Policy Wise

While attention is frequently focussed on lack of research in basic sciences, the picture is even more abysmal in case of social sciences. S.l Rao, formerly of the National Council For Applied Economic Research explains why,

Distancing from teaching, spreading a thin layer of good academics over teaching and research institutions, the principle of the lowest common denominator that places mediocrity over merit comprise the work culture in social science institutions.

Teaching and research in the same campus expose students to current work. Researchers can test ideas on raw but good minds. Science education in colleges also suffers from poor laboratory facilities because funds are limited. Those universities that are better equipped suffer because of the growing drain of good scientists to independent research laboratories in India, mostly started by foreign companies, and to overseas facilities. Many scientists pretend in government laboratories to do ‘basic’ work when even applied research is of poor quality and application.

In the social sciences, private corporate research and financial undertakings take away good teachers and researchers too. Most social scientists in India work on sponsored research, not on hypotheses or concepts they have developed. They are poor disseminators of their work and regard popular writing as dumbing down. They depend on government largesse, and make no effort to find funding for work that interests them. Most have little connection with public policy formulation arising out of their work. Increasingly, as government freezes its funding, social science research is becoming sponsored research and the attention to basic research has declined. We need to redress the balance by increasing government funding in relation to ‘contract’ funding.

The best social scientists go overseas, or join companies. Because the best students have gone abroad and the teachers are poor scholars, the flood of mediocre graduates and PhDs of very low quality continues. Most PhDs are mediocre, they become teachers, and mediocrity is recycled.[link]

I will make one additional point: the mediocrity in built into the system from the very beginning because of the low status accorded to social sciences in India. Even at the school level, only students with the lowest grades opt for social sciences–with the possible exception of economics. College merely confirms this trend and quite naturally the available pool for academics is quite mediocre. While more government support for basic research may help, the long-term solution would have to await better economic conditions where it is possible to earn a decent living from non-science fields or to be more accurate, non professional courses.