Ranking

In general, humans have an obsession with ranking. Everything, and more frighteningly, everyone needs to be ranked. How to rank? On what criteria? Don't ask. Everything is justified as long as you can cite some scores, some ranks - all in the name of "objectivity". The newspapers and the magazines are obsessed with it, and the growing trend is the administrators (even in academia) are getting used to it.

Let us for a moment ponder how to rank two educational institutes or two universities. Apparently, the belief is that Inst-A is better than Inst-B since its students get better jobs (what is better - probably more salary), more companies come for campus placement, higher ranked (in what - well, a multiple-choice-question-type pan-India exam, what else?) students join there, and so on.

Now, we know the universities are supposed to impart "total" education. Without going in to the debate of what that means, it at least should include some social factors and some human angles, and not just money or companies. Even for jobs, who measures what happens later in those jobs. In the most high-paying jobs, people get frustrated earlier, and leave or change jobs, or change the entire career path as well. Shouldn't this stress be counted as a negative "score" for that job? But no, that is after the students have left the institutes, and why should an institute worry about it?

Again, this tendency of pushing the problem to someone else is very disturbing. A little joke is on order now. Due to the previous tatkal rail ticket timing, the website and the booking offices were clogged at 8am. The government solved it remarkably well. How? By shifting the tatkal time to 10am. Now, of course, there is no rush at 8am. What about the rush at 10am? Well, that's a different problem, and for someone else to solve.

Coming back to institutes, I personally will always prefer a campus with more vibrancy, more seminars of dignitaries from different walks of life (especially outside the set curriculum), a social awareness, more equality in gender, caste, religion, etc. However, no magazine, no agency considers this. Considering one aspect (jobs, etc.), and not considering others (social awareness, etc.) - isn't that subjectivity? Why do we think of objectivity in only numbers, and not the parameters?

Now, even more disconcertingly, compare two academicians. How to do that? Some will say, simple enough - just count the number of publications, the number of PhD students, the number of times one was a chair, the number of times one got awards, the number of times one organized a conference/workshop, etc. and map it to a nice little "score" in the end. This will solve the problem of who to promote, etc. without "subjectivity" as it produces a nice total ordering of all academicians in the institute.

I am not saying these measures are bad. In fact, some of them are good, and probably needs to be tracked. However, my point is by fixing only some of these, others are ignored, which ultimately will turn out to be very very costly. An example will be easier to understand. Nowhere in these measures is mentioned the number of times one works in a doctoral committee. Moreover, an unusual project or a tough course is counted the same as a run-off-the-mill project or a course - everything is made equivalent by the number "1".

Also, since there is an objective function to maximize, over the course of time, people will do just that. People will stop teaching esoteric courses, people will stop spending time in doctoral committees, etc. as these are deemed "unproductive" and time is limited.

In an academic institute, and to think more widely, in a society, it is best to let people evolve in their own ways, and not rank them. Of course, there should be checks and balances, but we all know when something or someone is abnormally bad or abnormally good, don't we? It is the middle section that matters, and ranking, at least in my opinion, only worsens the situation.

Human society is based upon trust, cooperation and fellow feeling. Unnecessary ranking measures promote mistrust, unhealthy competition and back-stabbing. That can never be desirable.

How to find good faculty members and post-graduate students?

How to find good faculty members? Although this question is faced by all institutions across the world, I am discussing here the Indian academia.
Probably a more important question is how to find good graduate students motivated for research?

Here are some of my thoughts.

I believe there is a huge potential in the so-called "next-level" colleges in India. May be the best is to tap them, go to their institutes, invite them to spend a summer or the last year with the "top-level" institutes, and hopefully show them and convince them the advantages of pursuing research in India.

How to retain the bachelor students of the "top-level" institutes themselves? May be money in the foreign universities is not the only concern. May be our curriculum is too rigid, too fixed with rules and bureaucratic, and in the process not so interesting. May be the colonialism has left us to derive a system where we don't believe anyone and try to guard against all possible mis-actions.
If we believe the graduate students more in letting them choose what they really want, the faculty members more in letting them design courses and conduct classes the way they want, things will only change towards better.

In any case, it cannot become much worse.

Reverse colonization

Now an European president is seeking to meet an Indian businessman to decide how the Indian company will operate in the European country! The tables have turned, is it?
However, I fail to get satisfaction as much as I would have wanted.
In the end, this is still humans portraying their ultimate greed.

Capital punishment

The hanging of Ajmal Kasab is a welcome news.
If he along with his mates dared to do this to our country, it is only right that he is hanged. Yes, this is revenge, but then what is wrong in it?
Why should we be chicken-hearted about ending the life of a hard-core terrorist? Why should we keep on feeding him from the state exchequer, filled from our taxes, when we are killed by him mercilessly? For than 100 deaths happened on that day, and the media is only worried about the human rights angle to the capital punishment!
Should we wait for another terrorist attack that hijacks a plane and demands Ajmal to be freed, only for him to return and create more havoc?
These kind of people have no right to live in our society, especially when it has been proved beyond doubt that he was responsible for his actions.
The only thing I dislike about the whole thing is that it took 4 years.

Facebook

Whatever is going on in this country in the name of governance is too obnoxious. How can police arrest a girl for posting on facebook? More ridiculously, how can they arrest some other girl for "liking" that post? The morality of the law-keepers in this country has never been highly thought of, but this is too much to ignore, too much to not condemn in the strictest possible words.
The post was way too innocuous and is very very reasonable. Holding up an entire city is not worthwhile; but the more important point is hunting down someone for a perfectly nice post in the cyber world, and claiming it incites hatred, etc. is a perfect example of what wrong is.

My country

The situation in this country is just way too depressing. I don't even know where to start, what to say. Too many events -- CWG, 2G, CAG shunning, Coal Allocation, Petroleum Ministry, Education, Law and Order, Khap -- the list is too depressing and too endless.
It is easy to blame the Congress or the UPA-II for this, but what about the Opposition -- BJP or NDA? They give some press conferences and that's all. I guess the whole political system is just rotten from the core.
However, this is not the most frustrating part. It is the failure of the entire country in either individual capacities or NGO-level or some group level to fight this wide-spread corruption. In fact, it seems that no body really hates corruption. They hate it when they can't do it themselves, and when the chance comes, they just scrape the cream as well. And I am one of them.

Faculty member caught posing as R-1 officer

In a startling revelation, one of the faculty members of an IIT near a remote village has been caught masquerading as an R-1 officer.  He was exposed while setting up a coaching center for IIT-JEE exam where he put up a hoarding mentioning himself as a faculty member.

When our reporter caught up with him, Dr. Robin Vada (real name changed only a bit) put up a brave face, and said this is to protect himself and his family against discrimination.  He argued, "Who wants to be a faculty member from an R-1 officer? While it seems a promotion, it actually is quite the reverse," and after adding an expletive towards one of his uncles who advised him for this, went on, "Look at all the things a faculty member has to go through -- taking regular classes, conducting exams, grading large number of papers, explaining to authorities why his/her students did not work, etc., etc.  And on top of it, they get houses that have been rejected by all R-1 officers, even those who are around 10 years junior.  On the other hand, we, R-1 officers, enjoy all the perks, and have much less responsibilities.  It was a grave mistake to apply for a faculty position.  And while I was offered a position, I never accepted it." While our reporter pointed out that 'no communication' means an acceptance and he had to send a formal rejection letter, Dr. Vada broke into another feat, "You journalists don't understand the situation of the aam aadmi in this country.  We need to worry about gas cylinders and banana prices every day and not some official bureaucratic rejection letter."

The IIT authorities has also decided to pass on the buck to, well, it is not clear whom, as they are still deciding.  However, one of the faculty members, on conditions of anonymity, told us that he is sure that the buck will be passed to the faculty community, "I am waiting for an office order that will reprimand us for not welcoming a new member of our community.  Sadly, the truth remains that we had no idea he was part of us.  In fact, we felt jealous looking at his big house, big car, etc."

Dr. Vada's wife, Mrs. Sonali, refused to talk to our reporter.  One of the neighbors, however, was gracious enough to pitch in, "How can she now come out? She always called us to her house on one pretext or another to show how good and how big it was.  Her nagging about what to do with so many rooms and so much garden space was becoming intolerable.  Now that she will be forced to stay in a two-room apartment like us and wait for 5-7 years for a bigger house, she is simply heart-broken."

The faculty members in Dr. Vada's department were also morose about this development, "This now means our average class size will go down from 76 to 74. With a cut-off of 75 students, we could have got one more extra day of grading."

Some members even saw a sinister motive in revealing Dr. Vada as a faculty member just when the IIT senate passed the rule of allowing one less day for grading with courses less than 75 students.  "You have to question the timing of this.  I mean, this guy has been enjoying this house for more than a year now. Why have the authorities woken up so late?"

The whole matter has been referred to the ministry of human resources and development.  Apparently, the reaction from there is that a little dishonesty doesn't hurt anyone.  In fact, it has helped the country by distorting the statistics of available faculty members in IIT, thereby paving the way for setting up foreign institutes.

The reaction from the Board of Governors of the IIT is awaited.