Unrealistic expectations from indian society
Gajendra P.S. Raghava
Tuesday, 26 August 2008 19:10 UTC
One of my observation, over the years in India is most of us have unrealistic expectations from society/country. This is main reason of our frustrations.
we blame our seniors/juniors etc. why they have not done this or that for society. Same time we never ask this question from our self, why we are not contributing to society or what we have contributed to society or how can we contribute to society.
Most of our students complain that they their teachers are not highly qualified or standard of teaching is low. When you ask from same students whether they wants to become teacher after completing their degree. Their answer is no. How can we expect high standards of science/teaching if we are not ready to contribute. We wants that we should do highly paid jobs and others should do low paid jobs like scientists/teachers.
I wish to initiate a discussion on “Open source from India”http://network.nature.com/forums/natureindia/2029" but response was too poor. We have initiated Indipidia in order to provide resources related to India. Idea is to provide information related to science particularly drug discovery, we are not getting any contributors from Indian students/scientists so far. If we all contribute to this side than it is possible we may easily get opportunities in India. If our own people are not ready to contribute to society than why we expect open source should be created from India.
Our frustration will continue till we expect from other without any expectations from self. This is our country, if we wish wish that it should be a perfect country than each of us should ask question from self “What we have contribute to our county today”.
Nobody is going to help us only we can help us by contributing to society. Do not bother what other are doing for country. Think how we can contribute to society in order to make it better. Blame game will not lead to us any where.
Their is need of realistic thinking rather than self-centered thinking.
-
Replies
-
Unrealistic expectations have gone too far. But they are partly realistic and partly unrealistic.
For last 30 years or so the best Institutes & Universities have been churning out only Graduates turned to Managers. Hence serious problems have arisen due to dearth of qualified persons in the Academic institutions/ Hard and Hot Shop Industries. Even IITs/ IIMs are not getting good teachers because the salary of the teachers are quite less in comparison to those who have gone to IT or Management.
Bioinformatics is a part of the Vocational courses introduced recently in the Universities. But no person in a town is available with a degree in the subject. For all the Vocational courses this statement is true. The lectures are given by Guest Faculties who have no background in the related subject. They seem to have touched sometime in their life a small part of the course from a few km distance. This is why students need outsiders help in their training/ placement etc.
It is unfortunate that Universities and colleges started the Vocational courses without meeting the requirement. Pl. make a note that much worse is that they are examined and evaluated by the same very non-qualified persons. Universities award degrees on the basis of this.
Solution:
In my opinion the solution is High Tech arrangement of teaching before camera in real time in all the colleges offering the given course. Alternatively, recorded lectures can be handed over on CD/DVD to the Colleges.The former option can be preferred as there can be live Q-A sessions.
-
Dear Dr. Raghava,
I can understand your frustation.But I tried Indipedia.. and I don’t think message is clear and its also not written in simple language.. Therefore Indiapedia might have difficulties in finding contributors.. (n yeah, website is too slow)
Second problem is knowledge itself.. I comes from Bareilly College, where I never did molecular biology but I qualified NET/JRF in MSc itself..
And when I went to IISc or other big institutions in India.. I was never welcomed…
*I think scientists don’t care how intellegent a student is.. or how much he have the energy to contribute in science.. they just want students from big universities.. *
And this really putt me off..
I went to IISc interview.. and even they know that I comes from traditional zoology background.. they ask questions… on critical molecular biology experimental design…
They alerady know that I can never answer these questions.. because I have never studied that.. but they always ask…
*so its not all about how students think… its also about how our scientists make choices… *
-
I hope situation will improve with the Chadda committee suggestion of pay hike in universities.
-
I promise to load open matlab code for pattern recognition on Indipedia. I will take 3 months to do so as it is under publication. But this can be futher improved to include more.
Let us start doing it. -
Dear Amit, Sorry for late response due to some other assignments. Regarding problems you faced in Indipedia was due to bandwidth problem that has been solved. Present bandwidth is 2MBPS which is very less, now we are working for 45MBPS bandwidth. Technical issues are small issue which can be handled, major issue is response of public. One side people complain that we do not have opportunity and other side if they got opportunity than they do not use it.
I am not frustrated why people are not joining but I am worried about people why they are not utilizing opportunities. Our group is working from last number of years in bioinformatics and we have developed more than 80 web servers. All servers are free for public and these servers are heavily used by scientific community (more than 20000 hits per day). Regarding CRDD, our group is working and we hope it will be a powerful resources in few years. The question arises why I am writing too much on nature network, it is due to fact most people at nature network are criticizing indians but same set of people do not want to contribute anything or doing anything except criticism. I am giving challenge to these peoples to demonstrate their capability by contributing to society rather than plane abusing the system. Constructive criticism is good for system but same time every one has responsibility to contribute to system.
Regarding your bad experience about IISc. I can not comment why they have not selected you. The question is why you wants to join only IISc? It is probably due to fact that these scientists are doing better than others. Every student wants to join best group, similarly IISc scientist also wants to select best student suitable to them in all respect so they spend minimum time on teaching. We all have to understand problem of each other. Its every where in the world that every student wants best group and scientists wants best students.
It is nothing to do city or village, IISc have large number of students from rural background. if you see statistics more us (scientists) have come from village so why we will discriminate a students from same background. Major problem is some scientists got too many NET qualified students so these scientists have no option except to put some filters.
-
