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.
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