There is a growing recognition of the significance of academic research in India and is being monitored by public institutions. However the focus in these assessments has remained largely restricted to quantity dimensions, ignoring the dimension of quality. An analysis of research publications around the world has shown that in terms of quality research output, the country’s universities have fallen way behind than other countries. Except for a few institutions, such as IIT, IIM, All India Institutes of Medical Sciences and the Indian Institute of Science, higher education sector in India has been largely a failure in R&D.
Reasons for poor quality research in Indian universities:
- There is a lack of industry-academia interaction. In India people go for PhD to have a job security. You are paid around 25k per month. The people that aren't satisfied with low salary mostly come for PhD. As PhD may be a door to become a professor in some university. From their perspective it's the foremost relaxing job. This is the very fundamental reason research suffers.
- Everyone focuses on no. of research papers and length of thesis so that they can complete it as soon as possible. Many people just pick a random topics, 95% of the research is of no use to industry in India. In countries like USA and Germany, the companies specify their problems for research and thus a proper direction is always there. The solution is of practical use and in due course reflects within the progress of nation.
- Also in India, everyone encourages you to be "Tesla" or "Edison" but ask the administration for money and that they will tell end number of reasons justifying non funding of such projects. They will ask you for guarantee, reliability, proof and an extensive list. They want you to excel in first shot of your try. And for me surely that will not produce a Tesla. That encourages you to take a well beaten path and you re-do the things done by other people, just to ensure it will work.
- Research is not yet “valued” by the society compared to countries like USA, UK or Germany. Indians are very sensitive to what others consider them and have a tendency to think in relative terms. So a job in an IT or multinational company is more respected.
- The Jugaad approach often leads to non-perfectionist immediate type incremental research rather than innovative (which tend to be risky in terms of time and money) solutions.
- One big Problem is of claiming ownership of other research material and plagiarism.
- Our curriculum does not approve failures. Most of the PhD/M.S. works are not original and innovative. Resultant they follow a safe path of finding a research gap and filling it. Innovative and pioneering research involves risk. There are high chances that no substantial results will be yielded. In such cases he/she will need to again change the research topic or sometimes need to stop the whole work. And finally he/she will not be awarded the degree
There is a huge potential for R&D in India but there are ground level challenges. To project India into the top five scientific nations, the country needs enabling policies with increased spending and should be the front-runner in the field of research.
