Prof Rajni Kant
This is for second year in a row that the congress is in the eye of the storm. Director of B M Birla Science Centre, Hyderabad, B. G Sidharth, called the congress a ‘Kumbh Mela of science’ and according to him “It would be much better to spend the money on setting up a medical college than organize the congress”. He said that it has become a platform where old cronies meet and indulge in ‘you-scratch-my-back-and-I-will-scratch-yours’ exercise.
Dr. P.M Bhargava, founder Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, said that ISCA had deteriorated over decades and holding the event now was “an absolute waste of money”. Responding to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan’s remark, the Centre has said that the objective of ISCA is to popularize science. With all the stakeholders in one place, one gets not the deep vertical but the horizontal spread of science in this country,” said Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology. The Lucknow University vice-chancellor Professor SB Nimse, who was president of the Mumbai congress, said it was unfair to call ISC a ‘circus’ just because of an isolated remark. He (Venkatraman) is, however, correct in a sense that many people nowadays don’t take science congress seriously,” he said.
Besides the sorry state of affairs in all but the elite science education centres, there are serious problems that Indian science is facing, ranging from resource crunch to policy confusion. Organizing a seminar by any institution/ college/ University in any given subject has become a very routine fashionable affair and more a matter of pride to put a tag like “National or International seminar / Conference…..”. It is more so because of the Academic Performance Indicators (APIs) – the numbers used for promotional purposes under Career Advancement Scheme of UGC. Even the abstract booklets (a compilation of sub-standard abstracts) are not only being released by the organizing institutions, these are getting the ISSN numbers as well so that points are counted when it comes to the computation of API scores for promotion. Another dimension of organizing such events is to pour in some politicians/ ministers (whether or not related to the seminar subject/ theme) for inaugural/ valedictory functions so as to cement further the proximity with higher ups for personal gains. Recently, I attended Asian Crystallographic Association Meeting in Kolkota on December 2015 which was organized by the S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences. It had around four hundred delegates coming from over 28 countries. The inaugural function was graced by the Convenor of the Conference, President of the Crystallographic Association and President of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr). There were no flowers, bouquets, etc on the dais. The inaugural function lasted for 20 minutes and it was followed by the first plenary lecture. The immediate past-President of the IUCr commented that “the level of science/ seminar goes up if the level of hospitality is minimal and vice-versa”. How true? Unfortunately, most of the productive time, energy and resources are deployed by many of us to make the inaugural and valedictory functions successful, sometimes to please the authorities. Even the audience is imported from the non-related disciplines, at times, to prove to the society the success of an event. Unless we change our mind-set with regard to bringing more quality to the scientific content and curriculum in seminars and conferences, we will continue to be on the receiving end and perhaps we may never be able to cross the level of mediocrity, so far as science and education is concerned. Under such circumstances the national claims of scientific superiority other developing nations would remain hollow and we shall continue to be looked down upon by the developing countries as an under-developed nation. Therefore, it is high time for every academic/scientific institution to revisit the approach leading to organization of credible and serious theme/issue-based seminars and conferences so that the tax-payers money is utilized properly for the scientific growth of the nation.
In view of the fact that a lot of sub-standard seminar/ conferences are being organized by various colleges and universities these days, bringing out even sub-standard journals and seminar proceedings, the Chancellor of University of Jammu, N. N Vohra, took a very serious note of this issue during the University Council Meeting held on 23rd October 2015 and advised the University that it puts a mechanism in place to scrutinize the credentials of such seminars before the faculty is deputed for participation. In this regard, the Vice-Chancellor, University of Jammu, Prof R. D. Sharma instructed the Registry to take out a circular asking all the concerned departments/colleges to scrutinize the credibility of the seminar/conference and the reputation of the organising institutions where the faculty member(s) are being deputed for participation. This is a very positive step forward in ensuring that the institutes organize a quality seminar and the participating faculty is enriched genuinely with the deliberations taking place in such meetings.
Though it may not be enough to check the menace of sub-standard seminars but it will certainly set the ball rolling for achieving better objectivity and output of such scientific gatherings.
(The author can be reached at rkantverma@rediffmail.com)
(Concluded)