[Assam] TOI: getting PhD in India!!!?

umesh sharma jaipurschool at yahoo.com
Fri Dec 29 20:20:22 PST 2006 

Mukul-da,
   
  You didn't comment on the professors --but only on the PhD seekers. I wonder why?
  Till master's level you have to take written exams only (mostly) but for PhD the prof. becomes God. 
   
  At KMC Delhi Univ my hostel mates in science dept complained that local Delhiite/Punjabi guys, all girls etc got much more marks in laboratory than Biharis and hostelers in general --so they had to make up for that by performing better in written exams. 

  Ofcourse, except for some elite univs like Delhi univ, JNU , Bombay or other metro univs and engg/medical/mba programs --most univs do not see profs inside classrooms (mostly) -so to make the profs take pains for hD guidance there has to be somee quid-pro-quo. Thats reasonable to expect, isn't it?
   
  Umesh
   
  PS: Old news:  http://www.sacw.net/Wmov/DayalSinghCase.html
  The University of Delhi has had a long history of sexual harassment. Each case that has surfaced in the University during the past two decades shows how deeply entrenched sexual harassment is and how difficult it is to fight it and take each case to its logical conclusion. The University witnessed a series of suicides by female research scholars in the 1980s in a science department. A huge agitation in and outside the campus forced the authorities to set up an inquiry. The inquiry found the Professor guilty of sexual harassment which had led to serial suicides. A combined committee of the Executive Council and Academic Council was formed to recommend the course of action in the case, but the Professor virtually escaped punishment; he acquired an exclusive laboratory in the South Campus. It took Sushma Merh of the Department of Adult Continuing Education eight years just to be heard. The Justice Wad Committee was set up only when the Vice-Chancellor was confronted with an
 issue of the magazine Manushi at an international feminist conference abroad. This contained details of Sushma Merh’s harassment. The inquiry revealed that not only Sushma Merh but nearly twenty other women had been subjected to sexual harassment by S.C. Bhatia, the Head of the Department. In this instance, too, the culprit continued to be in his position with demotion for a long time. In the specific instance of Beena Rani, a safai karamchari in Hindu College, the college authorities whitewashed the whole issue. It was only through a struggle by a tiny but determined section of the students, teachers and karamcharis of the University that the university saw the first inquiry committee being set up according to the Supreme Court guidelines in the Vishakha case. In this instance it was the intervention of the National Commission of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes that led to the constitution of this committee. Here the committee left its task unfinished; it did not
 consider a crucial piece of evidence saying that it was not in their purview to get someone’s signatures authenticated. The NGO representative on the committee was not from one having tackled such cases and it substantially represented the interests of the authorities. By this time lots of spurious NGOs had come into existence to find place in the committees on sexual harassment established according to the Supreme Court guidelines. In another instance at Hindu College, a female teacher was abused and chased by a male colleague in the staff-room in the presence of a large number of her colleagues including some feminist activists. The Staff Association and authorities of the college did nothing in the case. In a case of sexual harassment of a librarian in Ramjas College, the inquiry remained incomplete because the complainant withdrew the case under family pressure.
   
  In each one of these cases the authorities attempted to stop the case from being raised. If by the sheer tenacity of the victim, the issue got raised, the inquiry committees invariably did not do their job properly. If in rare instances, such as the Wad Committee in Sushma Merh case the committee did its job properly, the decision-making processes to decide on the punishment of the guilty often faltered. In each case social pressures, including family pressures, were exerted on the victim to withdraw the case.
  
mc mahant <mikemahant at hotmail.com> wrote:
                    I cleaned classrooms too at Harvard --but not to please my profs but to earn money to stay alive.


  SO you followed Gita's edict"I have the right only to work-not to expect results"
  No wonder nobody in Gita got a Harvard /Ahmedabad Ph.D.
  Ph.D. is all about getting a better scale of pay(UGC).
  In Indian TV discussion forums(fora) one sees" Ph.D. Scientists" pining  how China produces annually more than 28000 Engineering/Science/Technology Ph.D's and India --"Not even 10000"
  Heartrending?!
  mm
   
  

 

  
    
---------------------------------
    
From:  umesh sharma <jaipurschool at yahoo.com>
Reply-To:  umesh.sh05 at post.harvard.edu
To:  assam at assamnet.org
Subject:  [Assam] TOI: getting PhD in India!!!?
Date:  Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:58:50 +0000 (GMT)
  

  I cleaned classrooms too at Harvard --but not to please my profs but to earn money to stay alive. I was the only graduate student member (perhaps) of Harvard Dormmmm Crew http://dormcrew.com/termtime/index.html 
      
     Good that some Indian profs have become professional enough to keep time-sheets of the sweeping work done by their students -towards their PhD grades.
      
     Umesh
      
      
     http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Want_PhD_Look_for_jhadu/articleshow/987638.cms
      
     Want PhD? Look for a 'jhadu'
     
          AHMEDABAD: Remember that Jaspal Bhatti comedy 
show, where a PhD student spent more than half of his research time buying groceries, booking rail tickets and mopping floors for his guide in order to get his thesis done on time? 

Well, that may have been reel life. But in real life too, Jigar Patel, a research scholar at Gujarat University's chemistry department, went through all of this. And his guide VK Jain insisted that Patel maintain a daily activity log sheet mentioning this non-academic work and even signed it. 

A year into his research, a frustrated Patel has filed an application under the Right to Information Act, seeking answers from the university on whether mopping lab floors, repairing electrical equipment, booking tickets for his guide formed part of his research topic — 'Calix Pyroles and Its Applications'. 

Patel claims in his application that he was asked by Jain to do odd 
jobs like repairing his scooter’s flat tyre and depositing cheques. Patel has submitted a copy of the log book. An entry in Patel's log sheet on October 16, 2005, which carries Jain's signature, states, "Went to BSNL office, creation for printer work, post-office, watch shop for repairing, complex preparation of dyes and computer work." 

Another entry dated September 19, 2005 reads, "Printer repair, mouse change and searched for 'Jhaadu' (broom)." Similar entries appear practically every day till September this year on Patel's log sheet. 

"After going through my daily log sheet, no one would believe that I did complex research. I filed the RTI application to bring to the university’s notice the harassment we face from some guides. It is time students came out in the open," said Patel. 

"Students resist protests against errant teachers fearing   
that it may ruin their academic career as the guide may refuse to give a recommendation. But these issues need to be brought out in public and authorities held responsible," says sociologist Gaurang Jani.   
  


Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, 
(Washington D.C. Metro Region)
MD 20740 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
website: www.gse.harvard.edu/iep   Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com   
  

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Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, 
(Washington D.C. Metro Region)
MD 20740 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
website: www.gse.harvard.edu/iep
 Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com 
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