Govt needs to wake up against ignorance to researchers

MANY WAYS, research in India is not motivating and alluring to talents and rarely top-talents opt to join career in teaching and research in India. The main deterrent here is poor stipend-packages to our young researchers who are, in addition, absolutely ignored in the implementation of the sixth pay commission. We must understand that poor stipend is making research less competitive and somewhat a lethargic job. Most of students are coming to research only because they will be jobless otherwise.


Young researchers (research scholars and research associates) of the country are poorly paid and there is no increment yet in their stipend-package after the implementation of sixth pay-commission. We find increments in salary-packages of every government employee due to sixth pay commission, but there is great amount of delay in increasing stipend-packages of young researchers. It seems ministry and concerned offices like UGC, DST, CSIR, etc. are not bothering to increase stipend-packages of young researchers. No doubt, we find erupting dissatisfaction in young researchers with government over the delay in fellowship hike and their continuous ignorance in the country.


Government must wake up to acknowledge the difference between the package provided to young researchers and the package received by school teachers and lab assistants who join on a lower qualification of B.Sc. whereas masters and PhD are qualification for research fellow and research associates, respectively. It's an important issue concerning research scholars because jobs requiring less qualification pay almost double to what is being paid to scholars to run his or her life.

One cannot expect young researchers should forget their social life and confine themselves to research activities with full commitment. When scientists and academicians involved in research have been supported fully by abrupt pay-hike, for pushing research activities and seeking quality-research in the country, on the matter of dignity and societal status too, young researchers of the country also believe that they must be given adequate and proportional financial support according to their qualification.

Points for Dissatisfaction:

For a long, it has been observed that research scholars are destined to face discrimination and ignorance, just because they chiefly concentrate on their research objectives instead of involving in unions, politics and strikes. Recently, all IITs' faculties went on extended strike for seeking better pay-package than their counterparts in universities. To a huge degree of surprise, ministry adopting hostile stance earlier buckled under the language of strikes. Now, professors in IITs are receiving hefty sum of Rs. 70,000 – 90,000 per month as well as many other perks of high costs. Even lab assistants in IITs who join on the qualification of B.Sc. are receiving Rs. 24,000 – 30,000 and so are school teachers with equivalent qualifications. Needless to say, it is considerably shocking that positions of research scholars requires master degrees but to great injustice are paid only Rs. 12,000 and Rs. 14,000. A research associate usually owns PhD qualification but receives a meager amount of Rs. 16,000 only.