Indian Post-docs for INDIA
Kangkan Halder
Thursday, 27 December 2007 09:24 UTC
Dear Friends,
We the graduate (doctoral) students toiling day-&-night to get a degree, also learn many a techniques apart from doing all other day-to-day necessecities of the lab (logistic update, ordering, instrument repairing, etc). And most importantly, we are vibrant with ideas and dreams. And all this goes to a foriegn lab (no disregards what-so-ever !!) primarily for two reasons. First, financial and second, somehow the scientific recruiter’s prefer a Stanford / MIT returned guy with a high profile (Noble laureate Post-doc Mentor, couple of Impact factor 10+ journal publication, etc). Anyways, these are the ‘cause’ eventually leading to the ‘consequence’ of relatively poor performance in whole of Indian Science. I understand that most of the scientists working in India would agree with me – as a Post-doc is a trained scientist – he/she(a) can easily handle a lab and couple of students
(b) would work hard and keepup the dealines alive
© are risk-takers trying to establish new ideas
(d) …….. and more can be added to this list.
Now, how can we retain ‘Indian Post-docs in INDIA’ – thoughts / suggestions are requested.
:)
Updated 27 December 2007 09:27 UTC
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Dear friends,
It’s great to see that many of us are thinking hard for finding some solution to Kanqkan’s questions. I strongly agree with most of your thoughts. About enhancing the respect of post-docs in India, I also wish to add something. But I must put a word of caution here that what I am going to jot down is very personal.
I did my masters and now doing research in the biggest university and research institution of my State, respectively. Still I find many times that the researchers do not get their quota of respect from the scientists in particular and society at large. Society might respect talent later but it runs after money-makers first. And scientists seldom estimate talent correctly. In such situations, the researchers are churned in humiliations. “After studying hard for such a long time, what have we earned?” Such questions keep killing the true scientist in us.
I have discovered something serious here. Perhaps we never respected a researcher from the beginning and now begging it. Truly speaking, we never learned about their potential, even at the masters level of education. Some of the teachers even discouraged us to become one. And now many us feel them right.We have to change the word ‘respect’ to ‘self-respect’. And self-respect does not come from outside. It’s a matter of confidence. If we really have it, then we have to show it out to the world. We have to shout our voice out. We have to mark our existence. We have to understand each project wholly and mark our own identity in that. We have to arrange seminars, webinars, symposia, etc. of our own. We have to make a respectable community of the researchers. Independently. We have to make the change we want. I know, our true teachers are always with us.
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Dear All,
I have been reading all the comments quite a few times (and almost everyday!) and to my best of belief, I am confident about the Indian Science future. All the comments are constructive (with a pinch of criticism at times). Even if a part of the suggestions can be looked into seriously – we are done. Bikash Mohanty in his first comment pointed towards one of the most important characteristic change required for Indian postdocs – enhance respect for Post-docs. Kuljeet Sandhu believes that we have a strong education system but cautions about post-doc situations in US. I hope similar message could be widely publicized (seniors in US should guide the juniors in India). This can help in retaining some Indian post-docs in India. Dr. Gajendra Raghava looks money as an alluring factor still keeping our post-docs not so keen to come back. Though the present hike (almost ~1.5 times) in the JRF/SRF/RA fellowships and the next pay commission should take care some of his concerns (hopefully). Dinesh Kumar Singh however is not convinced with any possible change happening just by salary factor. He demands more transparency concerning funding/work and also in the personal attitute (personally, I agree with him – however I have no clue to changing ‘attitude’. Hope we have some comments on that too.) Chaitanya Saxena summarized nicely in his bulleted points taking care of most of the discussion – definitely adding up by suggesting (a) post-doc committees (personally, I liked it a lot) and (b) commercialize ideas. Finally Bikash Mohanty gives an eye-opener. In his words: Perhaps we never respected a researcher from the beginning and now begging it. Truly speaking, we never learned about their potential, even at the masters’ level of education. This should be taken seriously – which would mean that we should respect our juniors from the college right now.This is an amazing learning discussion for me. Hope and wish we all have some take-home message from this forum.
I have a request to all of you. Please send the forum link to your colleagues and PI’s – so that we can have more insight towards other aspects too. I believe that in the end all of us would be benefited in one way or the other.Wish you all a pleasant day ahead :)
_KH -
Anonymous
With the recommendations of the new pay commission, what is new salary for a scientist in India?Anyone knowledgeable, please update.Just curious to know.
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Anonymous
For salary of a scientist in new pay commision you can check for the report on 6th pay commission over here (http://www.india.gov.in/)
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can anyone tell me nature.india journal impact factor?
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Anonymous
Hello Saumya
I dont think there will be some impact factor of “Nature.India” journal. It seems your question is out of relevance of this “Indian Post-docs for INDIA” forum question put up by Kangkan Halder also.Any way Good Luck to you
arun
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