The sad tale of PhDs in India

MRS X was a professor at a famous university in India for eight years; having a post-graduate degree she was never interested in opting for further studies, until she got an offer to take up the post of Senior Professor and may be Head of the Department, if and the condition was unsaid, if she had a PhD.

Within two years, the professor was called Dr  X. It was almost an order, package and deliver deal. Cases like these are aplenty in our country these days. Around 14,000 PhD's are awarded every year in India. This is split as 4000 in Arts, 5000 in Science, 1000 in Agriculture, 1000 in Engineering, 1000 in Commerce and roughly 500 in Education and 250 in medicine. Its important to analyse what drives most people to take up research and PhDs in our country.

More often than not people who choose to do a research doctorate in India do it out of academic compulsion rather than research penchant. Its either taken up to supplement one’s career or to get better job opportunities. A lot of them also choose to take up Ph D for the ‘tag’ sake, for being a Ph D is akin to being an expert and is given a lot of status in the society. The result of such motivation is sub-standard quality of work, half hearted approach and half baked patchwork thesis which doesn’t contribute to the research base of the country. In fact a lot of Ph D research topics taken up are frivolous and have zero contribution value. So where does the loop hole lie?

Speaking to Mrs Ruchi Jaggi, HOD Research, in a management college in Pune on the deteriorating quality of PhDs, she says, “It is sad that apart from a few research institutes our country isn’t able to produce good research work. I think our set-up doesn’t compel us to go for the long way.” It is an irony that on major counts our expertise in research is very limited. We do not promote research acumen and the “cut, copy, paste” methodology is widespread.

Dr V K Jain, a senior professor did his PhD two decades back. He compares the kind of rigours they had to go during that time and the situation today. He says, “I remember giving my Ph D guide a weekly report and getting as many inputs as possible. Today ten students are doing their PhD’s under me but they are either propelled to do it because of additional qualification or the tag associated with it. Rarely do I find a strong research penchant as the driving force.”