A new class theory

In the academic world, compensation has become completely lop-sided. A college teacher in the US may be making $80,000 which is approximately Rs 40 lakh a year. If he wanted to relocate to India and teach in a good college or university, we offer him Rs 4 lakh or even less. However much you may adjust for purchasing power parity or for the opportunity for patriotic service, a ten to one differential simply does not work. And remember most top professors in the US do not make Rs 40 lakh; it is more like Rs 1 crore. No wonder US universities are full of Indian academics.

This used to be the case for engineers and managers till some time ago. As Indian compensation levels have adjusted, there is no mad rush for these talented persons to emigrate en masse. Many still do go away. But on balance, there is a healthy two-way traffic. In the academic world, this is simply just not the case. It is ironic that the best Indian professors and researchers are teaching students in America and in other parts of the world but not in India. This is true not just in the sciences, engineering or economics; the best professors of Indian history, anthropology, archaeology and even Sanskrit are abroad, not in India. It can be argued that countries like the US are in effect out-sourcing their “professorial” requirements to Indians.

We can always say that this does not matter. Despite poor teacher salaries, the IITs, the IIMs and other institutions provide high quality education. This is true. But when we peel the onion, we discover matters that are astonishing and depressing. Because they get a high quality student intake and because there are still some good teachers left (far too few, sadly), the present situation is deceptively good. We cannot afford to be complacent. The quality and quantum of research in Indian universities leaves much to be desired. Our conceit is misplaced. The fact remains that the three Indian

Nobel-laureates in the hard sciences, Raman, Khurana and Chandrashekhar, were all products of the much-maligned British education system in India. Free India is yet to produce a single Nobel-laureate in the hard sciences. Our lone Nobel-laureate in economics, Amartya Sen, prefers to teach at Cambridge and Harvard. If he came to India, the UGC would probably offer him Rs 10 lakh which he must be paying to a part-time typist in the US.

Compensation is the basic problem, but by no means the only one. The working environment in Indian universities is hierarchical, bureaucratic and hemmed in by irrelevant and obsolete government diktats. As a starter, if we suddenly decided to increase compensation tenfold, the problem of attracting talent may start to get resolved. However, the UGC simply could not absorb this extra cost; besides we may end up with a situation where we increase pay not for those who produce good results but for incompetent or lazy teachers who may be in a sizable majority. And compensation changes alone will not change the academic eco-system.

If we chose a hundred institutions in India (including all the CSIR laboratories) and gave them autonomy to transform themselves into islands of excellence, we could make a beginning with nurturing a non-bureaucratic environment. These institutions would compete for students and for teaching talent and would evolve in diverse ways. Such diversity is important. To make all IITs or IIMs similar is not a good idea. Each of them should try to evolve different cultures and specialise in different areas. The financial problem can be tackled by inviting the participation of India’s successful corporate sector. Corporations should be encouraged to fund research grants, chairs and special appointments. Without burdening the public fisc and without an all-round salary increase (which would destroy the finances of the UGC), we can start rewarding specific professors.

We must ensure that private sector funding of a part of a university’s expense base does not translate into corporate control. When we talk of autonomy for universities, it is not just freedom from the interference of netas and babus. It is also freedom from interference by corporate donors. Their funding should be a giveback to society not to produce immediate returns in the form of power, control and patronage, but to create long-term returns as the country produces more talented citizens who contribute as researchers, managers and so on adding to the sum total of our wealth.

We can have good teachers and world class researchers in India. We need to free up just a hundred universities and institutes from the clutches of the stultifying HRD ministry and the departments of education in the states. Rather than having them under common umbrellas, we should encourage each of them to develop distinct institutional persona. These institutions can then use their autonomy to create a positive academic environment. They can leverage the Indian corporate sector to financially reward competent teachers and researchers without surrendering their freedom to corporate control.

Try this with a hundred institutions (maybe just fifty); we can have dozens of Nobel-laureates in twenty-five years. Otherwise, we will remain a mediocre nation dependent on other countries to provide us with creativity and innovation. Is someone listening?

The writer divides his time between Mumbai, Lonavla and Bangalore jerry.rao@expressindia.com