[കേ.ശാ.സാ.പ] Re: Our research centres

Dear sir,

Thank you for nicely summarising the issues. I would like to add some
more information to that:

On Fri, 2007-05-25 at 12:31 -0700, R.V.G. Menon wrote:

> 1.On Autonomy: I agree with your perception.
> The powers that be at the state level, don't seem to have any
> appreciation for the concept of autonomy. However autonomous be an
> institution in theory, it is assumed that the Minister or the
> Secretariat has supremacy over it, in the sense that they feel
> entitled to interfere even in routine matters. This is our
> interpretation of democracy. Leaving an autonomous institution alone,
> and holding it accountable, based on a given mandate, is a concept
> which seems to be alien to us.

Interestingly, very rarely have Ministers interfered directly in the
affairs of at least CESS. The only occasions I can think of are when
drivers were being recruited several years ago. Apparently, some drivers
had recommendations from some Minster's office or the other but in all
such cases, the only thing that the candidates could drive was a screw.
On one occasion, I remember that the candidate could not even engage the
gear after starting! Not one of such candidates was selected. And
Ministers normally show respect to scientists, even to the extent of the
scientist sometimes being embarrased.

In most cases, the officials also were courteous to scientists (except
one particular occasion when an IAS official did not even offer seats to
three senior scientists who had gone to meet him).

And I fully agree that what the government should do is to leave the
institutes alone and hold them responsible.

> 2. The Mandate of our R&D Insitutions: Kerala is not a rich state.
> Still it ventured to start R&D Institutions in most of the areas which
> are critical to our development, because we wanted R&D work to be done
> on topics which are crucial to us. These may be in the nature of
> resource assessment, data base creation, providing solutions to
> practical problems faced by our line departments, or giving advice to
> the State or Local Governments. This may or may not result in
> International or even National Publications, but they will certainly
> result in reports or other documents, which are very important to the
> state.

Unfortunately, many such reports (though not all) remain on the shelves.
This is what happened in the case of the landslide in Amburi a few years
ago.

> 3. Quality Assessment: These institutions (and individuals) have to be
> assessed against this mandate of theirs. How much have they
> contributed to the development of the state? How much of their work
> has been useful to our Govt departments or other user agencies? If
> not, where does the fault lie? Has their work been substandard? Or
> have they been working on the wrong problems? Or, are the departments
> unwilling to use their results? If so, why?

We have a problem here. That is of identifying people who can do the
assessment objectively. Our research centres are supposed to be
evaluated by a team every five years. The team normally consists of
leading "national scientists". They rarely understand the objectives of
state institutes. And their problems. Though someone from Kerala also
would usually be there in the committee, s/he is usually from a
University, where the situation is very different. Their report,
therefore, is normally of no use in real terms.

> 4. Pure Science Research: It is cetrtainly true that given an
> investment of such magnitude, such institutions can always afford to
> spare a few scientists to work on problems of their own choice, which
> may not have any immediate benefit, but which could contribute to the
> advancement of the frontiers of knowledge, in a larger sense. But such
> work should be judged by international standards, and publication in
> High Impact Journals is the best measure available. Let it be
> understood that given the primary mandate of these institutions and
> the limitations of resources, the proportion of such personnel can not
> be very large. All others have to work on ground level problems!

Very true. Unfortunately, this also introduces a problem. If we have a
few researchers working on pure science problems and others on ground
level problems, there tends to be a conflict between the two groups.
This is partly a problem with scientists and partly a result of how
these two groups are viewed by others. Scientists working in pure
science tend to see the other group as doing "inferior" research and, in
turn, the other group tends to see the pure science group as living in a
glass house. Similarly, other people also tend to discriminate between
the groups based on their judgement of what scientists should do. The
administrative staff, for example, tends to behave towards individual
scientists based, at least to a certain extent, on their judgement of
the quality of research they do. And this judgement can strongly be
based on their belief about what is "good science". Scientists working
on local problems would get more publicity in the media while those
working on pure science problems would get appreciation from other
scientists. These are not major problems if people are willing to
understand their own roles and those of others.

> 5. Promotion based on peer assessment is the accepted international
> norm for scientists. It is working reasonably well in the CSIR
> institutions. There may be some instances of favouritism and some
> instances of victimisation. But by and large, it works well. Everybody
> gets promoted, sooner or later; but the good ones get promoted sooner.
> And it does make a difference to the morale of the personnel.

Promotion is often a problem, I think, in state institutes because
people see undeserving (according to them) people being given promotion
and deserving people denied. This could actually happen due to various
reasons, like the Director favouring someone or the interview committee
having an expert who is biased (or sometimes even unsuitable for the
job). This tends to demoralise some people, though, personally, I think
a researcher who is genuinely interested in his work should not take it
to heart. If he is able to do good work, he will get his reward from his
peers. The problem arises when we consider promotion as a reward.

> 7. One suggestion is to insist that a certain percentage (say 2%) of
> the budget allotment of every devlopment department, and also the
> Local Governments, should be set apart for R&D. They can use it to
> sponsor any research/ development project which is of interest to
> them, with any of these R&D Insitutions. For example, the Irrigation
> dept can sponsor a project with CWRDM, or the Mining and Geology
> Department can sponsor a project with the CESS. This will ensure that
> these institutions are working on problems which are relevant and
> which are of immediate concern to the state, and also encourage the
> User Agencies to utilize the results of the works sponsored by them.
> If the results are usless, that also will be brought out and followed
> up.

I think this idea was implemented by Dr. A.D. Damodaran when he became
the Chairman of the erstwhile STEC. But, apparently, what happened was
that the departments mostly utilised the money for some other purpose
though some departments did invest the money in research.

Best regards

-- 
V. Sasi Kumar <sasi.fsf_at_gmail.com>
Free Software Foundation of India
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