Yash Pal and Annadurai selected for Firodia award

This is with reference to the news item “Delhi tech university introduces research fellowships to attract talent”. It is not enough for any technical university to introduce research fellowships. Areas for study, first class, inspiring guides, laboratory facility with great equipment and unobtrusive supervision encouraging freedom to choose the methods of study — these are far more important, and unless these are guaranteed, nothing is going to be achieved despite considerable costs, by such courses, which are already available in tonnes in our universities, almost all of them below par and countig for zero, visavis the best international standards. Areas for study should be selected BEFORE the induction of the fellows in mutual consultation between them and their guides after researching on the world wide web (internet) and dividing them into basic and applied categories. A prospective fellow could choose a research topic from either basic or applied, but should have the freedom to switch over to the other if so desired intensely by the researcher. Better study how research is being done in univesities such as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Cambridge, etc. and do not modify their guidelines and even rules if they have been formulated for upholding the highest standards of research in terms of quality of inputs expected. Research environment is something which only great universities can ensure, under people of high academic cum research calibre with a fanatic zeal, as it were, for uplifting the low standards in India today. A feeling of pride in India’s heritage and achievements, in the past, not only of the recent , CV Raman-Meghnad Saha-Ramanujan-Chandrasekhar decades but also in the medieval and ancient eras where ideas and discoveries of far-reaching significance, such as the concept of zero (shunya), decimal value of digits, astronomical findings such as the ecliptic, Salya-Sushruta tools for medicine and surgery and their codes of practice, should be instilled in every researcher, for which the guide could add value by inspiration. Also, the sense of shame and inferiority, and of frustration at the unhealthy environment prevailing in India today, which is driving away brilliant brains to green pastures abroad, must replaced by a confidence that India could never be low-rated in its potential, but only that the potential is being frittered away by the corruption in society. But society’s corruption being kept aside, it is the INDIVIDUALS who have to refurbish the poor image of india a a poor manager of research, and development of technologies based on research outputs.