According to world famous mathematician, C R Rao, India currently requires significant number of research professionals to carry out fundamental research that will result in creation of new knowledge that is required to enhance the outcome of educational institutions and business entities.

C R Rao on research in Indian universities

This remark was made during his speech at the 62nd annual convocation of the Karnataka University. He commented that it is the only way that will help India to over come problems that we face such as hunger and ill health of crores of people. The universities have a major role in encouraging research activities in basic sciences. To a greater extend we were successful in the initial stages in restoring the past glory in scholarship, but the momentum soon faded away. We are way behind in the global ranking as a member of the knowledge society and lot needs to be done in this direction to improve the position. The status of India in the global ranking of knowledge creation, determined by the number of research publications in leading journals was significantly low, and was behind many of the third world countries such as Brazil, Poland and South Korea.

The need for discussions and debates to solve problems

Mr. Rao said that one should conduct research in a topic which he or she has not studied for obtaining a degree. The advantage with such a research is that it will lead to a fundamental discovery rather than an extension of the knowledge obtained through university education. He said that selecting a renowned scientist as a role model, choosing an area of interest and working on it with great commitment will help in achieving success in research. There are various instances in which one might feel that India is against scientific development. Such instances include the movements against nuclear power even though we face serious power crisis, against Genetically Modified food crops when the production is stagnant and the population of the country is increasing at a rapid rate, and movements against vaccination that help in preventing diseases due to rare cases of adverse side effects. In India we do not follow the practice of resolving problems through discussions and debates as our ancestors did in the past. It is now the responsibility of the younger generation of the present era who graduate out of colleges to ponder over such problems and come up with solutions.

India tops in scientific research output, but lags in research conducted in universities

A study of research publications across the globe has demonstrated that India is among the top countries in the world based on scientific research output. But lags behind in the terms of research activities carried out in universities. The results were announced at the Indian Science congress held in Bhubaneswar.

The increase in scientific journals publishes from India

The analysis conducted by Elsevier, which publishes the leading science journals has revealed that the number of scientific journals released from India has grown at a rate of 14.3% annually in the past five years, making it into the top list which consists of countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. The analysis has found out that most of the research papers published in India is from research institutes and not from universities. It is the research activities in the universities that contribute for the growth of the country in terms of research.

Research institutes leads research in India

In India research activities are mainly carried out by various scientific institutes such as Indian Institute of Science, IITs, etc. According to J S Virdi, head of microbiology at Delhi University, the contribution of universities in the area of research is very low in India. He says that this is as a result of the increased burden of teaching and lack of funds. In the case of research institutes their only objective is to carry out research and research only.

Indian research ahead in quality compared to china

The researchers who analyzed the research scenario in India have compared the research output of India with output from other countries such as China.  They have found that China comes out with more papers than India, but lags behind India in terms of quality. The observation is made based on the evaluation of a parameter. The same is called citations per article (CPA). This denotes the number of times other authors cite a published research paper.

Statistics

The study has found that the major contribution of India towards the scientific world has been in the field of chemistry. It was found that 38 % of the total papers published from India were on chemistry. The contribution in the field of CS was 4.8 % and medical specialties were 4.3 %.

Reasons for minimal research activities in universities

An important reason for the lag in knowledge creation is the rote system of learning we have been following since ages. The Indian education system promotes rote learning which wants the students to memorize what is given in the text books and other study materials. This will help the students to increase their memory power and not their reasoning skills, which is required for analyzing problems and thus develop solutions. So in most of the cases students lack creativity and reasoning which impacts the research and knowledge creation in the country. So when these students grow up and complete their graduation, they will not be interested in research activities.

The fear of risk taking is another major factor that damages the research activities in the country. In the Indian context, failure is often considered as a grave mistake. Since most of them fear failure, they hesitate to try something new and thus it hampers knowledge creation.

It is high time that we change our attitude towards risk taking and research. We have to alter the present education system to incorporate more of learning through reasoning which will develop bright students who are attracted towards research and experimenting.