Research in India

I was reading TOI and came across this nice article. click here to read it. It is so very true, phd in india in most of the institutes except for IIT's and IISc is done in this fashion. Although my friends at PEC would be really upset, but I must say that is the case at PEC,Chandigarh also.

I still remember being told by my guide at PEC in subtle language to look for some repetitive thesis, rather than original one. Let me quote him "Think of research as a tree , so if someone has been on one leaf, then you should try to be on the neighbouring leaf". wow !! what better way can you find to instruct your student to copy some one's thesis. Now I don't remember what I was thinking of researching on ,but I googled on some topics and came up with a published thesis. From then on I thought of it as a programming assignment.

Though I do remember Prasad Sir, who used to scold us like anything for not devoting enough time at research ( and sitting like couples at verka drinking coffee with friends). We were all told to devote at least 4-5 hours in library, but he was all alone in his quest. Guy in above article mentions of thesis on bank in every university( that had me laughing for 10 minutes ), I think we in IT have our own equivalents, like neural networks ( yup I did my thesis on it).

I think that research is in this state because it is just not paying enough. A guide should be thinking above the meagre allowance they get per student.

Having said all this , I must still say PEC did take my career to great heights, but it rocks because of the efforts students put in.