Karva Chauth and Ten years of fasting

Last week was Karva Chauth- the day when all the married women in North India fast for the well being of their husbands. It is a festival I have never understood. We have a similar festival down in the South. Only it does not involve fasting but tying a yellow thread around the neck.  The other difference is that both unmarried and married women participate-the married women pray for the well-being of their husband and the unmarried pray for a good husband.  I must have been in 7th or 8th class when I began protesting against this festival.  I did not want a yellow thread around my neck and having to answer embarrassing questions in the school.  More importantly, I did not see why my brother should not pray for a good wife or why my father should not pray for the well-being of his wife. This one-sided business made no sense to me.  My mother and I had a fight over this festival every year till I left home. At that point she kind of gave up on me.

While the South Indian version is plain and simple, the North Indian version is colorful thanks to the patina provided by Karan Johar's movies.  My friend puzzled by the fervor of Karva Chauth, she wanted to know the reason.  She was told the reason plain and simple: One gets gifts including diamond set. Well that makes lots of sense though I still think keeping a fast for a diamond set is stupid. Now if some one was promising me books it would be a different matter...

This week is Irom Sharmila's tenth year of fast.  This one is shorn of all glamor. All Irom Sharmila wants is the AFSPA to be withdrawn from Manipur.  Successive governments have come and gone. Whatever be the color of the government, they all agree that AFSPA is necessary for a state like Manipur. No one bothers to answer why it is important. Makes no sense to me but...

Some amazing moments

Okay, we are still behind many nations in sports. And many of the top players did not come for CWG. But still it is amazing...
We won two medals in gymnastics...
We won medals in field and track events.  Yes, Dani Samuels did not come but to make a clean sweep of the discus throw is amazing.  And the 4 X 400m women relay won the gold. That was wow.
Medals were expected in shooting as well as in wrestling and boxing.  Badminton too given Saina Nehwal plays for us.
But hockey was unexpected...though I wish that we did not have to lose so badly to Australia!
What was also unexpected was the way the stadiums started filling up towards the end. My students and I went for a hockey match- women's hockey NZ versus South Africa (semi-finals) and Wales vs Scotland. The stadium was at least 2/3 full and everyone was cheering...
I do not know what it means in the long run or even if we can sustain this momentum.  We will know soon for the Asian Games begin next month in China.
I did not want the CWG... but now I am not so sure. At least Delhi got some new infrastructure, though I do really wish they had not built the village on Yamuna floodplains. In addition, the ASI got into act and repaired some of the monuments.
I do not know...if our politicians had bit of sense then they would bid for games in other cities or at least spread it around a bit so that other cities too could bit of infrastructure, considering we seem to spend on it only when we have to put up a show.
Anyway, given the way CWG has been a success (successful corruption as well), the political parties are now dreaming of Olympics.

P.S. The hockey match was in the evening and it was 10 pm when it got over.  We were 4 women and in Delhi, we could walk over to the Metro station, catch a metro to New Delhi Railway station, get an auto and get back safely. That was truly amazing.

Mothers and sons...

Growing up my biggest grouse was that my mother expected me to do all the housework while my brother escaped scot-free. Of course my mother had a ready excuse:
"He is left-handed."
So?
So he did not have to grind the dosa batter or do the coffee grinding or clean the table or learn to cook or mop the floor or any of the hateful thousand tasks my mother lined up for me.

My mother, whenever confronted, denies being more indulgent towards her son. But science is on my side. Here is the article from Guardian that confirms my suspicion: Mothers are more hard on their daughters irrespective of their origin.

Life in the times of CWG

As I type, India has 20 medals. And there are questions asked about poor attendance.

I went to CGO complex as my DBT report was long overdue and I need the next years money to fund my lab. The CGO complex is next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.  I took a taxi.  It was a bad choice as events proved later.

The roads are a mess. One lane has been blocked for the CWG players and they are ferried about in AC buses (DTC low floor buses) with dark curtains so no one can see the players. None of the players were curious enough to peek out either.  The remaining lanes are for us citizens and naturally everything was jammed.  The police is out in full force with guns and bunkers. Reminded me of the high days of Khalistan movement when the bunkers were everywhere. It was spooky.

The JNS is a fortress. No car can enter.  No parking allowed either. So I had to dismiss the taxi and walk down to the complex. At the entrance to the complex I had to show my identity card before I was allowed to enter.

Why would anyone in right mind attend the games?

Of course, the citizens do not exist. All the laborers have been deported out of Delhi. The most affected are daily wagers because no one seems to care as to how they will survive without money?  And aren't we citizens? Don't we have the right to live in our country, in the city of our choice? What right does the government have to treat us as aliens?

I took an auto back. The autowallah put it right:
"The government better remember that the foreigners are not going to vote in the next elections. It is we who are going to vote."

Tomorrow I need to go to CSIR complex, which is near Pusa. Not looking forward to it. Though I think it might be easier as there are no stadiums close to the complex.

Dilli badnam hui...

That is what the CNN-IBN is happily saying:
Dilli badnam hui darling tere liye.

I thought the height of absurd statements was Lalit Bhanot's sage pronouncement:
"The standards of our hygiene is different from theirs."

One of the most enduring memories of my hostel days is the dark and dank and smelly toilet. I simply do not know how I managed the two years at Baroda but it was terrible.  Toilets, for me, have to be clean and airy and light.  But Indian toilets are generally afterthought...something we need but prefer to push it out of sight.  Of course cleaning toilets is anathema to us. Forget what Gandhi said or did, it is simply not done because we, you see, do not clean toilets. There  are special people to do so. One of my acquaintances once said to me that he does not clean toilets and he did not see what was big deal for Infosys Chief and his wife to highlight this aspect of their life. I was little stunned. I was about to ask as to who cleans up the toilets in his house but I bit my tongue in time.

When I moved into my current residence, which by the way is currently dripping water thanks to the incessant rains and 150 years of excellent work by CPWD, the toilet was a sight to be seen. The first thing I did was to get a bottle of Harpic and scrub the toilet till it was usable.  Why do we do such things?

The toilets in our School are no better.  I finally had to post a stinker of a note before the girls started behaving themselves. Even now we keep the Western toilet locked up because we figured that many girls do not know how to use it.

There is no question of their hygiene and our hygiene. Simply put-toilets have to be clean. It is good sanitation and key to prevent health problems. The sooner Lalit Bhanot understands this point the better.

Meantime, Dilli badnaam hui darling tere liye.

I think I am going to enjoy the CWG.

A tale of two songs.

Two songs have been composed for the Commonwealth Games. One is by Palash Sen who has a group called Euphoria.  The other is by A.R. Rahman.  Therein lies the tale.

The song by Palash Sen is fantastic. The lyrics evoke the old time Delhi- you know the sepia tinted photographs of an era long gone by. Of course Palash Sen is very much a Delhite. He grew up in Delhi and he lives in Delhi and the passion for his city is reflected in the song. We can argue endlessly whether Delhi as a city is worth being passionate about but as someone who grew up in Delhi I remember a Delhi that is every different from the one it is today.  Listening to the Delhi theme song, it is that old time Delhi, the laid-back city, the one with wide tree-lined avenues, the one of lazy winter afternoons flashes through the mind.

I listened to A.R.Rahman's song too and I think the major problem is the language. Palash Sen has very wisely stuck to Hindi.  It is different matter whether Hindi is the language of our country or not. But the fact is that the ethos, the passion is usually reflected only one's native tongue.  A. R. Rahman's song is a kichdi. It is a wannabe and unfortunately it remains a wannabe. The music content of many of Rahman's song takes multiple listening before it grows on to you. So I am keeping an open mind. Maybe I will like the music after multiple listenings.   But what do we do with the lyric. Nonsense lyrics like Take it Easy policy is okay for a movie. However, when you expand it to something like Commonwealth Games it is stupid. 

A.R. Rahman had said that he would do one better than Waka Waka, the theme song of World Cup. We will leave it for history to judge it.  Personally, I prefer Waka Waka.

In today's Delhi Times Geeta Chandran has aptly summed up the problem with the theme music. And she concludes by reminding the readers of the Asiad theme song which was set to music by Ravi Shankar and sung by Amitabh Bacchan. The point to remember is that the music as well as lyric were so simple that all of us hummed.  

As a last point I do not know how much Palash Sen was paid but definitely Rs 5 crore that was paid to Rahman for a theme song is obscene especially when there was flash flood in Ladakh and parts of Bihar are reeling under drought.

Refreshed

Finally the refresher course is over. There was a fracas. One of the persons who came to give a talk decided to tell us that he was an expert in Helicases. These are proteins that unwind DNA during replication, transcription etc.  I have no problems in someone declaring that they are experts as long as they are willing to substantiate that claim. To be fair, I think he thought he would be safe in making that declaration because the refresher courses are generally for college teachers and as they do not do research he decided he could get away with the proclamation. Unfortunately, I was there in the audience and once he pompously announced that we should keep quiet during the lecture as it was a difficult topic he was explaining, I decided to have some fun. I asked a very legitimate question and he was furious. Then my colleague with whom I collaborate for doing biophysical studies decided to ask a question which he could not answer. He boiled with rage when I prompted him by taking names of the scientists who done the work and therefore, if he is an expert, he should immediately recall. That cooked my goose.  The next opportunity he got he went for me with all guns blazing. The end result was that I happily walked out of the class and he ranted that we were all stupid. Which got another of my colleague riled up and there was a lovely fracas. Hopefully, we will not ever get him to give another talk.

Take home lesson:  Never take your audience for granted.

"Common Wealth" Games

I do not know why there is so much fuss about all the corruption. After all it is Common Wealth, so every one is helping themselves to it.

Bachi Karkaria as usual nails it down in her column.

The CPWD with its 160 years of experience has created world class facility. Where in the world will you have stadium with leaking roofs?  Where else can you find seepages in brand new constructions?

Of course the roads caved in. It is part of the monsoon charm. The month of Sawan...

Two days back we had a 11 hour power cut. The Government is ensuring that we become acclimatized to the long power cuts because that is the only way they can provide power during the games.

Meantime, I am spending time getting refreshed yet again. The University refuses to believe that having projects and papers are sufficient proof that I am constantly updating myself. Most of the lectures are terrible so we sit in back giggling and making comments. It helps in passing the time.

Decision making-whom to accept as PhD student

This year there was a deluge of applications to join my lab.  There were applications even before our interview processes took place and of course after the candidates were selected, all of them made a beeline to my lab. Chromatin remodeling is the latest buzzword. While I can preen myself on it, it also made life difficult for me. How do I select a candidate?

The first thing is that I do not look at resumes. It does not tell me anything. Given the Indian University context, it tells me how good a student is at memorizing stuff. Beyond it I do not get any information about the student. Is she/he creative? What do they like to do? What is it that they find fascinating?

I took recourse in the way interviews are done abroad. Where the faculty and the student essentially chat. All my interactions were one-to-one. As I told the student about the work we were doing I was looking for responses. Is the student curious? Do they find a phenomenon interesting? How do they react to unusual data?

I interacted with 20 students in all. I found 2 who were very interesting and keen. It was a pleasure to interact with them. 2 were responsive but not curious. The rest were not curious.

All the students were asked to interact with my lab. The feedback I got back from my students was then matched with what I had observed in my interviews.

Unanimously we have narrowed down on one student. I do have back-up names but I know whom I want to have in my lab.

I have not yet announced my decision. Funnily none of the 4 students are toppers in any sense. They are good but they are not the kinds who have won awards. They have not even topped our merit list.  But as I said in the beginning, resumes in India are meaningless till we stop evaluating students based on what they have memorized.

New Web Page

Finally, I pulled myself together and created a new web page. Or at least I put the material together and Ritu Nidhi from CIS created the web page.  There are some glitches that need to be taken care off. But for the present there is a web page that provides information about my laboratory. It can be accessed here:
http://www.jnu.ac.in/Faculty/rohini/

Monsoons and Commonwealth Games

My gardener, Nanku Ram, was extremely upset this morning. Yesterday's downpour has wreaked havoc in his home. Water entered the house and everything, from atta to bed, was soaked. His children were pulled out by a neighbour as they tried to wade through waist high water. The family finally had dinner late in the night that they purchased from outside because there was nothing to cook.
Nanku Ram lives in Munirka.  Of late, Munirka has been receiving attention in the form of flyovers. They have been built one after another on the outer ring road to ease traffic problems. Of course, small unimportant things like proper drainage for the rain water has been forgotten. As well as subways/footbridge for the pedestrians. The pedestrians do not exist and it is the houseowner's problem to make sure that their house is built in such a way that the water does not enter in during rains.
Munirka does not have bus shelters either despite a plethora of buses plying on the route. On the other hand, GK-I where no bus plys has two bus shelters. Go figure!
Delhi is a chaos.  The Chief Minister has made a comment today that Delhi is appearing dirty because all the construction activity is going on simultaneously.  What can one say? This is the CM who also said that she was unaware of CVC report on corruption in CWG.  Blind, that is what she is. Someone give her glasses please.

Graduation party

Yesterday, two of my students submitted their thesis and we celebrated the event with a dinner party. It was also a sort of surprise farewell party for Pravin who graduated earlier this month. Here is the photo:

The new academic session

Officially classes start tomorrow. However, our M.Sc semester students have not joined as those classes will start sometime in August.

This year I have been inundated with PhD applications. The applications started coming even before our M.Phil/Ph.D interviews were held. Only one set of results have been declared and the other set is yet to be declared. Meantime, I am being forced to take decisions.

I understand chromatin remodeling/epigenetics is the new "in thing". Just like molecular biology and stem cell and all the other fancy terms. Everyone wants to work on it. Unfortunately, the reality is different from the glamour. Really speaking my lab also does those very boring things like purifying plasmids and running agarose gels. The experiments fail, even the most perfectly designed ones. There is more sweat than anything else.

This year four of my senior most students have or are graduating. It is little poignant because the first students always remain in one's memories. They either make or break labs. Mine were fantastic bunch of students who helped build my lab up. If my lab is doing well then all the kudos goes to them. I sit in my office in front of my computer. They are the ones who have to deal with the vendors, failed experiments, and M.Sc project students and all the other load that I dump on them.

This week we are going out to celebrate their graduation. As I took a head count of the members I realized that we will be at least 15 of us. It shook me a little bit-that number. As a post-doc when I was dreaming of my own lab, I remember telling Brad, a graduate student in Charlie's lab that I wanted a small lab. Couple of students whom I would teach. We would do good work of course. There was to be no compromise on that because of my Phd and post doc advisors. Brad was a dreamer too and he dreamt big. My small lab idea appalled him. I wonder what he would say now if he were to see my lab.

Biotechnology-the bane of Indian education

We are very fond of fancy words. It took me two years of M.Sc to realize that I should have never done biotechnology because I did not learn anything and forgot everything about chemistry. It took me one year of hard work before I was confident to appear in subject GRE. It is a different matter that I did manage to get 98 percentile and that UVa offered me a PhD seat based solely on that score.

As I sat through one more year of PhD interviews and listened to students telling us that they had done biotechnology in B.Sc and M.Sc, I felt throttling the person who dared to perpetrate this bad joke on the Indian Universities. Every one offers Biotech and all possible variations of Biotech. In addition, there is a B.Sc Biochemistry, B.Sc Microbiology and all other sorts of fancy courses. These students know nothing of biochemistry, or chemistry, or physics, or math, or biology. In fact they know nothing!

Today I was at National Institute of Plant Genome Research (some time later I will spew out my rants on Institutes)as an external examiner. The objective was the same- select candidates for PhD program.

Some of the students who attended the interview had done biochemistry and knew about enzymes. Now enzymes are catalysts. They bind to a particular compound called substrate and help it to be converted into a product. The affinity of an enzyme for a particular substrate is constant. However, the rate of reaction is altered. So my question was very simple: If you keep the enzyme concentration constant and vary the substrate concentration, you will get saturation at a particular point. From this graph, you can calculate the affinity of the substrate for the enzyme. Next, what will happen if you increase or decrease the concentration of the enzyme.

Not a single student knew what would happen.

We are mean at times. We take pot shots at them. We expect them to know the very basics like how to make solutions. What is 1M solution and how will you make it? What is a buffer?

The student knows all about hi-fi techniques- the latest in the field. But none of them know what is a buffer, the very basis of a laboratory reaction.

What does one do?

Key to the city

This is a project currently initiated in New York. The project, started on June 3rd, is an attempt to give the key to 24 places in NY that are usually off-limits to unauthorized people.

As I read the article, the concept was first explored in Sao Paulo, I wondered what if it was transplanted into India. What are the places that people should have access to? Since Delhi has the unique distinction of being constructed by CPWD, there is really no limits to the architectural wonders. But let us just make a list for the heck of it. So here is mine:

1. Mayur Bhawan. This houses the income tax department, a place to visit every year to deposit your income tax returns. It is dingy, with broken down staircase, and walls liberally sprinkled with paan stains. One visit is sufficient to know that getting a refund is a miracle in making.

2. Passport Office. Located in the South Delhi, near Bhikaji Cama Place, the entry is through a narrow gate which is opened only sufficiently to allow one person to enter. To enjoy the office and to admire the workings, one needs to visit it on a full working day in the peak of summer when the A/C is not working. That is when the officials manning to desk go on sudden strike and allow the crowd to simmer and smother in the heat. As an aside: My passport still has not arrived even though it is more than 45 days.

3. CPWD Service center: A marvel in itself. Visit any one that is not located in Pandara Road or Lodi Estate or Rabindra Nagar or Bharti Nagar. These venues serve the high and mighty and do not really depict the beauty of a normal CPWD service center. The normal one will be empty save for a wooden desk. The almirah will have some broken down tools. The men will be sitting outside smoking a beedi especially on a cold winter day.

4. New Delhi Railway Station: This is being currently renovated. But no amount of renovation will help this place. Not when there are plenty of people to spit on the floors and the walls, to urinate, and to throw garbage around. A visit to the pre-paid auto rickshaw stand is a must. None of the auto-rickshaw wallahs like the pre-paid scheme so they tend to avoid the place like the plague. Generally, a police man stands on the road to catch hold of a hapless auto driver and to arm twist him into taking the passenger who has purchased the ticket to his/her destination. It is an enjoyable sight as long as you are not the passenger. Currently, after the last stampede, the place is out of bounds for people who are not bona-fide passengers.

5. Munirka: Though one does not require a formal key to this place, a sort of map would be nice but I doubt if any map can be created of this congested, filthy, mosquito-infested place. Houses and shops sprout with a delightful lack of any orderliness. The houses are a marvel. A key to one of them should be provided to know how not to build a house. You wonder how people live in it as they would not be getting any air or light. This, in case any of you is wondering, is made possible by the simple expedient of removing windows during the construction. The staircases in each house (all are multi-storied) are steep without railings. All in all an experience for a life time.

That reminds me. I have a veenai class. More architectural marvels later.

First Prize-Children Book Trust

Last June Children Book Trust announced a writing competition. The results were supposed to be announced in October but it took them till May to announce them. I saw it in the web today. My story has been awarded the first prize in the Get Ready for Magical Time.
Not bad!
I screeched of course with joy and our maid took fright. She thought something had happened to my father for he has not been feeling well. My mother took it in her stride. Her rationale was that I always screech so she is used to it.
Meantime, I am waiting from JBC for they said that they are processing our rebuttal letter.

Getting a paper published

Our paper was returned back from JBC with a comment:

The experimental work appears solid but incremental.

Therefore, it cannot be published.

Never mind that we showed a paradigm shift by our experiments, mapped the interaction region, used thermodynamics to show one path is preferred over the other! The reviewer is convinced that is just incremental.

I guess I had would not have been annoyed if the reviewer had pointed out the flaws or if the editor had said it was beyond the scope of the journal and suggested where we can submit the work. To dismiss the entire work as just a teeny bit incremental (which by the way is such a subjective term) is annoying least to say.

The only recourse I have is to submit the paper to another journal and write a rebuttal letter to the editor of JBC.

The superiority complex

I spent a tiring half hour trying to explain to a colleague why it is better to avoid confrontations. Alas, without success.

It is a syndrome with us in India. We always have to feel superior. My caste is better than yours. My religion is better than yours. My gender is better than yours. I am your employer therefore...I am senior to you by few seconds so you better... constantly we hammer this into the other person.

So my colleague wants to show that he is Da Boss. Go ahead. Show it. But do not expect the people working under you to have any respect for you or work properly for you.

The other faculty are amazed that my Lab attendant does actual work for me. I have been very lucky. He is amazing. Of course there are times when I get angry with him but since he ends up doing all the paper work, I usually forget to remain angry with him. He got promoted and was moved away from my lab but he still does all my paper work. He also ends up fighting on my behalf. On one memorable occasion, when the project cell was making my life miserable as usual and refusing to pay my air fare for a conference, he told the project cell section officer that as I had paid the fare out of my pocket, he better be ashamed of himself and reimburse me pronto. Needless to say the section officer called me up, apologized and reimbursed the entire amount pronto. And after that incident he has never harassed me and my bills do get paid sooner or later.

But I cannot explain this to others. Just treat the other person as a human being. Why can´t you?

The same phenomenon holds for interviews too. The committee sits grim faced, ready to show that the candidate walking into the room knows nothing and then proceeds to grill him/her on all that they have memorized. For heavenś sake, why can´t we simply talk to them, try to figure out their interests and ask them questions that they can answer?

Oh well, one cannot change the leopardś spot.

Gussie Fink-Nottle and I

When Mrs. Dahlia Travers wants someone to hand out the prizes at the Market Snodsbury Grammer school, she calls her nephew Bertie Wooster, who cleverly wriggles out of the assignment by roping in his friend Gussie Fink-Nottle. As Mrs. Travers says, they are not very choosy at the Market Snodsbury Grammer School and a newt lover is as good as any body else. Gussie Fink-Nottle horrified at the prospect of having to make a speech takes Bertieś advice and has a drink(s) to fortify himself for the ordeal.

Unfortunately, I could not do what Gussie Fink-Nottle did when NATURE NGO called me to be the Chief Guest at their annual function. More horror was waiting for me when I realized I would have to speak in Hindi. Now I can talk in Hindi. I can even curse in Hindi but I cannot make a speech in Hindi. All I could fortify myself was a glass of pepsi, which I should not drink but nothing stronger was available. I came out of the ordeal pretty okay but I am still shaken up. I cannot imagine anything worse than spouting advice in public. Yeesh! All I can do in such situations is to recall how I used to sit in the back as a school student giggling at the Chief guest, stifling a yawn and when I can get out. And the chief guest would drone on and on and on and on....ad infinitum.

On serious note: NATURE NGO is a venture of three sisters all of whom are blind. They are amazing. One of them is at Daulat Ram College. She commutes from Moti Bagh, where she and her husband live, to North Campus, from there to Raja Garden, and then back home every day. The other sister, Amita, is a teacher at Govt. School, Tagore Garden, and is the prime mover behind this venture. And finally, the younger sister who also participates. They have one brother who is also blind.
The NGO runs a formal school called Gyan Jyoti at Raghubir Nagar, a JJ colony near Raja Garden. They have classes from Class I to V and about 80 children are attending it. They have partial funding from Noon.ch, a Swiss funding agency and are searching for an organization who can fund the remaining budget.

The program was fun. But what was really nice to see was the way the children behaved with Amita and her sisters. That sensitivity is sorely lacking in our society.

Eureka

Then entire lot of molecular biologist use a gene called neomycin resistance gene for selection purposes. Any cell that contains neomycin resistance gene will become resistant neomycin and its ilk, including streptomycin. As a graduate student I showed that the gene product converts neomycin and its ilk into a small molecule that inhibits a specific class of ATP hydrolyzing enzymes.

No body believed us. Joel had no grant to work with because he was believed to be an heretic. I managed to get some grant by being devious and by being in India.

We then showed that when you put the neomycin resistance gene into a cell, the cell's genetic content changes. This was a powerful data but the proof was missing. I have finally have the proof that yes, the whole genetic/cellular make up of a mammalian cell changes.

What we are actually saying is that 30 years of work done in the field might be suspect. More importantly, the spate of papers that has come out on the protein that I work with is suspect.

I am sitting back and savoring the moment with a grin on my face.

The reservation/antireservation hungama

My colleague is being hounded out ever since he signed a petition asking for review of the reservation policy. As I said in the previous blog, UGC/MHRD in its wisdom has decreed that assistant professor, associate professor, and professor positions will be reserved. He insists that all he ever said was that if this decree was not legally binding can we have a discussion on it before implementing it. The pro-reservation brigade is baying for his blood because they perceive this as an anti-reservation stand. He is going hoarse telling people that he is not anti-reservation. He is aghast at the obdurateness of the pro-reservation brigade.

They are not even willing to listen, he complained.

Oh well. That is exactly what the anti-reservation/YFE said when the government instituted the reservation policy at undergraduate and postgraduate degree. Then every one, including the very same colleague, defended the policy. Now that he is at the receiving end, he wants a civilized debate on the issue.

I had a chat with him today. He finally agreed that 60 years of reservation has not changed the social equality position. If anything, people are more rigid than before on this issue. The lines have solidified instead of blurring. Everyone is clamoring for reservation. And as my colleague pointed out, when it comes to fighting for justice for the sweepers, not one stands up. So where is the equality or social justice?

Poor chap! He is quite disillusioned.

M.Phil degree- The way of the Universities

M.Phil degree is something between M.Sc and Ph.D. There is compulsory course work followed by dissertation defense. In my University, we admit students under the guise of M.Phil/Ph.D and then based on their performance in the course work promote them to direct Ph.D. In the social sciences, a M.Phil is mandatory before doing Ph.D.
Today I received an email from a student in University of Kerala, Department of Biochemistry. He is doing M.Phil and has completed his course work. Now he is searching for a lab to do dissertation work for 6 months.
I am amused and flabbergasted. What is the Department of Biochemistry up to? They don't have faculty who are doing active research? If not, why offer a M.Phil degree? Is this how they offer Ph.D degrees too? Palm them off to some other University for experimentation work? More to the point, what is the UGC doing? How can they allow this to happen?

Of course, on the other hand, it is amusing to know that one can obtain M.Phil this way too.

Finally, what is the future of such a student?

Quota for the faculty

I was out of touch with the happenings in the University for goodish part of last year. But I am back in action now.

The first thing that was brought to my notice was the implementation of reservation at all levels of faculty appointment.

This is mandated by UGC and if I am not mistaken the MHRD has issued a notification. All Universities have to abide by the notification.

So it happened that we also have to abide by it. Only the professors are opposed to it. Their argument: It will dilute the standard of the University.

What standard I would like to ask? Where is the standard? Most of our teachers do not bother to teach or if they do teach, they get away by teaching sub-standard stuff. There are some who are extremely innovative. They offer three different courses but teach the same thing in all the courses. Is this the standard we want to maintain?

Okay, I will abide by your argument that standard will be diluted. But then why doesn´t the same argument hold up when we talk of reservations for students? Shouldn´t admission be made on the basis of aptitude? Where was the standard when it was mandated that reservations should be implemented for PhD admissions? Where was the uproar when reservations were being implemented in medical and engineering schools? Shouldn´t aptitude and merit be the sole criteria?

Or is this noise is being made because it affects the teaching faculty themselves? Our children can be safely sent abroad to study so the reservations at that level is not a big issue. But where are livelihood is concerned, we will oppose the implementation of quota.

The truth of the matter is that there is severe discrimination against the lower castes. The need of the hour is to teach equality to our children and try to rectify the issue from the beginning but who has the time?