would be happy to know that content is now available in 29 languages and 14 tribal dialects. Dialects such as Galoj, Jharkand Kartha Santhali ... You would also be happy to know that the textbooks of the NCERT have been put on the NROER website in open education system resource format. And its for the first time that this has been done. This was done about three weeks back."

Shri R. P. Sisodia, Joint Secretary, Higher Education (http://mhrd.gov.in/whoswho) talk:

*) Around 22:55, "Coming to the fact that, in this country, there is (a) lot of shortage of teachers, and good teachers, specially in the backward areas. We need to ensure that the talented academics and good teachers are made available whether they are from India or from abroad. So we have initiated a scheme by which we would ensure that eminent scholars, scientists or even from other backgrounds would come, from within the country or from abroad, who are interested in coming, staying in our institutions, teaching our students, guiding our research. So this scheme we are calling GIAN which is Global Initiative for Academic Networks, and we are shortly going to announce this."

*) Around 23:57, "The next is - we have not been able to utilize the Information Communication Technology resources that are available at our command. In order to ensure that we leverage the existing gross effort that is taking place on the education (front). Now there is a very ambitious program that we have launched and that has different components. But the essential objective of this is that we must utilize ICT resources to reach out to the last student that happens to be there. Each student should be able to access best of the knowledge that is available in the world, best of the content that is available, best of the teachers and teaching that is happening in the world. As part of that process, we started a few schemes. First of all it is SWAYAM which is the Indian version of what we keep calling as MOOCs. This will be available shortly to the Indian not only students but Indian citizens. Anyone who feels like undergoing or taking a particular course, out of sheer interest or in order to become gainfully employed, or for any other reason, he or she may simply access (it). And this will be similar to the world class delivery systems, online delivery systems that happen to be existing. And for that purpose our institutions - IITs, IIMs and central universities, they would be taking up core disciplines, their subject areas and also create content, create courses which will be available online. And if required, even certificates will be issued."

[Ravi: What will be the difference between SWAYAM and NPTEL? Or will it be NPTEL renamed?]

*) Around 25:49, "The second scheme which our honourable president had announced (in) his speech to Parliament is national e-library. The national e-library would ensure that it is an online portal to make available to everyone - students, researchers - the digital content that is there - be it books, be it journals, be it their theses, their research papers, everything should be available in the e-library. Then AICTE has started a portal which is know your college portal by which every student or a parent who is there can figure out what this college is about, what the strengths of this college, what are the weaknesses. How many teachers are there, how many students. What is the curriculum, what is the content, what are the classes taking place and all that. All that information at the click of a button would be available. Then we have started a program which is called Campus Connect. Campus Connect would essentially be a program by which our overall idea is that all the institutions of higher learning in this country should be Wi-Fi enabled, should be connected, with each other, with the national system of knowledge and for that, we have prepared a scheme by which resources available at our command, we would be eventually connecting all the universities, all the colleges with each other. And within each institution there would be a wi-fi network so that each and every student can access whatever is available on the Internet."

*) Around 30:08, "Enhancing employability: For vocational education, UGC and AICTE have started (a) scheme by which they are supporting community colleges. The UGC has also announced a new scheme which is be vocational in which a person can obtain a degree in a vocation of his/her choice and (become) employable. Similarly, in order to ensure that there are bridges built between industry and academia, a council for industry-higher education collaboration is being operationalized to identify initiatives to promote research, mobilize resources and undertake socially relevant research."

[Ravi: Community colleges seems to be an interesting initiative.]

Around 32:21: Hon'ble HRD minister, Smt Smirti Irani talk:

*  Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming and partaking in our journey of the past 100 days (through) the MHRD. I thank Mr. Bhattacharya and Mr. Sisodia for the presentation vis-a-vis school education and higher education. I think that the presentation in itself was pretty exhaustive. Hence I will only restrict myself to thanking the officers in the MHRD who have assisted us in ensuring that the 100 days have not only helped us initiate some new programmes but also helped (us) draw the path forward vis-a-vis science, technology and research. Since today is the 11th of September, a day where Swami Vivekananda gave that historic speech in Chicago, I also take this opportunity through the media to appeal to all vice-chancellors across all central universities, state universities and deemed universities, that the UGC has proposed a plan whereby chairs can be set up in the name of Swami Vivekananda so that Swami Vivekanada's philosophy, teaching and life can be researched upon and studied. I appeal to all these institutions to avail this particular grant by the UGC. Ladies and gentlemen, now I am open to questions from you. Thank you."

[Ravi: I very much support the idea of Swami Vivekananda chairs in some universities of India to study & research his teachings & life. Over time, perhaps we can have similar chairs for other powerful Indian spiritual personalities from all the religions of India.]